The Truth About Everything

The historian Tom Holland begins his magisterial work Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World with the remarkable note that Rome’s first heated swimming pool was “raised on the backs of the dead” 30 to 40 years before Christ was born. Though these pools were built as a showcase of wealth and power, the stench of decades of slave deaths still hung in the air.  While some were tossed out, too poor for a tomb, others suffered what was considered the worst death imaginable—crucifixion. The Roman builders even, according to Holland, imported new trees and plants to mask the stench and because “the bare trees remained as a token of its sinister past.” Sinister past and sinister future.  

While we can scarcely imagine seeing someone nailed to a cross, the Romans could. It’s ghastly. Shocking. Inhuman. And, perhaps, that was the point. The Romans had seen the bodies alongside roads. There was no more potent reminder of the empire’s power and no more provocative symbol of failed rebellion. 

Decades after they began building that first heated swimming pool on what was called Esquiline Hill, Jesus himself suffered the same fate that so many slaves met on a different hill—Golgotha, or “the place of the skull.” And as we begin this Holy Lent and meditate on the seven last words of Jesus on the cross, this is where we find Jesus—and ourselves. 

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

In Luke’s narrative of the crucifixion, we learn that two criminals were put to death with Jesus. One was on his right; one was on his left. Placed beside him, Jesus said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).  

Who was Jesus talking about? The criminals beside him? The Jewish leaders who had called for his death? The Romans who crucified him? The answer to all these questions is, of course, yes. But on that cursed tree, we, too, are in Jesus’s first word. In this plea for forgiveness, he’s asking his Father to forgive his enemies, but also his disciples.  

No one—not one—is beyond needing forgiveness. And no one—not one—is “beyond the reach of Jesus’ prayer,” as the Reverend Fleming Rutledge writes. “From that sphere of divine power, we hear these words today as though they were spoken for the first time,” she reminds us, “as though they were being spoken at this very moment by the living Spirit, spoken of each one of us: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

The Big-R Reality

My wife, Mtr. Bree, is fond of saying that the Gospel is the “big-R Reality” of our existence. It’s Truth with a capital T. Jesus’s first word from the Cross is simply that. We all need divine forgiveness, for we do not know what we do. We confess as much every week when we pray: “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” 

While Rome’s first heated swimming pool was “raised on the backs of the dead,” the big-R reality of what Jesus did on the cross now raises the dead. That’s why the ultimate symbol of defeat—a cross—has become the ultimate symbol of victory.  

Or, to put it as the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus did: “If what Christians say about Good Friday is true, then it is, quite simply, the truth about everything.” With a capital T.