Sermon, November 25, 2007 -- Luke 23:33-43

“Fit for a King” (Luke 23:33-43)
Rick Olson, November 25, 2007

When you read about the crucifixion these days, it’s hard not to think of Mel Gibson’s movie-version, “The Passion of the Christ.” You remember all the hype, all the controversy as people who hadn’t even seen the movie were condemning it as anti-Semitic, and you probably remember as well the canny way that Gibson and company parlayed all that, and the fanatical support of many evangelical Christians, into a box-office bonanza. People who would never see an R-rated movie – like my mother – went in droves, and made it one of the bona-fide hits of 2004. I finally saw it when it came out on DVD, and I was impressed by the technical mastery . . . the sets and costumes were beautiful, and it was acted and directed with skill and . . . yes . . . passion.

It’s all there . . . the betrayal in the garden, the trials before Pilate and the Sanhedrin, his horrific scourging in front of his mother and Mary Magdalene . . . and then the long walk to Golgotha, the constant beatings and taunting, and finally, when he gets get to the hill, the nails being pounded in – in close-up, of course – the blood spurting and running down his side, the tearing of the flesh as they hoisted him up on the tree . . . you can see the agony on his face, can almost feel the crown of thorns as it rips his skin . . . “The Passion of the Christ” is unsparingly explicit in its depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Now contrast all of that with Luke’s description: “When they came to the place that is called the skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.” Twenty-six words in English, twenty-four in the original Greek. They crucified Jesus there with the criminals. Makes you think that Luke wants us to concentrate on something other than the pain, something other than the gore, doesn’t it? Maybe he was interested in getting at some truths about Jesus and the nature of his being that transcends the brutal details of his death.

Well, the first thing out of his mouth after he’s been nailed up might give us a clue . . . “Father,” he says, “forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus begs forgiveness from God for his captors – for the soldiers who nail him up us, for those who sentence him to die, in fact, for all those who are complicit in his death . . . father forgive them for they know not what they do . . . he begs God’s forgiveness for their horrendous act, for their terrible murder of an innocent man . . . then they cast lots to divide his clothing. The juxtaposition is telling, isn’t it? Jesus forgives his killers while they divvy up his things. The way of God versus the way of the world . . . forgiveness versus greed.

And the crowd, which had followed him around, hanging on every word, is silent, but the religious leaders aren’t: they scoff at him, saying “he saved others; let him save himself.” And here’s a second clue as to what this passage is all about: this word saved. Luke uses that word only seventeen times in his entire Gospel, and four of them – almost a quarter – are right here in these few verses. Seems that Luke wants us to think about Jesus as savior here . . .

So let’s see: we’ve got Jesus as one who forgives, Jesus as one who saves . . . but the religious leaders don’t stop there . . . “let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one.” Messiah, chosen one . . . another title for Jesus . . . and here’s a sharp irony: we confess that Jesus is the Messiah, that’s what we call him: Christ, which is Greek for Messiah. And the irony is not just his identity, but his actions: Jesus is a Messiah that saves others, but will not save himself.

Well. The soldiers also mock him, they offer him sour wine, they tell him “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” And here’s another title, one that he’d never claimed . . . Pilate had asked him “Are you the King of the Jews?” and Jesus’ only reply was “You say so” . . . and yet they hung it on him, or on the stake above him, at least – “This is the King of the Jews.”

And we can’t help but think back to the very start of his ministry, when he was driven out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit . . . remember? The devil comes up to him and tempts him with three temptations, to use his Son-of-God-hood to gain power and authority: “command this stone to become a loaf of bread,” the devil says. “If you’ll just worship me, the world will all be yours.” “Throw yourself down and God will command angels to bear you up.” And these temptations on the cross – save yourself, if you are the Messiah – are of a kind with those first ones there in the wilderness . . . Luke brackets Jesus’ ministry with scenes that illustrate his refusal to save himself, to look after his own interests. Jesus spent his entire life saving other folks – healing them, feeding them, assuring them of forgiveness – but he would not save himself.

And this is why we read this passage on Christ the King Sunday . . . “If you are the King of the Jews save yourself.” Save yourself . . . We not only confess Jesus to be Messiah, to be the anointed one, we confess him to be King over all, over the world and all that is in it. We confess that he is our Lord and master, so there’s a double irony here: he never claimed to be King of anyone, much less of the Jews, but they mocked him with that title anyway, and today we call him our sovereign ruler . . . but here’s Luke’s point: if he is a king, it’s king unlike any other . . . “ The soldiers can hardly be blamed for being confused . . . every king they ever heard about thought of himself first . . . every king the world knew lived in palaces paneled in cedar, on thrones filagreed with gold . . . every king they knew about sucked the people dry for their own benefit, stripped the wealth of the land to support their wars of conquest, to keep them and their toadies in silver. If Jesus Christ is a king, it’s not as the world has known . . .

And of course, this is no less true today than it was back then . . . only this time the real kings are monarchs of the boardroom, captains of multinational corporations . . . they’re people who oversee the laying-off of thousands to prop up the corporate bottom line . . . they’re people who live in luxury while their workers make minimum wage . . . they’re people who drive corporations into the ground, then flutter to golden-parachuted landings. In our country, a very large amount of wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few people . . . and it’s built on the backs of working men and women. Since the 1970s, the gap between the richest people in this country and the poorest has steadily widened, as has the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers in American corporations. And I wonder what these modern leaders, these corporate kings and princes, would make of the real, authentic Jesus if they saw him on the cross? Would they have just as much trouble understanding Jesus as the leaders of that day? Would they scoff at his humble nature and say “If he is CEO, let him save himself?” Would they offer up spoiled wine, saying “If you are the Chairman of the Board, then save yourself?”

Well. One of the criminals hanging beside him keeps deriding him and saying “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us! . . . Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him, scolded him, saying “Don’t you fear God . . . after all, you’re under the same sentence.” This other criminal, this other guy hung on a cross for bucking the Roman line, he apparently gets it. He apparently understands that Jesus is no ordinary rabble-rouser, no run-of-the-mill seditionist like those the Romans executed every day. And what he says next confirms it: “We deserve what we’re getting,” he says – we did it. “But this man has done nothing wrong.” And notice that he doesn’t say “But this man is the Son of God,” or “This man is the Messiah, the chosen one.” He says: “This man has done nothing wrong.”

And so he adds one more line to the list of attributes we’ve been compiling for Jesus. We have Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the chosen one, Jesus the forgiver, Jesus the King . . . and now here is Jesus the innocent victim. But it’s what he says next that really shows he gets it. “Jesus,” he says, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” This guy does indeed get it . . . he gets the difference between worldly rulers and heavenly ones, between God’s idea of power and the world’s . . . he understands that sarcasm not withstanding, Jesus indeed is a sovereign, that there will be a kingdom on earth, and he wants Jesus to remember him – as would a loving ruler – when he comes into his own.

And Jesus responds with one of the most famous lines in the gospels: “Truly I say to you, truly I tell you: today you will be with me in Paradise.” But note something about this that’s often overlooked – and I had to have this pointed out to me. He says today you will be with me, today, not “in three days, when I’ve risen from the grave we’ll be together,” not “after forty days when I ascend on a cloud,” but today, we’ll be together, in Paradise. We know Jesus went to the grave, that he was really dead, carried there by Joseph of Arimathea. We also know that three days later, he arose from that grave, and appeared first to Mary, then to the other disciples. So he couldn’t be talking about heaven, because he wouldn’t be there yet, for at least three days.

So if Jesus is not talking about heaven, what is he talking about? This thief on the cross, who of all the people in the Passion narrative is the only one who gets it, the only one who doesn’t see disaster in Jesus’ death, in what sense will Jesus be with him in Paradise on that very day? Only if Paradise is some state before death can this be possible . . . only if Paradise has nothing to do with Jesus’ death, nothing in fact to do with his resurrection . . . the criminal on the cross heard what Jesus said . . . forgive them, for they know not what to do, and he knows then that his own standing before God, his own forgiveness, if you will, has nothing to do with whatever he did to get there, whatever he did that put him on the cross . . . I mean, if the folks who’d crucified the Son of God were forgiven, he certainly will be as well . . . and the moment he realizes that, he becomes free. The moment he realizes that, he joins Jesus in Paradise.

Do you remember when Jesus was asked by some Pharisees when the Kingdom of God was coming, and he said “In fact, the kingdom of God is among you?” And other times, he told his disciples “the Kingdom of God has come near.” Theologians talk about the already-not-yet quality of the Kingdom, how it has somehow arrived, yet is still to come . . . and in this story of the cross and the second criminal’s response, we can see how that might be . . . when we realize that we are forgiven, that we are made right with God no matter what we do, no matter what we have done, we are freed from bondage to our own mis-deeds, freed to joyously serve God and one another in Paradise beside the risen Christ.

And brothers and sisters, we are called to make that same paradise a reality for all we meet, just as Jesus did for the thief. We are called to point to the reality of Jesus’ kingship in the here and now, as the kingdom that has arrived, but is not yet here all the way. We can see through the lies of the world, through the death-dealing falsehoods of the powers that be, because like the thief, we know the meaning of the cross. Amen.