Luke
23:33-43
The
word “save” is all over this morning’s reading from the gospel of Luke. It was being tossed around in a lot of ways
while Jesus was dying.
“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!” [Luke
23:35-37]
“One of the criminals who were hanged
there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’” [Luke
23:39]
A king – any ruler – is supposed to do that, right?
There’s
the obvious level where a king is the commander-in-chief. He was to ride out with his army and drive
back invaders led by a neighboring king.
Even better, he was to be the one doing the invading, conquering
territory and maybe even turning the kingdom into an empire.
There’s
the less flashy but no less vital aspect where the king was to be a wise
administrator. He would save the people
from poverty with his trade and economic policies. Czar Peter the Great left Russia at one point
in the hands of his ministers so that he could travel to western Europe to
learn its technology first-hand. He
himself worked in a Dutch shipyard so that he could learn what he needed to
know to upgrade the Russian navy and its commercial fleet.
He would save the people
from hunger with his encouragement of sound agricultural practices. The Inca came to power in part because they
understood how to terrace land in the Andes to grow potatoes on mountainsides,
and their kings made the resources available to do that.
A king would order irrigation
projects that would also include reservoirs and dams and levees to save his
country from drought or floods. If his
timing was right.
The king could, if he
wanted, issue laws that protected the weak and vulnerable. He could save the poor from
exploitation. In theory. He could save the disabled from neglect and
abandonment. Sometimes.
We
still have these expectations of government, whether they are vested in one
person or laid upon some formal institution (and it’s interesting that we do
refer to a congress or a council or a court or an agency as a “governmental
body” as if it were one person). A good
government is one that sees to these matters and more. Thomas Jefferson boiled down what we should expect
into the terms “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and said that “to
secure these rights, governments are instituted”.
We
look to be saved from enemies, foreign and domestic. Under our system, candidates seek office by
promising to provide security and safety, and put themselves forward with the
argument that they are the best person or the person with the best
understanding of how to do that.
Disillusionment
follows when a leader cannot deliver. In
extreme cases, even the leader becomes disillusioned, and then there can be
real problems for everyone. Power becomes
more important, and pride and self-preservation take over.
Jesus,
arrested and convicted and executed, hardly presented much in the way of the
power anyone has ever expected of a king.
So as he was dying, people mocked him.
He was not saving himself; what could he do for anyone else? He had not kicked out the Romans. Even the moneychangers he chased out of the
Temple returned to their spots when he was gone.
To
call Jesus a king, or to claim that he saves, means that you have to see
kingship and salvation in some way other than the usual. It’s
only in King Jesus’ willingness to set aside the usual trappings of rule that
the hollowness of power and coercion and violence and pride is shown clearly
once and for all.
It
seems appropriate that the Bible starts out very early warning about the
dangers of what the pharaoh wants to do to the Israelite slaves. The symbol of the pharaoh’s world is the
pyramid, with one stone on top and each row pressing down on the next one
underneath. The symbol of Jesus is the
cross, with its body rooted in the earth and reaching to God while its arms
stretch out in embrace, regardless of the pain.
At
the pharaoh’s order, the Bible tells us,
“The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing
tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter”. [Exodus 1:13-14]
Jesus, in contrast, spoke to his followers,
“Come to me, all you that are weary and
are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for
I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
[Matthew
11:28-30]
He can say that, because he takes the weight on his
own shoulders. He saves us by not saving
himself. He does the true work of a king
by setting aside his privileges and prerogatives, and doing the work of a slave.
As
for us, we are called to life in a kingdom that follows those unearthly rules.
“Do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than
yourselves. Let each of you look not to
your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in
Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the
form of God,
did not count equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human
form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death –
even death on a cross.” [Philippians 2:3-8]
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