'Father, forgive them' by Tamara Hill Murphy [a preview for Holy Week series]
Today, on the Stories member blog, we began our eighth annual series Retrieve Lament, a series of stories written by myself and some guest writers to help us keep vigil with Jesus during this final week of Lent. Jesus gave us a litany of last words, known as the Seven Last Words of Christ, and his deathbed words provide our framework for Holy Week. (You can read more here about how the idea for this series started at a Good Friday service in our Austin church back in 2012.)
Each day between now and Resurrection Sunday, six friends and family members will share their own stories to help us retrieve lament and to keep vigil with Jesus. I’m sharing the first post here on my public blog for you to get an idea of what we’ll be doing together in the Stories member area this week. The next six posts will be available to Stories members only as a way to create a bit more privacy for the guests who are sharing their lament.
Would you invite a friend to join us? These stories of lament shave helped me grow deeper in gratitude and worship for Jesus and I believe they could also encourage you too.
You can subscribe to the Stories member blog on this page Retrieve Lament for Holy Week or click through the button below.
“When they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’”
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do
by Tamara Hill Murphy
Last year, as Holy Week arrived in the disorienting early weeks of the pandemic, I invited everyone who’d previously written a story for the Retrieve Lament series to gather via Zoom. It felt important for the Sacramental Life Community to process the unknown grief ahead of us in the context of what we’d learned about lament in the past. To my surprise, I was not alone. Three different times last April, we gathered to share, listen, and notice how God meets the brokenhearted.
The holy compulsion motivating the Retrieve Lament series for the past eight years contends for this truth: We need to hear other people’s laments in the presence of Christ and his people. Specifically, we need to hear stories outside of our own perspective and from all different stages of grief. I need to hear expressions of lament at the beginning shocking part of grief, the middle, uncharted terrain of grief, and the lament that comes with the ending chapters of grief. I need to be surrounded by people who aren’t afraid to share their lament in all its unpredictability and strength.
Since Holy Week 2020, I’ve been reminded that the best antidote to falling into existential despair over the incalculable grief of the whole world, is to know real people expressing real lament over real suffering.
Today’s story expands the update I offered during one of our Zoom gatherings last Holy Week, an epilogue to the lament I’d offered in 2018 about my childhood sexual abuse, ‘Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit’.
In 2018 I wrote the final lament for Holy Week and in 2021, it feels fitting to offer the first.
Being able to share one of my deepest, most unresolved stories of grief on the blog was a huge milestone for me. The past eighteen months contained another important milestone: one of my abusers passed away. Finding out that he died established another defining moment in my grief story.
For several years before his death, I’d tried to anticipate what it’d feel like when the actual moment arrived. I presumed that I’d be devastated because, while I’m not positive, I think this man is the only other person who knew about my abuse. My suffering had two witnesses and one of us was too young and too traumatized to carry a clear memory of the facts. While my abuser was alive I carried within me the hope for validation or an apology or a confession or some sort of something that could help vindicate me. With his death, it felt like that opportunity was gone forever. That was hard to accept. Really, really, really hard.
When I learned this man had died, my body responded in a burst of loud tears. Even as I shook and wailed, I noticed that I was not devastated. Whatever my fear had threatened to unravel in the dread of this moment, I lived through the moment with a profound sense of being intact and unharmed. I received the tears as a gift carrying the message that I am full of life.
Following the tears, the immediate feeling I had was relief. Not in a vengeful way - I’m not glad this person died - rather, in a way that my actual body felt lighter. My hope for explicit validation died with the man who abused me, and in its place came emotional clarity. For the first time in my life, I was certain that my abuser was living in the transparency of truth he’d avoided for my lifetime. This knowledge comforted me.
Before that moment I was haunted by the question “Does he know what he did?” and after that moment I realized he’d entered the full gaze of God, exposed in a way no human encounter could have manufactured. My tears of lament turned into tears of relief. I can’t explain it; I can only bear witness.
Maybe the word I’m looking for is closure. My hope for validation was gone, and in its place, I realized I would be okay without it. More than okay. Strong, substantive, and valid as one who gives and receives love with authority.
For many years, I was driven by the false expectation that healing was a static state of being. I was either healed or unhealed. In hindsight, I was thinking of healing as something I could achieve. Yes, I knew that God was doing the work but I wanted to help him heal me faster so that I’d be able to once and for all put this pain and grief away; so that I’d no longer be sad or randomly angry or sit through a story of someone else’s abuse and want to go wreck the world in some way.
Now my grief is teaching me that while I’m not defined by my suffering of sexual abuse, I am invited by the Suffering Christ to fellowship with him in particular intimacy because of it. Those moments of being knocked over by the emotion of grief will always happen and while I look forward to being fully healed and whole in the final resurrection, I also hold sacred the fellowship of suffering I live in with Jesus. I can’t explain it; I can only bear witness.
Maybe the word I’m looking for is acceptance. In God’s tenderness, I’ve been made whole enough to own my grief. Something about the wounding I’ve received will bear eternal witness to the redemptive beauty of Jesus, who lives with scars in his body to this day. I can accept this truth with deep thanksgiving.
One week during summer 2019, I’d heard that the man who abused me was in the hospital and might not recover. He did recover for a period of time before dying, but I received the news like a warning sign. I needed God to put some distance between the dying breaths of this man who’d abused me and my own well-being.
Summer 2019 carried a full weight of suffering for my family and, to be honest, the news about the man’s near-death illness didn’t make the top of the list. In the context of caring for my hurting family, I knew I needed God to meet my need for justice in another way. I couldn’t give any more strength to it and I needed all of that energy to be transformed into love.
Brian and I had been given the gift of a few days away in Maine. In the vastness of a rocky coastline, I stood by the ocean and sensed God inviting me to drop off the weight of my unmet needs. As much as the thought appealed to me, I couldn’t figure out how.
How could I let go of this part of the story I’d hoped would be written? The part where truth is revealed and justice is administered. I picked up a tiny bit of driftwood and told God, not defiantly but honestly, “This is how much I can drop.” I let the stick fall into the crashing surf and watched the wood bob up against the rocks over and over again. And then, it was gone. The driftwood was carried into the vast Atlantic.
Something in my spirit shifted and I realized I could say “I give my story to you. I release my rights to it and trust you God to know best how to end this story. I release the work of mercy and justice completely into your hands.”
Maybe it was just the seaspray blowing on my face, but at that moment I felt cleaner, lighter, and calmer.
With my grip tightened around the outcome of my story, I could not let go of the wrongdoing of my abuser. In my version, he had to know and make known what he had done in order for me to be made whole. I had to keep alive the worst truths about him, in order for my own to come to light. This is an unbearable burden. I couldn’t carry it any longer.
The tiny piece of driftwood representing my deepest grief seems like a preposterous illustration, but the driftwood isn’t the metaphor. The vast ocean is the point of this story. I can’t explain it; I can only bear witness.
Maybe the word I’m looking for is forgiveness. Maybe my little offer of letting go reflects in a tiny way the great surrender of rights Jesus made on the cross. Maybe as Jesus faced the long hours of his excruciating death, he knew he needed all of his strength for the love he wanted to pour out on his friends and family and to all of us also.
Maybe Christ’s first, final words “Father, forgive them” was his own exhale of surrender. He let the weight of the damnable wood of the cross drop into the vast ocean of God’s justice and mercy.
There’s no me releasing my little stick into the Maine seawater without this stunning act of surrender Jesus offers in one of his final breaths. He bore the unbearable weight of forgiving those who could not live with the knowledge of what they’d done. I can bear my portion of this same kind of grief, hidden underneath the cover of his arms stretched out on the cross.
Father, forgive my abuser for he could not live with the knowledge of what he’d done. Father, thank you that he knows now and that he’s entered the depths of your vast ocean of mercy and justice. Amen.
Tamara Hill Murphy lives with her husband Brian, an Anglican priest, in Bridgeport, CT. Her writing has appeared in Plough, Think Christian, and Englewood Review of Books. She is a Spiritual Director and Selah fellow with Leadership Transformations and is currently learning how to parent her four adult children. Find her at TamaraHillMurphy.com, and A_Sacramental_Life on Instagram.
What Our Lord Saw from the Cross, James Tissot
Read and Pray
The First Word: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Pater dimite illis nessiunt enim quid faciunt.)*
O my people, what have I done unto thee?
Or wherein have I wearied thee?
Testify against me.
Because I brought thee forth from the land of Egypt:
thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Saviour.
Holy God,
Holy Mighty,
Holy Immortal, have mercy upon us.
Because I led thee through the desert forty years,
and fed thee with manna,
and brought thee into a land exceeding good:
thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Saviour.
Holy God,
Holy Mighty,
Holy Immortal, have mercy upon us.
--The Solemn Reproaches of Good Friday
At that time, Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas; and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. And the soldiers led him away.... [Mark 15:15-16a]
When they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” [Luke 23:33-34a]
O Christ Jesus, look with pity on me, in all of my own sins and failings, and help me to learn mercy from you, who are All Mercy. Then, as I have so often added my own sufferings to yours upon the cross, help me to now add my own words of compassionate forgiveness to yours, that I may learn from your example, and so further comprehend and share in your victory.