Well, good morning. I come to you this morning with a heavy heart and I feel a need to begin the sermon by correcting an error – actually a grievous error; a grievous error that was committed by my good friend and our dear pastor, Dan.

Many of you may know, may have been hear last Sunday when Dan was preaching and in the middle of the sermon he pointed to some of the art work here and specifically pointed to the men there with the white shirts and the ties that were crucifying Jesus, and he referred to them as “businessmen.”

Looking at the picture, I suppose it’s easy to see how slipped into that error, but anyone that knows the story – and surely Dan knows the story – knows that the people who were actually crucifying Jesus were government officials (you can think FBI) and religious leaders (you can think senior pastors of congregations).

In fact, if you searched the entire Passion record in search of a businessman, perhaps the only one that you could find (and this we don’t know for sure) is Simon of Cyrene who, as you know, is the only one who throughout entire human history ever literally carried the cross of Christ. So, once again, business doing heavy lifting.

I shared this with Dan this week and he suggested that perhaps we could also find businessmen in the two people hanging next to Jesus on the cross, but I personally find that preposterous because those people had broken the law. So, in any event, I did not want you to proceed even for one moment longer in a misapprehension about the art here on the wall or the role of business in God’s salvific plan. So let us pray.

God, I thank you for the privilege of turning to Your word. I thank you for the privilege of being able to preach from Your word. I thank you that You seek to encounter us again and again in Your word. And I pray that as we are encountered by You, that we will be changed. And I pray that you’d give me the confidence and the ability to speak as Your faithful servant so that the words that are spoken now will be words that are of You and for us. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

So we are coming to the end of Lent. We have walked the way of Jesus. We have stopped and looked at a number of the stations of the cross along the way. And we’re near the end – that candles are almost entirely extinguished.

You may remember that this journey begins back in the Garden of Gethsemane. It actually begins with Jesus on his knees, praying. And Jesus prays simply, “Father, not my will, but Yours be done.”

And that simple prayer of submission seems really to have unleashed this torrent of horrors that Jesus encounters over the next 24 hours or so of his life. During that time, he’s scorned. He’s abused. He’s isolated.

It begins immediately on his arrest. All of his friends flee. His closest friend follows, but only at a great distance, and within a few hours denies him repeatedly. The leaders of the Jewish people (the people that Jesus had been sent to save in the first instance) they suborn perjury in an effort to get rid of him. The Jewish people themselves who just days earlier were chanting hosannas are now chanting “crucify him! Crucify him!”

The Roman government that was charged with administering justice cynically and for political motivations knowingly send an innocent man to be executed. And he’s taken outside the gates outside the city walls (which Dan pointed out last Wednesday is another act of rejection, a picture of expungement. In the Old Testament, the impure were forced out of the community outside of the city walls). So another act of rejection.

During this time Jesus is sleep deprived. He’s flogged. He’s beaten. He’s tortured. And then, as Dan pointed out or talked about last Wednesday, he’s crucified. Nails are driven through his hands. He’s hung on a crossbar to die.

And that’s really where our text starts today.

Reading: Luke 23: 32-38

As the story continues, this life of Jesus here continues to spiral downwards. He’s now being crucified with common criminals as if to say he’s nothing more than just another criminal. He’s now quite literally stripped of his clothes to hang, humiliated, naked. He is scorned. He is scoffed at. He is mocked. The senior leaders of the church make fun of him. The Roman soldiers mock him. And even in the silence of the crowd, people standing by waiting to see what will happen next.

There is a sense in which he is being rejected. Jesus is incredibly alone. In fact, one of the really startling and maybe the most scandalous fact of all this whole passion journey, is that from the Garden to the Cross there is not one person who stands up and says, “I will take Jesus’ part. I will declare his innocence. I will voluntarily walk with him. Not one person.”

I sometimes wonder whether the scandal of that is kind of what prompted the Roman Catholic church when it developed its Stations of the Cross to actually add one that has no biblical support – no biblical reference. In the sixth station of the cross in the Roman Catholic tradition, a woman – Veronica – steps from the crowd to wipe Jesus’ brow, to wipe away the sweat and the blood. It’s almost as if the church could not stand the notion that no one – no one – would take Jesus’ part. But that’s really the story that comes out of Luke.

And the story continues. All of these events seem to be building now to one last episode. In fact, Luke, as he designs the way (and each of the gospel writers tells the story slightly differently), but as he designs how he wants to tell the story of the crucifixion, it seems that he has everything building up to one last incident where Jesus is going to have a conversation with two criminals hanging next to him.

It turns out that is the last act, the last incident that happens according to Luke, before Jesus dies. In the very next paragraph, he breathes his last. So this is kind of where it’s all heading. And it is really at the heart of our text today.

Reading: Luke 23: 39-43

Two criminals. We know almost nothing about them. We don’t know their names. In the other gospels they’re referred to as thieves, but beyond that we don’t know what they did that got them sentenced to death. In some ways they’re kind of similar. They’re both sentenced to death. They’re both dying. They’re both going to die adjacent to Christ.

But beyond those similarities, they really are quite different and it seems to me that actually Luke tells the stories this way (so) that we will contrast these two thieves. He really uses, in a sense, the first thief as a foil to set up the second thief who he really (I think) wants us to look closely at.

And so I want to suggest this morning and really use the balance of my time to highlight 3 ways in which these two thieves are really different.

• First, they look at themselves differently.
• And then second, they look for God in different places.
• And then third, because of that, they have very different encounters with Jesus. So let me take them in that order.

First, they look at themselves differently.

The first thief begins, “Are you not the Messiah?” His voice dripping with mockery, he’s simply picking up the mockery that has already been extended – in a sense – this is the lowest of the low, the leaders of the church, the Roman soldiers, and now a common criminal destined to die using his last breath to make fun of Jesus. “Are you not the Messiah? Well, if you were, save yourself! Save us, too!”

We were working on this passage in our home group, and one of the members of our home group is a middle school teacher. And as soon as we did this she said, “Oh, I know that voice. I’ve heard that voice before.” She said, “That’s the voice I hear all around me in middle school of kids who are scared, and kids who are insecure but choose to cover it up with a kind of a arrogant swagger, who in their own sort of insecurities seek to put other people down in a way to make themselves seem better, feel safer, be more included.” She said, “I know that voice.”

But the second thief, hearing this, rebukes him. And he says, “Don’t you fear God? Aren’t you willing to (in a sense) look at your life as God will see it? You and I are sentenced to the same condemnation – the same death that this man is sentenced to – but we deserve what we are getting.”

Now this is a remarkable statement because to say that you deserve to be crucified is really saying that you have done very bad things. Because really, to die on a cross was the most gruesome, terrible way that one could be executed. It was so bad that Roman citizens, no matter how heinous a crime they might commit, would never be hung on a cross. It was just too beneath them. It was a terrible way to die.

And yet the second thief says, “Based on what I have done in my life, I deserve this.”

Now that’s an important sentence to hear because he then turns and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He cannot be meaning at that point, “remember my good deeds” or “remember my good character” or “remember all the good things I have done for you” because he’s just said “I deserve to die on a cross.” He is really turning to Jesus and in a sense asking for a favor. A blessing. A gift. A grace. “When you come into your kingdom, don’t forget me.”

The difference between the two thieves is that the second thief is willing to look honestly at his own predicament – to really honestly assess his own situation. The first thief is not willing to do that, and as a result responds in an arrogant swagger, whereas the 2nd thief responds in humility. And that’s really the first thing that I would want you to observe – the humility of the second thief.

Now all the time, we often in the church and everywhere, we Christians are encouraged to behave with humility; to be humble people. I of course completely agree with that but I worry sometimes that we have the wrong picture of what humility really is. I think sometimes we think humility means to be meek and reticent and hanging back on the side.

That’s not humility. Humility is a frank recognition of our condition. A recognition that we deserve death, but have been given life. A simple recognition that all of the good things that we have and all of the good things that we do are given to us as gifts from God. That’s what humility is. And that’s what the second thief has.

Now perhaps because the second thief looks from a standpoint of humility, he also seems to look for God in different ways. The first thief again says, “If you’re the Messiah, save us – or save yourself – and save us, too.”

Now, again, I don’t mean to suggest that there’s any real sincerity behind that but at least [in] the words, there is kind of an irony. He is seeking salvation. He is asking that Jesus would save him. But it’s ironic that the one thing that the first thief asks is the one thing that Jesus cannot do. Save yourself and save us, too.

That’s the one thing that Jesus can’t do. If Jesus is going to save us, he must sacrifice himself. He must take on himself the brokenness and the sins of the world and carry them on our behalf to the cross. The one thing that Jesus could not do would be to save himself and save us, too.

But by making that request, it seems to me, the first thief reveals kind of his expectations; where it is he expects to see God at work. And I think he is looking for God in acts of power. Think what would have impressed this first thief. What if Jesus had jumped down from the cross and snapped his fingers and the other thieves had fallen from the cross, and then he had done this (sign) and the Roman soldiers were frozen and the thieves could run away. Now that would be a Messiah worth following. That would be somebody who has the power to make a difference. That someone, that someone who could truly be Savior, Messiah.

He’s looking for God in acts of power. And because he doesn’t see that, he misses the fact that even as he is dying, he is right next to his Messiah.

The second thief seems to recognize that Jesus is the Messiah. He says, “When you come into your kingdom” – a Messianic statement. We don’t know exactly how it is that he recognizes him as Messiah. Perhaps he’d had some earlier encounters. Perhaps he was moved by Jesus’ statement, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they’re doing.” But in this little text, the one thing that he seems to focus on is that Jesus was innocent; that Jesus had no wrong, and that he was going to the cross as one who did not deserve it.

And I don’t think it’s too far a stretch to say that this second thief encounters a God who is willing to go to the cross to take on the struggles and the pains and to share in the death of humanity out of love. And so whereas the first thief is looking for God in acts of power, the second thief encounters God in acts of love.

A friend of mine has said that you might think about these two thieves in the passage as really being kind of the examples of the two ways that the world responds to the apparent weakness of God - when God doesn’t bring justice, when the war doesn’t stop, when somebody isn’t healed.

Some parts of the world say, “That God is too weak. Either that God doesn’t care or that God doesn’t have power, and I’m not interested in following that God.” But other people seeing that say, “That God entered into that brokenness, entered into that injustice, entered into that pain and took it on himself in order that he could identify deeply, completely with the people he loved. That is a God who loves beyond anything I’ve ever seen. That is a God I will follow.”

And isn’t this the heart of the Gospel? Isn’t this the scandal of the cross? Really, we think we’re told elsewhere in scripture that the cross will be a stumbling block for many because some people will look at the cross and they will say, “If Jesus died there, if the powers of this world were sufficient to crush him and kill him, surely that can’t be God. That isn’t the kind of power that I would expect from a God.”

And other people see Jesus hanging on the cross and say, “If God loved me so much that He would carry all of my brokenness and my sins and participate even with death, that surely must be God.” One of them looks for God in acts of power, and the other experiences God in acts of love.

Now I want to say quickly that of course, as Christians, we believe in a powerful God. We believe that God does have power and certainly Jesus exhibited that. Jesus healed people and cast out demons. And even the cross which we think of in some ways as a sign of the ultimate weakness of God turns out to be God’s most powerful move in all of human history.

It’s at the cross and the resurrection that the curse that the whole world was laboring (under), that was sending the world spiraling towards chaos, was turned around. It’s what sets into motion resurrection life. It’s what sets the world on a trajectory and makes possible and more than possible, indeed certain, the coming kingdom – the day when our prayer that it will be on earth as it is in heaven – will be fully answered. All of that happens because of the cross. In a sense the cross is very powerful.

But here, I think, is the key distinction. God always uses power coming out of love. When God exercises His power it’s an expression of His love, and it’s for the sake of building and sustaining loving relationships. When the exercise of power would act against love, then God restrains Himself.

Some of you, I know, are Wendell Berry fans. And Wendell Berry has written a book entitled “Jayber Crow” in which the key figure is Jayber Crow. And I’m going to read a quote from him. It’s kind of a longish quote, so stay with me. But Jayber Crow is thinking on this subject. He says,

“For awhile again I couldn’t pray. I didn’t dare to. In the most secret place of my soul I wanted to beg the Lord to reveal Himself in power. I wanted to tell Him that it was time for His coming. If there was anything at all to what He had promised, why didn’t He come in glory with angels and lay His hands on the hurt children and awaken the dead soldiers and restore the burned villages and the blasted and poisoned lands?

But thinking such things was as dangerous as praying them. I know who had thought such thoughts before. Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross that we may see and believe. Christ did not descend from the cross except into the grave. And why not otherwise? Wouldn’t it have put fine, comical expressions on the face of the scribes and the chief priests and the soldiers if at that moment he had come down in power and glory? Why didn’t he do it? And why hasn’t he done it at any one of a thousand good times between then and now?

I knew the answer. I knew it a long time before I could admit it. For all the suffering of the world is in it. He didn’t and he hasn’t because from the moment he did, he would be the absolute tyrant of the world. And we would be his slaves – even those who hated him, and hated one another, and hated their own souls would have to believe in him then. And from that moment, the possibility, the possibility that we might be bound to him and he to us and us to one another – bound in love – that moment would be lost forever.”

God is a mighty, powerful God. But he will restrain His exercise of power if to exercise power would get in the way of what He most deeply wants – it’s a loving relationship with us.

The first thief arrogantly swaggered, mocking Christ, unwilling to look at his own predicament, seeking for God in acts of power; the second thief with humility, with clear recognition of his own predicament and experiencing God in acts of love. Two very different thieves, and as a result they have two very different encounters with Jesus.

As we look at this text, there seems to be – in a sense – no encounter with Jesus that comes with the first thief. Jesus never responds to the first thief. It’s as if the first thief has given him no opening. So the first thief will go to his death never recognizing the Messiah that was dying alongside him.

The second thief, the one that Luke really wants us to see…it was very different for the second thief. The second thief begins and he says to him, “Jesus.” Everybody so far when they’ve been referring to him even in mockery have been calling him by titles: Messiah, the King, the Chosen One. But the second thief says, “Jesus.” There’s an intimacy in that.” And then he says, “Remember me when you come someday in the future; when you come into your kingdom. Just don’t forget me.”

And Jesus responds by giving him so much more than he asks. He says, “Truly I say to you (which is kind of Greek for ‘really pay attention’), truly I say to you today (not some distant time in the future) today you will be with me (not just somebody I remember) but you will be with me in paradise. Today you will be with me in paradise.” The encounter that the second thief has is an encounter of a relationship that begins there and extends to eternity.

I told you at the beginning that there was not one person from the garden to the cross that stood up for Jesus. Until the second thief. The second thief declares his innocence. The second thief, an ordinary no-name criminal sentenced to death says, “I will stand with Jesus and I want to be with Jesus to the end.”

In a way, I think Luke ends with this because here is the hint of the church. This is where the church is to be found. The question that seems to me as we finish our walk through Lent – the question from text that Luke would leave ringing in our ears is where do we find ourselves in this story? Are we the first thief? Are we insecure but unwilling to really look at ourselves and covering it up with a show of self-sufficiency? Are we insisting on looking for God in power, wanting to work from places of power? Or are we willing to be humble and experience God in His identification with the brokenness of our world? Where are we looking for God? Which of these thieves will we identify with? And what will be our encounter with Jesus?

Let us pray.

Lord, I thank you. I thank you for that last conversation. I thank you that at your harkest moment, someone that the world would cast off as absolutely of no value reaches out and says, “You’re innocent and I want to be with you.” Lord, I pray that rather than seeking after value and power and importance in this world, that we would in humility align ourselves with the second thief and look forward to enjoying Your presence now and forever. In Jesus’ name. Amen.