My King Remembers Me
What is your response to Jesus' death on the cross? Come closer to Jesus. Claim him as your eternal Savior and rejoice with the dying criminal as told in Luke 23:35-43, "My King Remembers Me." November 21, 2010.
I’m thinking of a word. It’s a short word, but a significant word. When people use it you know they’ve changed. I listen for it in conversations with those on the path to membership here at Grace. I have prayed about it for my friend who needs Jesus. He’d benefit from connecting with this Lutheran church in his neighborhood, and recently he made my day because he used the word in reference to that church. I’m not sure he knows he used the word but I heard it and now I know he’s changed. He was telling me about this church, to which he’d previously refer with statements like, “They have a men’s ministry,” or “Their preschool …,” or “They do things there,” but this time he said, “My church …” He didn’t make a big deal about using the first person possessive pronoun but I was jumping up and down trying to refrain from panting too heavily. “My church is going to be looking for a pastor because our current pastor is retiring.” That’s the word! He’s in! He has now connected with that church’s ministry and has grown to possess it as his own, referring to the people there along with himself as “we … our.” It’s a transition people make all the time, not just in new churches but in new communities, new jobs, and new schools. “We … our … us … my.” Those little words are so big since they reveal a personal connection. A relationship.
We don’t hear those words from the crowd at the scene of Christ’s crucifixion. “There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.” Yet we hear only one who cries, “My King.” The others sneer, mock, and insult Jesus with gratuitous barbs piercing him as sharply as the hammered spikes and bloodthirsty thorns. “You … your … he … himself.” Those are big words since they reveal distance – rejection of the King. On this Christ the King Sunday we consider these two responses to the crucified King, and decide which belongs to each of us.
With him in his punishment
“Wasn’t it enough that Jesus was being crucified,” Christian author, Philip Yancey, wonders in his writings. “Were the nails insufficient? Crown of thorns too soft? Who is so base as to mock a dying man? Who would make fun of a person seated in an electric chair?” You and I do, when we distance ourselves from Jesus.
“The people stood watching” as Jesus hung on the cross. Why? What was so interesting? What were they looking for? Like a few crashed cars blocking the other side of the road beckon rubberneckers to slow down and gawk at the scene – looking for what? Drama? Excitement? Body parts among the car parts strewn on the road? What would satisfy our curiosity? Perhaps nothing other than driving safely by, glad that we’re not involved. Exactly. The people who just stood watching Jesus were glad they weren’t involved, and they’d go home that day like nothing had happened. When you ask to join this church, or you commit to Christian parenting or better witnessing, or you pray for God’s help to become a better person, and then just stand by watching – what you’re really saying is that you’re glad you’re not involved.
“The rulers even sneered at him, ‘Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God’!” Finally, this agitating rabble-rouser was being eliminated, and there’s no way they were going down with him. Obviously he didn’t know what he was doing or who he was messing with, or he wouldn’t be in this predicament. When you snap back at God for creating a mess in your life, you’re distancing yourself from going down with him because obviously he doesn’t know what he’s doing. “If he really is God,” you sometimes sneer, and then create your own conditions for him to prove it.
“The soldiers also came up and mocked him, ‘If you are the king of the Jews …’.” What cowards, blaspheming a beaten man nailed on a cross who poses no threat to them. They even try to keep him alert with some wine vinegar so the object of their ridicule doesn’t die too quickly. Only cowards keep Jesus just close enough in their lives so that they can blame him to make themselves feel strong. And those who consider Christ a helpless victim who poses no threat to a lifestyle that mocks his teachings treat him as a fake and a fraud; that’s blasphemy.
“One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him, ‘Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us’.” And where were the disciples? Who was with Jesus in his suffering and death, close in a way that would have held his hand and stroked his forehead during his final breaths, if possible? Either by absence or by abject mockery most disassociated themselves from this King. “You … your … he … himself … If you … Aren’t you …” Such strong words. A stab of pain must have shot through Jesus, recalling his warning, “Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32). There was one, however, who didn’t taunt Jesus to come down from the cross, but instead trusted him to come through the cross to his kingdom. There was one who didn’t expect Jesus to save himself, but instead to sacrifice himself and save sinners. There was one for whom Jesus wasn’t “that king,” but Jesus was “my King.” It must have comforted Jesus as a fulfillment of his words, “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32). This criminal understood things even the disciples didn’t understand, and certainly he believed what the crucifixion crowd refused to believe.
“Don’t you fear God?” he rhetorically asks the criminal on the other side of Jesus. This man, this criminal who has bucked authority and broken laws now bows in respect to his new King being crucified next to him. “We are punished justly … but this man has done nothing wrong.” Like defending the good name of a close friend this criminal confesses his own sin and at the same time his Savior’s holy, innocent suffering and death. Turning to him, he addresses him by his personal name, “Jesus,” an expression of closeness like those who can call the president by his first name. “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” What a difference in tone between this criminal and the other, between this sinner and the others. He doesn’t suggest in the least that Jesus come down from the cross. He doesn’t demand that Jesus prove anything. He doesn’t question Jesus defiantly but questions him prayerfully, humbly, repentantly, expectantly, “Jesus, when your cross carries you into your kingdom – and I believe it will – can I come, too?”
Instead of taunting Jesus, a helpless victim, to come down from the cross and live this man trusts Jesus, a victorious King, to suffer the cross and die. I need to be more like this dying criminal, don’t you? Let’s stop taunting Jesus to prove himself, stop demanding Jesus to do things our way, stop mocking Jesus to make it look like we’re part of the popular crowd. Repent with me for our sins of distancing ourselves from Jesus, and let’s get down from the cross that sees Jesus as “That king … If you … He.” Let’s walk under the cross of our dying Savior, looking up at him hanging in the sky for all. Let’s climb the cross of this repentant criminal, and on that cross confess Jesus as “My King” in a close connection and personal relationship. “Jesus, remember me.”
With him in his paradise
In his 1653 etching, The Three Crosses, Rembrandt depicts the many different responses to the crucifixion in various facial expressions and bodily postures of those around the cross. Rembrandt even contrasts the criminals on each side of Jesus. Known for his self-portraits, Rembrandt included himself as a character in the crowd in some of his biblical works, and art critics suggest that there is a figure near the edge of this piece in the shadows who is Rembrandt himself. “I was there,” Rembrandt is saying. And so are we. Because the Bible tells us so.
God “has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13,14). To be rescued from the clouds of shame hanging over our heads and the shadows of guilt that darken our days we need a new existence. And we have it. Brought into the kingdom of God’s Son Jesus Christ. Look, there, on the cross is his kingdom. There, on the cross, he is our King. We don’t taunt him to come down but, like the repentant criminal, we die with him there. We entrust the one who has done nothing wrong to take all our wrongs, all our sins, and die with them. When he does, we die to our sins and are forgiven, redeemed, and set free. The Bible says, “If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection … If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Romans 6:5,8). “Jesus, when your cross carries you into your kingdom – and I believe it will – can I come, too?”
“Yes,” Jesus answers. “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” No staging area. No reincarnation. No purgatory. No being assigned a pair of wings and becoming an angel. When believers die our own souls immediately begin spending eternity with Jesus himself in a heaven he describes as a paradise. There’s no place better, and nobody we’d rather be with than Jesus. “You will be with me.” With Jesus at the cross in his punishment for us, we will be with Jesus in his paradise forever.
Sociologists argue that generations can be shaped by a singular event that becomes the ruling metaphor for their approach to life. The Great Depression, for example, explains why our parents or grandparents act like they do. Pearl Harbor. The first man on the moon. 9/11. They change us. Define us. When Jesus died, except for some women at the foot of the cross, nobody mourned. When Jesus died, except for a criminal who deserved his punishment, nobody asked to come with him to his kingdom. Jesus changed the course of history forever, and at the time few knew. Few cared. What is your response to the cross? Come closer to Jesus. Claim him as your eternal Savior and rejoice with the dying criminal, My King Remembers Me. We remember the day of Jesus’ death and it defines us. Better yet, he remembers us, and it destines us into his kingdom now and forever. Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on November 21, 2010
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