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Luke 23:32-43

Christ the King Sunday 2007 Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. 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. [[ Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’]] And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ We are cheating a bit this morning, fooling around with the lectionary calendar. When pastors live on the edge, this is what it looks like. Technically, Christ the King Sunday is next weekend, the last Sunday of ordinary time, the last Sunday of the Christian year, sort of a New Year’s Eve for the lectionary. But knowing that we wouldn’t be together next weekend, that next Sunday at this time you might be:

*worshipping in some church back home, *admiring the shiny new toaster you didn’t need but got for 3 dollars at 5am on Black Friday, or *recovering on the couch from a turkey-induced tryptophan coma,

I thought we should jump ahead a bit in the story. Christ the King is the dramatic end to the Christian year, but most of the time it is overshadowed in our worship services by Thanksgiving or the looming Christmas season. But this is the moment where we proclaim Christ’s triumph, the expectation of Christ’s return, our belief that Christ is indeed Lord of creation. It is here, at the end of the Christian year, when we look back and say what it was all about. The first reading from Jeremiah spoke of a righteous branch rising up, with a powerful reign as king. Good stuff, but just the warm up act, really. Our second reading described a mighty savior, to save us from our enemies, like the dawn breaking from on high, light shining on those who live in darkness and death. And then our third reading. Our third reading from Colossians sings of this promised Savior as the firstborn of all creation, the one through whom all things in heaven and earth were created, the one in whom the fullness of God dwells.

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These sound like texts you could play a trumpet to. Roll out the velvet robes and the jeweled crowns. There is a king on the way who is the king of kings—the firstborn of all creation. And then the Gospel reading comes along. The good news. The realization of all these lofty promises. But rather than finding ourselves in the halls of a grand castle, or in the company of a mighty leader, we find ourselves in a place called “the Skull,” and three figures hang dying from crosses. And in the middle of the three, we recognize one of the faces, the life slowly draining out of his body, surrounded by thieves and abandoned by his friends, it is the promised one, the righteous branch, the firstborn of all creation. You can understand, perhaps, why Jesus was a bit of a disappointment to folks who knew scripture well. And that is why, when it comes time to crown Jesus king, in that landfill of decay and death, flies buzzing and everything that is wrong with humanity on display for the ages, not many people show up. For an event that history marks as tremendously significant for civilizations around the world, for an event that Christianity marks as the fullness of time itself, not many people can make it that day. What you might notice first is who is not there—Peter, for instance. Or any particularly religious folks, the type of people who might be looking for the righteous branch of David. There are some who are there because it is their job to be there. They punched their time card that morning, and were told to take these hapless souls out to Golgotha and kill them. There are a handful of people who have chosen to be here. Some have come to mock, some have come to mourn, but either way, they are there on their own time. But there are at least two people around Jesus who are not here for any of those reasons. They are the two that die alongside the hope of the nations. Maybe you know them as the good thief and the bad thief. Christian tradition has named them Dismas and Gestas. We do not know what they have done, we don’t know that they are thieves, Luke only tells us that they were criminals, so you can imagine them however you like. Murderers, terrorists, embezzlers, rapists, extortionists, thieves. With Jesus there in the middle, they also hang from their own crosses. We don’t know if anyone came to grieve them, if anyone even missed them the next day when they were gone.

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In fact, all we know about them is from the very short conversation they share with Jesus. But those few lines say it all. One of them, Gestas, sitting on the left hand of Jesus, gets caught up with the crowd who is taunting Jesus. They are all shouting out things like, “He saved others, let him save himself!” and “So this is what the King of the Jews looks like—save yourself!” So Gestas joins in. Maybe he is just a bully, and remains a bully to the end, shouting out, “If you are the Messiah, why don’t you save yourself and us?” But there is an edge to his question. Why don’t you save us? he asks. His taunt might sound like the others, but it’s not at all the same. He is nailed to a cross just like Jesus is, and he wants to know why Jesus isn’t doing anything about it. I’m not saying he is a believer, I’m not saying that he believes Jesus can do anything about the situation. Maybe it is just taunting, trying to get one more laugh out of the crowd. But my guess is that it is something much more than that. This man has been beaten up, in every way possible, by this life. And here, in the end, all he can muster up is bitterness. Maybe there was even a time in his life he could’ve believed in something like a Messiah, maybe he was a child just like all the rest of us, and before the world got to him, he could’ve been made into a dreamer, a poet, a believer. But hanging there from the cross, it is too late for him, it seems. The crucifixion is just the last in a series of blows he has taken from life, and he knows enough to know that this is how life works. It just keeps taking and taking and taking until there is nothing left. And while he may not know a thing about Jesus of Nazareth, he knows the type. Telling people that there is a God, that God cares about them, that God is on the way, God is going to do something big. “Show me,” he says. “Show me your God. Get me off of this cross and I will believe you.” And ever since that moment there on Golgotha, Christians have gathered, some of us asking the same question—if you are who you say you are, why don’t you do something? Why don’t you save us? So before you run off and label him the bad thief, before you judge him for his failure to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, spend a moment looking around.

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Spend a moment looking at who is not here at the cross, at all those who were happy to follow Jesus when he was turning water into wine or dancing on the waves of Galilee, but who are nowhere to be found. What good is a Messiah who bleeds so easily? What good is a Savior who can’t even save himself? What good is a Savior if he can’t get me out of my pain? “Just shut up. Shut up,” the thief on Jesus’ right mumbles to himself. “We deserve what we are getting. But this man has done nothing wrong.” “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” His body is broken, his breaths are short, his life is almost over. As far as we know, these are his last words on earth, “Remember me. Don’t forget me.” They are words of hope. Belief. They are foolish and ridiculous and make no practical sense. It is one thing to believe in the firstborn of all creation, the Lord of lords and King of kings, but to profess your faith in a dying man is something else altogether. “Remember me. Don’t forget me.” As Dianne mentioned earlier, the word “remember” literally means to “put back together.” Put me back together, Jesus. Put me back together. And so Jesus whispers back to him, “Here is the truth, brother. Today—today!—you will be with me in paradise.” Our tradition tells us that Christ died that day. He truly died, and stayed that way for three days, so I can’t think that what Jesus meant was that the thief would be with him in some far-off heaven that day. The paradise Jesus spoke of was not some eternal by and by, with sandy beaches and singing angels. It looked an awful lot like a garbage heap where they executed criminals. But in recognizing the presence of God, even in that shadowy place, the thief had found paradise. Two thieves died that day, one choking on bitterness, the other finding God. Jesus, remember me. Put me back together again. Put us all back together. We are here this morning to proclaim to the world that Christ is the firstborn of all creation, the one for whom angels sang, the one through whom all that is came to be. But we are also here to choose which voice we will listen to as we hang from our own crosses. We are here to choose which voice we will listen to as we sit in the waiting room, as the test results come back, as we weep over the grave, as we watch the wars escalate and the darkness deepen.

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We are here to choose which voice we will listen to when hope seems lost, what voice we will listen to when promises seem shattered, when our lives have no direction and we can’t imagine anything tomorrow could bring that might fill this hole within us. We are here to choose whether we are in this for what God can do for us, or if we are in this for whatever comes. Christ is Lord. Put us back together, Lord Jesus, so that we might be foolish enough to proclaim it even from the depths of our pain, even hanging from the cross of life. Christ is Lord.