A Meditation Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at The Good Friday Ecumenical Preaching Service at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Metuchen, New Jersey April 6, 2007

Text: Luke 23:39-49
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “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, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

It was now about noon, and darkness cam over the whole land until three in the after-noon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, cry-ing with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, “Cer-tainly this man was innocent.” And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this specta-cle saw what had taken place, they returned home beating their breasts. But all his acquain-tances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. —Luke 23:39-49, NRSV

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19 NRSV). All of the Gospels reflect keen theological insight, therefore, in connecting Jesus’ death with the promise of life to those who put their trust in him. The promise to the dying criminal is Luke’s way of making the same point. The other criminal taunted Jesus, mocking him with challenges to save himself and others, so with fitting irony Jesus’ last words to another human being are an assurance of salva-tion. Jesus began his ministry proclaiming “good news to the poor” and “release to the captives” (Luke 4:18), and he ends it extending an assurance of blessing to one of the wretched of the earth.

Here is good news not just for the “sweet by and by,” or even for “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:19), but for “today” (Luke 23:43). The second of the words from the cross in Luke should move every one of us to recognize that we, too, stand in need of God’s mercy (“Do you not fear God?”) and ask that God might remember us. As with so many other scenes from the Gospels, this one is a “Gospel in miniature”: Jesus, the dying Savior among the wretched; one who taunts him cynically and thereby rejects his mercy; and one who receives salvation be-cause he looks forward to the kingdom of God. Thus the story invites the same response as the Gospel as a whole: Turn to the Lord for mercy and then spread the good news of God’s kingdom among the poor by doing for them as Jesus did in his ministry.

In what or in whom do you trust? The rich fool thought he had provided for himself for years to come, but then God said, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20b, NRSV). The dying crimi-nal knew that he had no one else to whom he could appeal, and Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Dr. Alan Culpepper writes that, “Sometime during the seventh or ninth century, St. Angus came to Balquidder, a beautiful valley surrounded by forested hills in the Scottish high-lands. Moved by its beauty, he said it was “a thin place”—a place where the separation between heaven and earth was very thin—so he built a church there that has survived to this day.”
The death of Jesus is “a thin place.” Indeed, the heavens become dark, and on earth the veil in the Temple is rent. So thin is the separation between heaven and earth that Jesus talks to God from the cross, and those who hear his prayers are themselves moved to confession and con-trition. The one who was hailed by a chorus of angels at his birth and was designated by an angel visitant as the Son of God commits his spirit to God as he dies. The Holy One dies the death of a common criminal, and yet speaks of paradise to the criminal beside him.

Each of the four Gospels presents the death of Jesus in a different way… The divergent colors that the evangelists use to paint the crucifixion scene call us to read each one individually and appreciatively. In Luke we stand with the crowd of people watching while Jesus is crucified by those who taunt him with mocked pleas that he save himself and others. Jesus’ death, there-fore, confirms who he has been throughout his ministry. The authorities pronounce him innocent. The taunts derisively hail him as the Messiah, God’s chosen one, and the King of the Jews, but Jesus prays for forgiveness for those who have rejected and crucified him. He assures the peni-tent criminal of a blessing in Paradise and dies with the prayer on his lips of one who trusts God, even in death. Jesus has faithfully taken up the work of redemption—lifting up the lowly (Luke 1:52) and preaching good news to the poor (Luke 4:18)—and it has cost him his life. Ironically, though, his death also signals the inevitability of the completion of the other side of the redemp-tion of the humble—judgment upon the proud and bringing down “the powerful from their thrones” (Luke 1:52).

The people leave Calvary (“The Skull”) beating their breasts. How terrible that God has sent “the Savior,” and we rejected him and crucified him on a hill outside the city. At his death, even a hardened soldier was moved to confess that he was just. If we have rejected the Savior, God’s only Son, what hope is there?

It is baffling how we can hear this Passion story and not be changed by it. Don’t we get it? Who was repelled by the teachings of Jesus? Who felt that Jesus was teaching false doctrine? Who wanted this man to “go away”?

It was the righteous; the orthodox; the people who knew how to do it correctly. It was the keepers of the Law. It was the people who knew the rules: and knew how to make sure everyone else kept them. How can we hear this message—this story—and not be confronted by that? By the sin of self-righteousness in the voices who cried “Hosanna” on Sunday and turned so quickly to the crowd which cried “Crucify Him!” on Friday. And crucify him they did. The crowd got what they asked for.

Reflecting on this horror, the Rev. Susan Russell has said, “I don’t want to be part of that crowd. I don’t want you to be part of that crowd. I don’t want the church to be part of that crowd. But that’s the risk we run if we skip Good Friday. If we fast forward to Easter, we avoid con-fronting in ourselves our own self-righteousness, our own certainties, our own fears. We also avoid being transformed by them.”

Perhaps it is good not to dispel the darkness of the death of Jesus too quickly. As Pastor Russell points out, we naturally want to move on to wonder at the love of God revealed in the death of Jesus; or we try to translate its meaning into sacrificial terms; or, we want to quickly press on to the next chapter—to the resurrection. But I’m so glad you have come here today to pause and share in this time of Good Friday reflection on the crucifixion. A significant part of the power of Luke’s Gospel is that it summons us to tarry at the cross and then return home beating our breasts with those whose hopes seemed to have died there. Only by witnessing the darkness of his death and the despair of the loss of hope can we fully appreciate the joy of the resurrection.

However, God’s purposes for Jesus, the Savior will not be defeated by the power of darkness. Jesus came “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79). So those who are able to see the light in the darkness can join those at the cross who confessed Jesus, beat their breasts in grief and contrition, and then went away and out into their world to serve as witnesses that they had been at that remarkable “thin place” where the design of the God of the heavens was revealed on earth.

Through the centuries, human beings have looked for “thin places” in many ways. Some have climbed mountaintops; others have meticulously observed cultic rituals; some have searched great religious traditions; and others have looked within through prayer and meditation. Where is God to be found in our human experience? Where can we see God revealed through the veil that surrounds us? Who would have thought that Golgotha (“The Skull”) would become the “thin place”? At such a place as Calvary’s cross we can only confess our wretched unworthiness of such love as this.

Upon that cross of Jesus mine eye at times can see
the very dying form of One who suffered there for me;
and from my stricken heart with tears two wonders I confess:
the wonders of redeeming love and my unworthiness. Amen.