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Luke 23:32-43
32 Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.33 When
they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
35 The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.”
36 The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar37 and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”
38 There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.
This reading, which tells about the conversations between Jesus and the two criminals crucified with him, seems to me to be an especially important part of the story of the crucifixion.
In the midst of this almost unimaginable suffering, Jesus performs a breathtaking act of forgiveness – praying for those who were having him tortured to death. That superhuman act of forgiveness brings into sharp perspective the trivial nature of the offenses that people commit against us in this world. We harbor grudges against people for the most minor slights as though they were major crimes. But if our master could pray for the forgiveness of those who nailed him to a cross, how can we justify refusing to forgive those who sin against us in incredibly minor ways?
Another thing that strikes me as really interesting about this passage is that people who mean to mock Jesus keep saying things that turn out to be true. The religious bigshots mockingly say that Jesus “saved others.” It seems that they were thinking of the people Jesus saved from sickness and death during his earthly ministry. But you might remember that at the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday, people had shouted, “Hosanna!” which is Hebrew for ‘Save us, please.’ So the religious leaders might have meant to mock those cries by the crowd. What they couldn’t grasp, of course, was that by his death Jesus was about to save billions of others – including each of us.
The Roman soldiers also meant to mock Jesus but also came closer to the truth than they could have dreamed. They laughingly called him “the king of the Jews.” What they didn’t know, of course, was that Jesus really was a king. He was just a kind of king they could never understand. And the religious leaders and the unrepentant criminal all said that Jesus is the Christ – the Messiah. They meant it sarcastically, but of course they, too, were exactly right.
I also think we’re meant to see the significance of Jesus being crucified between two criminals. He said during his earthly ministry that it was for lost sinners that he came into the world. So for him to hang on the cross between two criminals seems to represent a stark visual symbol of the nature of his mission on earth. And what’s more, there were Old Testament prophesies that said the Messiah would be “counted among the transgressors,” so that aspect of the crucifixion story seems to fulfill those ancient prophesies.
The unrepentant criminal also mocks Jesus by challenging him to “Save yourself and us!” Of course, Jesus had no intention of saving himself from crucifixion. But as his interaction with the other criminal shows, Jesus was still actively performing his ministry – still saving people – right up to the moment of his death. But sadly, the toxic bitterness of the unrepentant criminal seems to have kept him from actually getting the salvation he mockingly demanded from Jesus.
On the other hand, it seems to me that the criminal who asks Jesus to ‘remember him’ demonstrates the attitude of confession and repentance that allows a person to experience new life in Jesus. That criminal made no attempt to justify himself or deflect blame for his own sins. Instead, he threw himself entirely on the mercy of Jesus. And as a result, he was promised paradise with Jesus.
And one other note about this story: Some people ask how the criminal could have been in paradise with Jesus that day, when Jesus himself was among the dead for three days. But some scholars point out that the Greek text has no punctuation, so a better translation of what Jesus said might be, “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise.”
The closer you look at this account of the Crucifixion of Jesus, the richer it becomes with signs of the meaning of Jesus’ earthly ministry and of his role in salvation history.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the great love you showed when you went to the cross for us and for the world. We thank you also that even in the middle of that great suffering, you were demonstrating a degree of forgiveness that is almost unimaginable to us. By the movement of your Spirit in our lives, help us to live in imitation of that great love and forgiveness. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The listed readings for today are Psalms 71 and 72; I Samuel 15:1 – 23; Acts 9:19b-31; and Luke 23:44-56. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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