The Friday Jesus was crucified was our worst day; so how can we call it Good? One reason we call it Good Friday is that we overheard Jesus praying that day. Rising to heaven alongside the sound of hammer on nails was the prayer, "Father, forgive them; they don't know what they're doing."

On our worst day, Jesus was praying for us. He was praying what He had always preached. As time ran out, as negotiations failed, in the last communique between holy parent and hostage child, the talk was of forgiving enemies, of pardon for persecutors.

This prayer was sent to break a seemingly unending cycle of domestic violence which began with Cain and Abel. The hostage Jesus was condemned by children of the parent to whom He prayed. At bottom, this prayer is a family affair, a child talking to His parent about sisters and brothers who are breaking His heart, taking His life. No wonder we call this a passion narrative.

Despite the line about not-knowing, this prayer is not a defense of those brothers' and sisters' actions. It is true they acted in ignorance, but ignorance is not innocence. This prayer is no expert testimony for plea bargaining with God: "Judge, we call to the stand one Jesus, specialist in human affairs, who advises a commuted sentence; after all they didn't know what they were doing."

The Jews could perhaps argue a measure of not-knowing, lately among us called deniability: "I don't remember knowing He was the true Son of God." And the Romans could argue its equally popular corollary: "Don't blame us; we were just following orders from the top."

You and I understand this defense. We do our worst damage when we think we are doing right. Recently a review of documents revealed that a Nazi official in La Chambon, France, during World War II had secretly protected Jewish refugees. He did not live to accept credit for this; Jewish members of the French resistance gunned him down just before the war ended. They did not really know who they were killing. Neither do we.

We all have bloody hands. In the play "2" Nazi leader Hermann Goering at Nuremburg defends himself by arguing that his death camps were no worse than the English saturation bombing of Dresden or the American holocaust that surprised Hiroshima. Our best defense against such charges is that the death of the innocent at our hands is somehow different than the death of innocents at the hands of others. You do not have to side with Nazis to see that this kind of defense does not prove us innocent and put us in the same camp with Jesus.

To plead insufficient knowledge will not do, not because it is not true but because it is not helpful. Such ignorance is not a shield against God's judgment; it is a locked gate separating us from God's love. Jesus pleads we be forgiven, not because our ignorance acquits us but because it shuts off our escape. With forgiveness comes knowledge and freedom.

Jesus was not praying a legal argument; He was begging a thoroughly sympathetic judge to act mercifully toward the judge's own children. In the end we are dependent completely upon the tender mercies of God sought in Jesus' prayer.