1.    "Two others also, who were criminals, were lead away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called the Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the two criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.' And they cast lots to divide his garments."  (Luke 23:32-34)

What would you say are among the most remarkable words you have ever heard?   I don't think there is anything more remarkable and miraculous than words of love spoken in a difficult situation; words of grace spoken when there has been offense and injury; words of reconciliation in the face of estrangement.  In my mind everything else pales in comparison.

I can think of no words more remarkable and miraculous than these words of Jesus to which Luke testifies:  "Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing."  

Crucifixion, by design was a torturous and excruciating death.  It was Roman execution and Jesus was crucified as an enemy of the state - of Rome and its temple collaborators. The only thing Jesus was guilty of was non-violent resistance to oppression. 

Luke's community experienced an amazing forgiving love in Jesus that could even forgive the oppressors who dominated their lives and crucified Jesus..  On the one hand, Jesus death on the cross was an indictment of Rome and its system of oppression. But on the other hand, his astounding forgiveness was a recognition of their oppressor’s humanity.  It was this very kind of love that motivated have people down through the ages;  people, resembling Jesus, who protested oppression, but never lost sight of the humanity of their oppressors. 

Ultimately these are words of incredible hope because the world so desperately needs this kind of love.  When will endless cycle of war ever come to an end?  When will centuries long animosities fostered by hatred ever cease?  When will swords be beaten into plowshares once and for all?

I believe only when something radically new is injected into the cycle of escalating violence.  That's what Jesus did.  He injected something radically new - forgiving love - love of the oppressed for the oppressor.  He took a radical first new step in the face of the cycle of violence.  

A few weeks ago some of us watched a video produced by the ELCA on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.  I was impacted by something a Palestinian clergyperson said.  He said, and I paraphrase, "No one on either side is willing to put down the sword of revenge.  No one on either side is willing to take a first risky step towards forgiveness and reconciliation.  No one sees it as their responsibility.  No sees the humanity of the other."

"Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing."   Therein lies the first step.  Therein lies the hope.

2.    "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'" (Luke 23:39-43)

The word for "criminal" in Greek, kakourgos, was a word that was commonly used for someone engaged in armed resistance against Rome.   

Jesus was crucified for being an enemy of the state.  It only makes sense that to drive home the point, the Romans would crucify Jesus with others who were being executed for violent crimes against the state.  The thing about it is we know that Jesus did not take up arms.  His tactics were non-violent and ultimately loving.  A moment ago, I said that he never lost sight of his oppressors humanity. 

One of the two crucified with him mocked him saying, "If you are the Messiah then save yourself and us."   But the other showed a measure of repentance asking to be remembered. 

I read this encounter metaphorically.  Matthew, Mark and John make no mention of the repentant criminal, just that he was crucified between the two.  Only Luke mentions this.  I believe this is Luke's way to make a point. The unrepentant criminal represents those who would use violence to overthrow violence; those who would allow the oppressor to set the agenda of response.  

Luke's repentant criminal, this one who saw the futility of resorting to violence to overthrow violence, is Luke's way of affirming the non-violent nature of the way Jesus resisted oppression and evil.  It is Luke's way of proclaiming that the very heart of Jesus, who revealed the heart of God, is a heart of non-violence and inclusive love for both oppressed and oppressor.  We can never make putting a sword in Jesus hand right!  The way of non-violence, the way Jesus chose, is the only way that is able to overcome oppression and evil without creating new forms of oppression and evil that turn the oppressed into the new oppressors. 

3.    "Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, 'Woman, here is your son.' Then he said to the disciple, 'Here is your mother.' And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home." (John 19:26-27)

We cannot even begin to imagine what was going on in Mary's heart and soul as she stood and watched her son die. We cannot imagine her pain and anguish. We can only guess what images and memories must have flooded into her thoughts.

Maybe she thought of that first time they went into the temple to dedicate her newborn son, and an old man named Simeon appeared and sang a glorious song about her baby child and then he said such a haunting thing to her, he said, "This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel" -- and then he looked at Mary and said, "And a sword will pierce your own soul as well."

I'm sure many times when he preached and proclaimed the Kingdom of God, Mary was one of the faces in the crowd.

And here she was again - a face in the crowd. But not just any face, but the mother of him who hung there. Simeon was right - a sword had pierced her soul. What she would have given to change places with him, because that's what a mother would feel; what she would have given to wipe his brow with a cool towel, anything to comfort his torment. But there was nothing this mother could do except to powerlessly and grievously stand and watch.

So many memories... so much pain... so much grief! Is there no limit to the sheer brutality that people will commit upon each other when they are ordered or when the lust for blood has possessed them!

And then John writes, that Jesus in the midst of his suffering, acknowledges his mother... He affirms her and perhaps thought of her loneliness in the days ahead.  He saw the "disciple whom he loved standing next to her" and he said, "Woman, behold your son... Behold you mother."  In an act of love he linked together his mother and his friend.   It was an action that created a new community.

To me this is the point John is making.  I don’t presume to understand all of what this word might mean, but one thing it says to me is God doesn't love us in general. God's love isn't some great theological principle. But God's love, as high and as wide and as deep as it is, is very personal... very close... very intimate... touching us at those hidden places of desperation... those concealed places of profound need.. those places of deep grief - and - that Jesus continues to minister to us, and we continue to experience him through the community he has left behind; and in the bonds that exist between us. 

Look into your neighbor’s face!  See you brother… see you sister… in Christ!  See the face of Jesus!

4.    "When it was noon darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At 3 o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eloi,Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means 'My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Mark 15:33-34)

It should come as no surprise that Jesus cried out in such a desperate way!  As he hung there as life was ebbing out of  him, suffering an agony that we cannot comprehend, he came to a point of utter despair; a place where he felt totally alone, caught in a void unreachable by anything or anyone.

These words that Jesus cried were not his own. He was quoting a psalm, Psalm 22 to be exact. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 

Psalm 22 in its entirety is a prayer to God for deliverance from fatal circumstance. It's a prayer that first of all, acknowledges the real pain and the real agony and the real suffering of the person's situation. But as the prayer goes on, the victim, who was feeling helpless and spent, begins little by little to be empowered. And at the end of the prayer the victim is filled with hope once again and acknowledges trust in God.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  It's the first line of a prayer that begins in despair and ends in hope!

What does it mean for you and me? Well, it means when you and I visit our places of despair, whatever they may be; whether they be self-made or we're hurled into it by circumstance or a combination of both - it means even in despair we are not out of the earshot and presence of God - and that the experience of despair need not be the final paragraph of the last chapter of our story, but yet there is always to be written.

5.    "After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), 'I am thirsty.' A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth." (John 19:28-29)

When John was writing his Gospel very late in the late first century, a certain kind of thinking had gained prominence in religious thought alongside early Christianity.  It is called Gnosticism.  It was a complex and diverse philosophy, but one tenant of Gnosticism was that spirit is altogether good, and that substance is altogether evil.  Believing that, the Gnostics came to certain conclusions about God, and one of them was that God, who is pure spirit, was not directly involved in human experience.

Therefore, some strains of Gnosticism taught that Jesus could not have had a real body, but only the illusion of a body. It was said that when Jesus walked his feet left no footprints. They went on to argue that God cannot experience suffering, so Jesus really didn't suffer, and he went through life and death without real pain!

Surrounded by this philosophy, John wrote his gospel in part as a response.  John wants his readers to know that Jesus' life and death was real...  agonizingly real... excruciatingly real. This wasn't play-acting, magic, or illusory, but this was real love... this was suffering love embedded in the human experience.

In our time, sometimes I hear Jesus described in a way that implies that he was really a souped-up human, a hyper-human, more than human, God masquerading as a human.  If that is the case, then Jesus had an advantage over you and me that we do not have.  A souped-up Jesus ceases to be a credible human being.  When Jesus invites me to live his kind of life, how can I do that if he was more than mortal and I am merely mortal?   When we talk about Jesus' divinity at the expense of his humanity, we lose track of the utterly remarkable human being that he was.  If we think  that his wisdom, compassion, courage and commitment were the result of his divinity, that puts them out of my reach and my experience.

But, if we think of Jesus in another way, that is he was a human being who was full of God and full of the Spirit of God, that changes everything.  "I thirst," said Jesus.  It was John's way of declaring that Jesus wasn't play-acting - he was real.  It also means that he wasn't deluding anyone when he said things like "Take up you cross and follow me."  "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."  "Do to others as you would have them do to you."  "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." It means these things were not out of our reach.

"I thrist."  Yes, and so do we, and the quenching of our thirst is to follow Jesus into his kind of life. 

 

6.    "When Jesus had received the wine, he said, 'It is finished.' Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." (John 19:30)

What kind of a cry was it? Was this a cry of defeat? A cry of relief? A cry of despair? A cry of finality? A cry of victory?  I don't know other than maybe all of these and more.

I heard one of the players from North Carolina basketball team, recently crowned NCAA champions of basketball, say, "It's over! It's over! It's over!"

Obviously he didn't merely mean the game was over. Yes, the game was over. But his excited acclamation "It's over!" also meant, "It's been a long season. We've worked hard. We set goals. It took discipline, long hours, persistence, believing in ourselves, and hanging in there. We reached out goal!" All of that from "It's over!"  But, I believe that's what he more or less meant!

"It is finished" was Jesus' final word from the cross according to John. But, it wasn't a cry of weary defeat; it wasn't merely a statement of the obvious that his life was coming to an end.  It was more a shout of completion in the fullest sense of the word.  He had remained faithful to proclaiming and embodying the Kingdom of God and faithful to love's imperatives to the very end. For John he was like a light shining in the darkness; the bread of life; the light of the world.  He had embodied the way of the cross.

All that he had experienced couldn't break his ultimate trust in God's love... for him... and for the world... and he lived it, and he loved until his last breath.

He had committed his life for the sake of the Kingdom of God and all that it means; demonstrating that there is power stronger and more life-giving than fear and hatred, oppression and domination.

"It is finished." 

7.    "It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, Into thy hands I commit my spirit.' Having said this, he breathed his last." (Luke 23:44-46)

To even begin to get this, I think we must look at it with a more-than-literal perspective. 

Luke says the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The curtain was the drape that hid the Holy of Holies, that sacred place beyond description where it was believed God was especially present; a place isolated from the rest of the world. No person could ever enter the Holy of Holies except the High Priest, and he only once a year, on the great Day of Atonement - to make sacrifice for sin. But Luke says the curtain was "ripped in two," reduced to rags!  

The message was crystal clear. The temple aristocracy were no longer to mediate God's grace.  The distribution of God's grace was no longer to be rationed-out like it was in short supply, and of course, only to the defined-deserved.   No longer would God's most serious business of love occur behind curtains and closed doors, in secret and isolation.  God won't be sequestered any more. Grace was officially set loose in the world, turning up in the most unlikely places, even in this most profane place of death and execution.

Do you see the message here?  The lines between the sacred and profane have been blurred; no longer so distinct. It is not clear any more as to what exactly is sacred and what exactly is profane; not clear who is in and who is out; who is included and who is left behind.  Grace on the loose blurs and erases the lines.

Only when the temple was sacked, and narrow, exclusive and oppressive traditional religious practices turned topsy-turvy, did Jesus commend his spirit to God and die. It's Luke's version of John's "It is finished."

The audacity of God!  How dare God do such a thing!  How dare God blur our neatly drawn lines between sacred and profane.  How dare God tinker with our carefully controlled belief systems.  How dare God crack open our carefully crafted God boxes.  God will no longer be confiscated, isolated, and mediated by narrow and arrogant human thinking anymore.

Just try and imagine: grace running loose in the world; cascading through life like a tidal wave,  washing indiscriminately over the sacred and profane, saints and sinners, good and bad alike?  Compassion, acceptance, social justice and inclusivity running rampantly out of control. Just imagine such a world!

Some did and tragically, it was too much for some - maybe for most. Indiscriminate grace was seen to be dangerous and too risky; too out of control.  Much of the history of Christian Church ever since could be described has an attempt to stitch the curtain of the temple back together again; to wrest control of grace back from God; to mediate it narrowly and exclusively using confining institutionally imposed beliefs and doctrinal formulas- insuring that only the defined-deserved receive it. 

I have to wonder what Jesus would say and do if he were to walk among us again and see much of what has been proclaimed and done in his name down through the centuries since?  I suppose he  would probably do what he did the first time: come announcing and embodying the Kingdom of God; preaching the inclusive and lavish love of God's kingdom; lifting up the least and the last that have been oppressed by the domination systems of our day.  He would be especially annoyed with the strictly religious who narrowly mediate God's grace.  And they would be annoyed with him, and would probably conspire to do away with him; and in some way shape or form he would go to the cross all over again.

But he is not here in the flesh to do it again, but we are!  And, my friends, that's the point!   We are now his hands and feet.  Will his heart and soul live on in and through us?   As his followers and disciples it is up to us to take up our cross; to love lavishly and passionately for the sake of the Kingdom of God; to see to it that God's grace is set loose in the world.