Proper 29 - Jesus is King
Rev. Michael Scott
Ordinary time 2022 • Sermon • Submitted
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Jesus is King
“There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,” goes the old hymn, whose popularity has waned with the passing years. The hymn goes on, “The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day,” but what was it that the dying thief saw? Luke’s story makes it clear that he was witnessing the crucifixion and death of Jesus, but why would the thief “rejoice” to see that? Why, beholding this grim scene, so choreographed by the Romans as to deter insurrections by providing such vivid visual instruction, might this thief ask so boldly, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom"? No simple reason for the thief’s request floats to the surface of Luke’s narrative.
Luke’s story so grinds on our sense of narrative that interpreters have felt compelled to provide midrashic elaborations that supply reasonable motives for this man’s request: he knew Jesus back in Nazareth, but they went their separate ways, this man into a life of crime, Jesus into the work of a Messiah; or they had met the night before in Pilate’s prison, they had talked, and one thing had led to another. No reasonable explanation, however, will diminish the abruptness of the man’s request. This dying thief has seen something, recognized something in this moment, that others will come to understand only by being taught by the risen Christ.
Three days later a pair of bewildered disciples on the Emmaus road will listen to Christ interpret the Scriptures with the hermeneutical key, “Was it not necessary [edei] that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (24:26). Later, a second time Jesus will interpret “the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms” so that they may understand the divine necessity that “the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day” (24:44, 46). Jesus’ disciples have the same advantage we are given in worship to hear the voice of Christ interpreting the Scriptures, but the dying thief stretched out on a cross lacks this benefit. All he can know is the brutal gore and stench of crucifixion.
His astonishing, out-of-the-blue request raises the question of how we discern the work of God when it irrupts in our midst and how we are to recognize the presence of God’s authorized prophet. In Luke’s telling of the crucifixion of Jesus, quite a conversation takes place. Jesus’ words begin and end the conversation, but in between, three challenges are voiced that echo the three challenges with which Satan tempted Jesus at the beginning of the story (4:3, 6–7, 9). Jesus’ identity and integrity are called into question in the hope of provoking him to provide a stunning and utterly compelling demonstration of his character as God’s chosen prophet. After all, how can we ever receive a Messiah who does not act like a Messiah? How can you see salvation if no one is being saved?
Talk of salvation hangs thick in the air in these few verses. Jesus is taunted, “let him save himself” (v. 35), then twice dared, “save yourself” (vv. 37, 39), each time with the implication that by doing so he might prove himself and thereby verify the titles— Messiah, King of the Jews—they have pinned upon him. Jesus remains silent. Moments before, he had prayed for their forgiveness. Early in Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah’s song connected “knowledge of salvation” to “the forgiveness of their sins” (1:77). The dying thief does not preface his request with either of the royal titles that were being tossed around that afternoon, but addresses him only as “Jesus” in the simple, ordinary way one person might address another.
The speaking of that name, however, evokes a world of meaning and of hope. Luke does not spell this out, as Matthew does, “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21), but it cannot be otherwise than that the name Jesus means “God will save,” and that is the name, and therefore the hope, the dying thief speaks. It is the last gasp of a dying man, perhaps a deathbed confession; it seems so little, so pitiful.
It is sufficient. He does not ask to be saved, to be rescued, but asks only, “ Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Perhaps his plea is meant to echo these words: “Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!” (Ps. 25:7), which is to say, do not remember me according to my wickedness, but remember me according to your goodness.
The thief asks Jesus to be remembered in his kingdom. Surveying the scene at “the place that is called The Skull” (v. 33), we find not the slightest shred of evidence that such a kingdom exists, ever has existed, or ever will exist. The thief asks nonetheless. Somehow he has found the hermeneutical lens that permits him to recognize salvation that intrudes into the absolutely hopeless moment where no one is saved from suffering and death, which is also exactly the moment when salvation breaks through.
“Today you will be with me in Paradise,” Jesus promises the thief, but “today” in Luke’s Gospel is not merely a twenty-four-hour interval, but the moment when God’s salvation fractures time (cf. 2:11; 4:21; 5:26; 19:9).
Here, at the end of the Christian year, we might say of this final reading from Luke that the leaders, soldiers, and first thief all live in ordinary time, where the powers of violence determine events and death is the last word; but the second thief lives already in the reign of Christ. If we can see this, we might also see—as thick darkness falls over this sad scene (v. 44)—a far, faint light rising from the dawning of this realm, a place as calm and refreshing as the garden called paradise.
PATRICK J. WILLSON
Luke 23:43