Kingdon Advance
Holy Week: Dying Words
There wasn’t one cross, there were three. All the gospels make a point of saying that it was a group execution. Jesus is not even given the distinction of a spot-lighted solo death; he’s inserted to make a party of three, a last-minute addition to someone else’s execution.
We all know about the placard hung above Jesus’ head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” This was standard at a crucifixion. Post the name and the crime with the horribly dying body so all who pass by can see. If the other two crosses had placards, the names didn’t survive into the Bible’s accounts; only their crime survives. “Bandits,” we’re told – meaning insurrectionists against Roman rule, guerillas ambushing a convoy here, hitting an outpost there, taking and killing where they could. Luke just calls them both “evildoers.” So there is Jesus, keeping the same kind of company as always. As in his ministry, so now more grimly in his death, he embodies the words of a long-ago prophet: “he … was numbered with the transgressors” (Isaiah53:12)
.Sometimes I think we are too harsh toward the one who reviled Jesus. Maybe he had his reasons. Awful pain had seized him, the panic of dying was in his throat – maybe
for an instant he had dared to entertain some mad hope that this so-called messiah might really pull something off. But then, no, he can plainly see that the so-called messiah is already nearly dead – and isn’t that just like hope, to die before you do! So he screams bitter words at the crucified Jesus. Luke says that the other of the two actually defended Jesus to his comrade, “Do you not fear God? You and I are guilty. We earned this. But this man did nothing wrong.” And then he does something that no one else in all the gospels ever did. He addressed Jesus simply by his name: “Jesus.” Others called him Teacher, Rabbi, Master, Lord – a very few said, “Jesus, Son of David.”
But in the whole record, no one had ever once just called him by his simple name. Only now does it happen, from someone who is dying. This is how the dying speak: each word simple and earnest as breath. “Jesus.”
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” That’s the whole of what he said. “Think of me, Jesus. Remember me, Jesus. In your kingdom, Jesus.”
Who knows if, as he spoke, he really thought Jesus in his own death struggle could even hear the words. But the most wonderful thing happens. Jesus lifts his head, the great face turns, and words are given back: “Truly I tell you, today. You will be with me in Paradise.”
Any number of people overhearing such an exchange between two convicts bleeding to death would have no doubt this was delirium talking, just the nonsense of two delusional, dying fools. We might think that ourselves, if we’re just observing this from some safe distance. But I doubt we should assume any distance for ourselves
This is Holy Week, and it involves a dying before it involves a living. I think this story is recorded in such detail for us by all four gospels because we are being asked to imagine our own dying, which comes to us in so many ways. In just a few minutes I’m going to stop by the hospital to visit a young mother who may lose her first-born child today and death is deep and real. In a way, the man talking with Jesus from his own cross is a sign of what Jesus’ death cannot do for us; it cannot deliver us from death or from our own dying. In some ways, that is us up there, our lives draining away, Slowly but steadily, irreversibly.
And some of us can see ourselves in him, not just because we’re dying. Some of us know we have our own guilt, that our lives too have done real damage as well. And we are in no more position to undo any of it than if we were pinned and suspended from the ground like that evildoer.
What a vision of our awful powerlessness he is, fixed like that, and finished, and nothing even left He can ask for, just this simple, dumb request; –“Jesus? Think of me? In your kingdom?”
And like this one, we hear an answer too. Only it’s so far beyond an answer to what he and we actually asked. It’s like a beggar asking a king for a penny, and the king gives him the whole kingdom. Someone with nothing prays, “Remember me when …” And Jesus answers with the whole green garden of God, this very day!!
Isn’t it amazing how silly and how sad we are, hoping somehow to get things right, wishing we knew what we don’t, dreaming of resolving our lives? If we could just get it right and think right. If we could somehow get it prayed right. The dying criminal shows how badly we miss the point. The point is not to get all of it right, or any of it right, not us who have no power but to want and to need and to ask the simplest thing: “Jesus, remember me.”
Sometimes we say these words crudely, often with a sob or a sigh, because we can’t begin to say what we really need. It is then that his ruined hand reaches for the Paradise gate and opens it wide. It is opened not just for those to pass through on some far-off tomorrow. It is also opened for us this very day, to grant us the sweet, abiding company of the One who does indeed remember us and gives us abundantly more than we had known to ask. Isn’t it wonderful we have Holy Week to remind us of this?
John Upton, Executive Director,
BGAV and VBMB
Used with permission.