March 1, 2020 “Salvation” – Luke 29:39-43

Luke 23:39-43
“Salvation”
March 1, 2020 – First Sunday in Lent

As I got ready to preach on the last words of our Lord on the Cross, I looked at lists of what other famous people said in their last moments. There were a wonderful number who focused on others as they died. Football coach Vince Lombardi looked at his wife Marie and said, “Happy anniversary. I love you.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, turned to his wife and said, “You are wonderful,” then grabbed his chest and died. Author Charlotte Bronte sadly said to her husband of nine months, “O, I am not going to die am I? Surely he will not separate us, we have been so happy.”

The four Gospels give us seven last words of Jesus as He died. There are three in Luke, three in John, and one that appears in both Matthew and Mark. The first three show us Jesus concerned about those around Him even while He was dying. Wednesday evening we remembered how Jesus asked His Father for forgiveness for those responsible for His death. Today we look at a more personal conversation with one of the two men physically closest to Jesus as He hung on the Cross.

We generally call the men crucified alongside Jesus the two “thieves,” because Matthew and Mark use a word for them which can mean “robbers” or “bandits.” But it could also mean a “revolutionary” or an “insurrectionist.” Which would make them men who had committed some violent act of rebellion, perhaps murder, against the Roman occupation. Luke uses a different word and calls them, literally, “evildoers” or “criminals” as you just heard me read; “malefactors” if you want a fancy word that means “evildoers.”

In any case, those who hung there to either side of Jesus were more and worse than simple petty thieves. At the least they were highway bandits who waylaid travelers like the man beaten up in Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan. At worst they were violent rebels who had engaged in deadly terrorism. That might be why the first criminal was so insulting and sarcastic with Jesus when he said, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” He was expressing the popular idea that the Messiah would come and lead the revolution, but implying very clearly that the Man who hung there between them was not that Messiah.

That first criminal can see no way out for himself and those with him. He resorts to the black humor of sarcasm in what he feels is a hopeless situation. Whatever he has done, he is unrepentant and still belligerent. The other evildoer also feels hopeless, but he has a somewhat better idea of who he is and, surprisingly, who Jesus is.

So the second criminal makes what must have been a painful, agonizing effort to speak past Jesus first to his companion in crime and rebuke him, “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.” Whatever their crimes were, this criminal knew he had done wrong and that death was a just punishment. They were not just thieves but murderers of some sort. Like the other man, he knows he is in a hopeless situation, but unlike that one full of anger and spite, he knows he deserves it.

There is no way to know how that second evildoer knew enough about Jesus to grasp that He, unlike they, had committed no crime. Maybe he had listened to Jesus preach in the streets, hoping He really was the Messiah there to lead them in overthrowing Rome. Maybe he saw how Jesus responded with acceptance and patience to the torture that was surely done to all of them. Whatever it was, in the worst place a person could be, he saw a glimmer of hope in the Man who hung there in between.

One interesting thing is that both criminals spoke the truth about Jesus. The first did not believe what he was saying when he called Jesus the Messiah and taunted Him to save them all, but it was still true. Jesus really was the Messiah and He did have the power to save Himself and those around Him. The difference is that the man on the other side believed what he said, that Jesus had done nothing wrong. And when He asked for help, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” he meant it.

Before we consider how Jesus answered that second criminal with His famous second last word from the Cross, let us consider how they so clearly represent the great divide which Jesus creates for the human race. You could say that you and I and everyone on earth is hanging there with them. Like those two, we are all guilty. That began as we heard this morning from Genesis, with Eve and then Adam, both guilty. Then we heard Paul tell us in Romans 5:12, “just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.” All of us have sinned, just like both those criminals. The penalty is death, and just like them, we deserve it.

The great, wonderful truth, though, is that it’s not just you and me hanging there guilty, waiting to die for our sins. There is another Man hanging with us, the only One who, as the one criminal saw, did not deserve to die. And, like that guilty murderer saw, in that Man we can have hope.

Everyone else there was mocking the idea that Jesus was a King. The actual charge against Him, as you may tell from verse 38 in the inscription that wrote over Him, was that He was pretending to be a King, gathering followers to lead in rebellion so that He could set Himself up to rule over them. The Jewish leaders mocked Him for pretending to be the Messiah and the Roman soldiers mocked him for pretending to be a king. Luke does not tell us why, but that second convicted criminal, probably a terrorist, hung there and took Jesus as king seriously instead of cynically.

All we know is that one out of the two men, equally guilty, equally vicious and sinful, chose to turn and ask to be remembered when Jesus arrived in that kingdom which seemed so impossible and far away those crosses. Instead of taking his frustration and hopelessness out on Jesus, he put his trust in Jesus. That is the choice for every human being, every one of us. We are all guilty and hopeless. The only difference is how we see that Man who came to hang in the middle and how we respond to Him.

There were two hockey players in the first group for which I was a teaching assistant during graduate school. They were taking a required course, introduction to philosophy. I could see right away they weren’t going to do well. Their eyes glazed over as other students entered into discussion about moral relativism and Kant’s categorical imperative. Their first two quizzes were each about the same, equally bad, Fs. These were athletes, not scholars. They knew how to hold a hockey stick and block a sweep up the side. They had no clue how to hold a pencil and counter an argument. I figured they would both fail.

But early the third week of class I heard a knock at my cubicle door. I opened it to find one of those hockey guys. He said, “Hey man, I just don’t get this stuff. What should I do?” I invited him in and we talked about the reading. I tried to show him what to look for as he read. He listened, he asked questions, and that Friday he wrote a barely passing quiz. He came back to talk again. He kept asking for help. In the end he squeaked by with a C- and passed the class. The other hockey player failed.

They were both the same, equally poor students, equally likely to fail on their own. But one of them asked for help. That was the difference. And that is the difference between the two sides of the Cross, between two criminals, two sinners like you and I, who hung there. One of them asked for help, asked Jesus to do whatever He could for him. And Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Like a lot of things in Scripture, we don’t know exactly what that meant. We heard this morning about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. By Jesus time, Jewish people were calling that “Paradise.” They hoped that when God brought this world to an end that it would be replaced with another Paradise, a re-creation of the Garden of Eden. And they also started to refer to heaven, where God is now, as Paradise. That seems to be what Jesus meant when He promised the criminal he would be there with Jesus that same day.

People ask questions about all this. In the Apostles’ Creed we say Jesus “descended into Hell [Hades],” after He was crucified, not ascended into Paradise. That descent into Hell has some support in Scripture, like Acts 2:31 and Matthew 12:40. It’s only after Jesus rose again and fifty days later on Pentecost that we read about Jesus ascending into heaven. How is the penitent criminal supposed to be with Him in Paradise the very day He died?

Honestly, I don’t know how this second last word of Jesus and the descent into Hell fit together. But to me His promise to that man is clearer than whatever His time in Hades is all about. The one man mockingly, sarcastically asked Jesus to save them. The other one sincerely asked Jesus simply to remember him. And Jesus in fact saved Him, right that moment, certainly that day. To be with Jesus is to be saved and Jesus promised that sinner He would be with Him.

So this last word of Jesus is often called the “Word of Salvation.” It is a promise that we as Christians claim at the hour of our own death. Ultimately, in the end, we trust that even our bodies will be raised from the dead like Jesus was raised. But for now, like that man on a cross, we have the promise that we will be with the Lord, and that will be Paradise. It’s what Paul meant in Philippians 1:21 when he said, “living is Christ and dying is gain,” and then that he would like “to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” He was expressing his hope in that same promise made from the Cross, that when we as Christians die we will immediately be with Jesus.

So this close, personal, conversation between three men in the worst of places at the worst of times ends with a Word that means hope and salvation for anyone. And, as is often pointed out, if this wretched offender suffering capital punishment can turn to Jesus at the last moment and be saved, then anyone can. It does not matter what your sins are or how guilty you might be. No one is beyond the reach of the grace and love of Jesus.

I often hear folks doing what I call “thief on the cross” theology. The thief on the cross was never baptized, never received holy communion, probably never studied the Bible, and, despite his insight, never really had a good idea of who or what Jesus was or what He was doing on that Cross. So, someone will conclude, all those things are ultimately not very important. It’s O.K. to ignore the sacraments, pay little attention to Scripture, not think much about theology. That guy got into heaven without all that. Why not me?

But making that one man who had the strange privilege of dying alongside the Lord the norm for what it means to be a Christian is wrong. He is what scientists call a limiting case, what happens at one extreme of a statistical sample. To draw the conclusion that what was true of him should be true of every believer in Jesus would be a huge mistake. He was going to be with Jesus immediately in heaven. The rest of us have a while to wait and much that we need to do before that time comes. In that meantime we need all the grace and spiritual resources our Lord can offer us, the sacraments, the Scriptures, His Holy Spirit, fellowship with other Christians.

Yet we still face the same choice the men on either side of Jesus did. As we begin Lent and move toward the Cross in our hearts and minds, which side of the Cross will we be on? That condemned man, with little time spare, is here to remind us to choose the side of honest repentance, of admitting our sins, of recognizing how hopeless we are on our own.

Like that wise evildoer, we too just hang there as guilty as we can be, suffering the consequences of our foolish actions. But if we choose the side he was on, we are also turning toward the one true hope anyone has in this world. Let us turn to the Man who came to hang in the middle of us. Let us ask Him and Him alone for the help we need at the hour of our death and for eternity. We know we don’t deserve it, but let us each ask Jesus to remember us in His kingdom. He promised then that we would be there.

Amen.