Second Word from the Cross: '...You Will Be With Me in Paradise'

A Sermon originally preached on Good Friday 2013

There was a certain irony in the First Word from the Cross: unless Jesus spread out his arms in love for men to drive the nails, we would have no chance of forgiveness. And yet it is in part because men drove the nails that we needed forgiveness. And there is a delicious irony at play in the Second Word as well.

As the three men hung dying on their crosses, one of the criminals said to Jesus ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ The irony is that Jesus will save the world precisely because he will not come down from the Cross. To do that would be to depart from his saving work, and ultimately to let the devil have the last word. It is not a coincidence that when Jesus is mocked on the Cross, those who taunt him keep coming back to the same refrain: ‘Let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!’ ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ Nor is it a coincidence that these are the same themes that the Devil uses when tempting Jesus in the wilderness.

‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.’ You’ve been fasting forty days, which is longer than normal people ought to go without food. You’re in agony of starvation. If you really are the Messiah, put an end to this misery. Use your great powers and fix this mess that you’ve gotten into. If you really are the Messiah.

And the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said . . . if you will worship me, it shall all be yours. The inscription over his head doesn’t say ‘The King of the Jews’ as in Mark’s Gospel, or ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’ as in John. In Luke’s Gospel, it says ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ This sad, miserable spectacle that you see -- this is the King of the Jews. And the soldiers come up to him and say ‘King of the Jews, is it? Where’s all your political power? Where’s your great army? It’s a pretty lame king that doesn’t even have the power to keep himself off the cross. I bet you wish you’d made that deal with the devil now, huh?’

Finally the devil took him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, and see if God will keep you safe.’ If you are the Christ, save yourself and us! Get us out of this fix!’ Luke shows us a progression of temptations. He starts with the temptation to misuse divine power for personal ends. Then he moves to the desire for worldly, political power. The final temptation is the showy, flashy one. Change the rules. Change things so that falling bodies don’t get smashed to pieces on the rocks. Change things so that crucified criminals don’t die slow, agonizing deaths! Save yourself and us.

The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

Ironically, Jesus will save them, and he’ll save you, and he’ll save me, and he’ll do it precisely because he doesn’t get down off the cross. The weight of the three temptations and the sting of the three mockeries, lie in the same thing: a mistaken idea of what it means to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the true king of Israel. These kinds of expectations are incompatible with the notion of a Messiah who suffers and dies for the sins of the world. After Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus goes on to tell the disciples about how he is going to suffer and die. Peter tries to argue with him: this is not what the Messiah is supposed to do. And Jesus says ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ You don’t understand what being the Messiah means. The devil doesn’t understand; that’s why his temptations miss the real point of what the Messiah’s powers are to be used for.

The men with hammers and nails, crosses and spears, crucified Jesus, expecting a pat on the back from their superiors for having helped execute a troublemaker. What they actually got was forgiveness, unasked-for and undeserved. The chief priests, the passersby, and even one of the criminals crucified with him, demanded that Jesus reveal himself as the Messiah through flashy miracles, through coming down from the Cross. What Jesus shows them is what it truly means to be the Messiah: the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

It’s funny that when Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, perhaps one of the most compelling moments is when the Devil takes him up and shows him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and says ‘To you I will give all this authority and all their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours.’ You see, like so many temptations, this whole promise is founded on a lie: on two lies, in fact.

In the first place, all the kingdoms of the world were never the Devil’s to give away in the first place! This is bluster and show. This claim of the Devil’s only makes sense if you believe that God’s not really in control of the world, that the Devil must be. And the other side of this promise is that Jesus can become king of the world by turning aside from his role as Messiah and worshiping the Devil.

In fact, Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed one. That means that he already is the King of the World! By not turning away to worship the Devil, Jesus will go to suffer and die at Calvary. Through his death and resurrection, he will be finally, decisively revealed to the world as the world’s true king and its Messiah. In the wilderness, the Devil is trying to tempt Jesus with something that he already has, which the Devil doesn’t even have to offer!

And so it is not coincidental that when everyone else mocks Jesus, one repentant thief says ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Although everyone else might miss the point, this one man gets it. Everyone else says ‘If he was the Messiah, he would have turned stones to bread, and thrown himself down from the Temple, and magically pulled himself down from the Cross. Obviously he can’t, or he won’t, so he must not be the Messiah.’ The repentant thief sees the things that Jesus might have done but hasn’t, and even in that, he still sees the Messiah. He still recognizes that Jesus is about to come into his kingdom. Jesus is not just being executed on this Cross, he is also being enthroned.

And no, this doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense that he should see kingship in the face of the dying man next to him. It doesn’t make sense that the centurion, standing nearby, having seen all that happened on Good Friday, should say ‘Well, obviously, this man was the Son of God.’ These men are receiving great grace. They are receiving supernatural revelation.

Jesus asks his disciples, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ and Peter pipes up, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus says ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.’ That one day in Caesarea Philippi, Peter gets it: that flash of inspiration, special inside information that is not obviously apparent. But when Jesus goes on to say that the Messiah must suffer many things, Peter immediately rebukes him, saying ‘I just said you were the Messiah! Messiahs aren’t supposed to suffer!’

This doesn’t make sense to Peter. I doubt that it makes any more sense to the repentant thief or to the centurion. It doesn’t make sense to us, either. We look at the crucifix, at the figure of Jesus dying, and we say ‘Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the world’s true king. And this is what it’s all about.’

This is a mystery. It is something that we cannot understand or explain, but neither can we deny it. Jesus is Lord, and he is fully revealed as Lord as he suffers and as he dies on the Cross. What we do with this information is up to us. We may try to scoff like the crowds. We may try to shoehorn this truth into our own preconceived notions of what Messiah means, like Peter did, and be rebuked by Jesus like Peter was. Or we might, like the repentant thief, turn to Jesus and say ‘I don’t know what this means. I don’t know how it makes sense. But I know that you are the Messiah, and if anyone is going to save me, it’s you. When you come into your kingdom, remember me.’

This is what it means to put your faith in Jesus Christ. It’s much easier to have faith in him when he walks on water, heals the sick, and feeds the multitude. It’s easy to have faith as he bursts victorious from the grave on Easter morning. But if we can put our faith in the broken, battered, dying figure on the Cross, this is an even greater faith. Jesus is the Son of God. He is the King of the Jews, and the king of the world. He is the long-awaited Saviour. But he is also first and foremost the Suffering Servant. The repentant thief understands this, and comes to Jesus on these terms, and so he is promised redemption.

There are a lot of sympathetic characters in Luke’s account of the Passion. The crowds don’t bray for his blood in this gospel, they follow to see what will happen – but that doesn’t make them his followers. Simon of Cyrene does just what Jesus said a disciple needed to do – he takes up the cross and follows Jesus – but he’s not praised as a disciple. The women of Jerusalem come out to lament for him, or perhaps to protest this travesty of justice – but Jesus only foretells woe for them. But this man, a convicted criminal! He sees Jesus the Messiah for what he is, even in the midst of his sufferings. He rebukes those who blaspheme him and prays for mercy. And this is the man who is told ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’