Friday, March 27

Scripture: Luke 23:39-43
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? 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 justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

THE REPENTANT CRIMINAL

To the last, Jesus kept company with sinners. Even in his dying moments, he was ranged between two criminals—three enemies of the state, on display as a reminder of the inevitable end of disloyalty.

Two criminals: nameless, faceless, but not without character. The first plays the tempter, snarling at Jesus to prove himself by saving himself—and them. Like the devil in the wilderness (If you are the Son of God…), the first criminal provokes Jesus to demonstrate publicly that he is the Messiah. And really, how could one who possessed such power not use it to evade impending death, dazzling his captors just when they thought they had him beat?

Or perhaps it is just a cruel joke; the mocking humiliation of the one person on earth more pitiful than the first criminal was himself. The only thing worse than capital punishment of a convicted criminal, perhaps, is capital punishment falling on a deluded radical. At least the first criminal knows which way is up; this man with messianic aspirations has everything topsy-turvy.

How strange that, in the ordeal of his own death, the second criminal has the decency to defend Jesus. He sees what the first obscures—that these three are in the same boat, dangling over death’s insatiable maw. The only difference is the innocence of Jesus. How strange that, in the throbbing pain of crucifixion, the second criminal would clearly discern the difference between the righteous and the unrighteous—and have the courage to acknowledge his place among the unrighteous.

And how strange that the second criminal asks this man hanging a few feet from him, a man with whom he is dying, to remember him. He anticipates a future for Jesus, even as his own prospects dim towards the darkness of death. And because Jesus has a future, it may just be that this man will, too. “Remember me,” he asks.

The request is so simple, and the Taizé community carries it into prayer just as simply. “Remember me”—that is, call me to mind. Recall me. Don’t let me slip your mind, falling into oblivion; don’t forget me.

What the second criminal may not have known was that the man hanging next to him, the man whose cry of God-forsakenness would erupt a few feet away, was the very man in whom God’s promises to remember his people was kept. Though Israel (though we) forgot, Israel’s God (ours) remembered. He remembered, and he acted.

Jesus’ reply to the second criminal mirrors this movement. He will do as the criminal asks and remember him, bringing him along into Paradise, a Paradise marked and made by the ongoing presence of Jesus himself.

On the night before Jesus died, he shared a meal with his disciples in which he called them to “remember me.” When we come to the Lord’s Table, we do just that. We call to mind the death he died, and call on him to return in glory. But perhaps even more important than our remembering Christ is his remembering us, his faithful calling us to mind as he intercedes at the right hand of the Father and his final calling us to life as he returns.

PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, remember me.
Amen.

Matt Jensen, Professor of Theology, Torreys Honors Institute