“Then the thief said,
‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you
will be with me in paradise.’” --Luke
23:42-43
During Lent and Holy Week, I’m preaching a sermon series on
Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross.
The second word is “Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise.” When Jesus was crucified, there were two
other men who were sentenced to death and crucified with him, thieves or highwaymen,
men of violence and robbery.
Here was Jesus, the one without any sin at all, sharing the
same punishment as these criminals, hanging on a cross just like theirs, placed
right between them.
And yet, isn’t this just where Jesus placed himself all his
life? Jesus was always getting in
trouble for hanging out with the wrong people.
He sat down and ate with tax collectors and sinners, he touched lepers, he
let a sinful woman bathe his feet and dry them with her hair. And even in his death, here he is in the
midst of sinners.
The first thief mocked Jesus. He looked at Jesus and saw a man who was
dirty, bloody, beaten and bruised.
Nothing about Jesus looked like a teacher, a healer, a worker of
miracles. Surely this was a man with no
power, no authority, no connection to God.
The first thief looked at Jesus and saw what he expected to see in
someone being executed. He saw a
criminal, just like him.
But the second thief . . . Somehow the second thief saw
something different. What was it that
man saw in Jesus? Had he perhaps seen
Jesus when he was teaching or healing?
Had he seen his compassion toward the least of these? Or was it Jesus’ words as he hung there on
the cross, “Father, forgive them,” that opened this man’s eyes so that he saw
not just another criminal but something else entirely?
I’m amazed as I think about this man’s ability to see
Jesus. I wonder if, had I been in his
place, I would have had such faith, such ability to see beyond the
circumstance, beyond the pain and the shame, to see Jesus. To look at death and failure and forsakenness
and see a king. To look at the end of
life and see the future. To look at the
object of despair and see hope, hope so great that he could say, “Jesus,
remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
This man believed that the bleeding, gasping, dying man was
a king! And contrary to what everyone
else believed—the soldiers, who saw just another criminal, the disciples who saw
the end of their dreams for a throne and power—this man believed that there was
a kingdom, and that the man hanging on the cross had power, power to remember
and help him in the place of his glory.
Somehow this man understood that it is in dying that we are
born to eternal life. It is in the death
of this one who was without sin that we have life and salvation. It is the great reversal at the heart of the
gospel, that in what the world sees as the ultimate failure and shame, the Son
of Man is glorified.
If we can understand this, then we can understand the true
nature of who God is and how great is God’s love for us. For without that love and the sacrifice of
Christ, death would be the end for all of us.
But because Christ died and was raised from death, we are raised with
him to life eternal. We are resurrected
from death and from the sin that would lead to eternal death by the life-giving
gift of God.
There, on the brink of death, that second thief looked at
Jesus and saw eternal life. He understood
that this is not the end, this is not all there is. And when he said, “Jesus,
remember me when you come into your kingdom,” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you,
today you will be with me in paradise.”
I have always loved C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. The
last book in the series is called, The
Last Battle. In that book, the
Pevensie children, who are the main characters in the series, were in a
beautiful land, with “the deep blue sky overhead, and the air” blew gently on
their faces like a day in early summer. As they walked along through a grove of
trees with the sun shining, they came upon a group of dwarfs huddled together
and grumbling among themselves. When the
children tried to talk to them about the beauty of the place, the dwarfs couldn’t
comprehend what they were talking about!
What, “In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hold of a stable!” they
said.
“’But it isn’t dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs,’ said
Lucy. ‘Can’t you see? Look up!
Look round! Can’t you see the sky
and the trees and the flowers? Can’t you
see me?’” (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle,
pp. 136-144).
But all that the dwarfs could see was darkness. The darkness of their hearts and their evil
deeds had consumed their sight until the dark was all that they could see, even
though the light shone all around them.
The second thief was blinded, seeing only the same darkness
that filled his heart. But when we open
our hearts to Jesus, when we allow the light of his love to pour in, when we
recognize our need for him, for his saving grace, then we see him aright. Then our eyes are opened to see the one who
is our Lord and Savior, victorious over both sin and death. And then we hear him say to each of us,
“Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
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