Jesus can bring restoration to even the most broken and gruesome atrocities, atrocities like the lynching of Mary Turner; after all, Jesus experienced his own unjust lynching. Like Turner, Jesus was hung because he opposed the dominant authority. But Jesus sought to bring reconciliation, even to that place. After he was wrongly convicted and hung from a tree, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”7 Forgiveness and healing cannot begin until we become aware of the historical roots of the problem and acknowledge the harm caused.
