Text: Luke 23:1-56

Each of the four gospel versions of the Passion narrative has its distinctive elements that help tell the story from the particular theological perspective of the evangelist. There are several passages and emphases that are unique to Luke’s gospel, including Pilate’s handing over of Jesus to Herod and Jesus’ lament to the daughters of Jerusalem. But it is the passage about the two criminals crucified beside Jesus that many of us remember most of all.

One of them mocks Jesus saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” The other then chastises his fellow criminal, declares Jesus’ innocence and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Luke uses this poignant exchange in the last moments of Jesus’ life to capture, on the one hand, the extent to which Jesus is mocked and misunderstood during his life and, on the other, the way in which his humiliating death becomes the means of his exaltation.

From the very beginning of his gospel Luke makes clear Jesus’ identity and purpose. In the annunciation to Mary the angel Gabriel proclaims, “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end…the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” The angel of the Lord announces “the good news of great joy” to the shepherds in the fields: “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” When the infant Jesus is presented at the temple, Simeon sees him for who he is: “…my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples.” At his baptism Jesus’ identity is affirmed to all in attendance by the voice from heaven that declares, “You are my Son, the Beloved.”

Then in the wilderness the mocking begins. “The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread,’ and “’If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.’”

In his hometown of Nazareth, when Jesus reads from Isaiah and tells his hometown hearers that he himself is the one whom God had sent “to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,” they try to throw him off a cliff. For his words threaten the very structure of society.

The pivotal focus of Mediterranean society in the first century was honor and shame. Honor—understood as the status one claimed and the recognition of that claim by others--meant everything, including survival. Honor could either be ascribed based on the circumstances of one’s birth or acquired by virtue of one’s skill. Since honor was a limited good, it was always a win-lose situation: if one person gained honor, someone else lost it.

To many, this son of lowly parents represents a threat and an offense. For the temple officials to hear him called “Son of God” is blasphemous. For the Romans to hear him called “Messiah” and “King” is a threat to their authority. For people of social standing to see him honored is a direct threat to their welfare. For Jesus to honor the outcasts of society—women, tax collectors, and sinners—is outrageous.

But others—demons he casts out, people whom he heals, and his disciple Peter—proclaim him the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God. When Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus warns him and the other disciples that for Jesus, mocking and exaltation are inexorably bound together: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” He repeats this prediction twice more on his way to Jerusalem.

On the day that we recall today, Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But the tide soon turns, as during that next few days he is betrayed by Judas, arrested, and denied three times by Peter. Meanwhile, the mocking continues: “Now the men who were holding Jesus began to mock him and beat him; they also blindfolded him and kept asking him, ‘Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?’ they kept heaping many other insults on him.”

When Pilate sends Jesus off to Herod, Luke writes, “Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him to Pilate.”

Since neither Pilate nor Herod find Jesus guilty of any charges, Pilate calls together the leaders, the chief priests, and the people. By this time the continual public dishonoring of Jesus has gotten through to the people. Those who had welcomed Jesus in his triumphal entry and shielded Jesus from hostile officials now turn on him. Just as Peter had denied Jesus three times, they deny him three times before Pilate.

The last week of Jesus’ life has been a progressive act of degradation ending in the ultimate sign of dishonor, the public torture of crucifixion. The final act of rejection is the verbal and physical abuse that Jesus takes while he is hanging on the cross. “…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!’” One of the criminals who is crucified along with him joins in, “’Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’”

Does it not make us cringe to hear the constant mocking and abuse that Jesus suffered during his last days—being called a fraud and a fool during his final agonies?

Here, though, Luke the evangelist gives us something else, the witness of the second criminal, the so-called “penitent thief” who hangs on the cross beside Jesus. This man sees something different, something that the disciples themselves don’t see from their viewpoint way off in the distance. To this thief, the one who is being mocked and condemned really is the Messiah. It is clear to him that Jesus’ shameful death doesn’t end his claim of royal power but is the very means by which he will achieve it.

The thief does what few others in the gospel do: he calls Jesus by his name, which means literally, “the Lord saves.” When he asks, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” he demonstrates his faith in Jesus’ saving power. When Jesus assures the thief, “today you will be with me in Paradise,” he is ending his ministry in the same way in which he began it at the synagogue in Nazareth, by giving blessing and assurance to outcasts.

It is ironic that rejection and shameful death are the means by which Jesus enters his glory, producing an outcome contrary to the intentions of those who mocked and condemned him. But from the beginning Luke has shown us that God works by surprise and reversal. The pregnant Mary proclaims in the Magnificat, “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty; he has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”

The cross that is a scandal and stumbling block to some becomes the very means of salvation. For Jesus, “though he was in the form of God…emptied himself (and) humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” Jesus tells of a God who enters into human suffering to bring power from weakness, healing from suffering, and life from death. It is a message that is mocked by the powers and principalities of the world. But, as the story of the two criminals who died beside Jesus tells us, it is the way to Paradise.