“Today You Will Be with Me in Paradise” - March 30, 2018 (Good Friday)

Luke 23:43

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”

One thing that really gets me about this detail of the crucifixion is that it ever happened at all.  Two thieves are hanging on crosses beside Jesus.  One of them mocks him.  The second thief tells the first to shut up and not bother Jesus.  He makes his own little comment, though.  He says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And with all three of them dying there, I really think he was pouring out some bitterness.  What I hear is incredible regret about his own life.  I hear how hopes and dreams, the sort that anybody would have for himself or herself so often end up cut short, ended, crucified.

It just amazes me that Jesus answers him, that Jesus says anything at all.  He was already half dead – and that’s not just an expression.  You know all that he had been through in the past hours: whipping and a crown of thorns, beatings and torture.  He didn’t have much time left, and what he had was dripping away like blood from an open wound.  What’s the worst pain you’ve ever felt?  His was more severe.

And in the middle of that, he heard what was going on around him.  He heard, and he paid attention.  How could anybody do that?  Pain at that level becomes an all-encompassing experience.  It takes over the mind and the heart.  It is all that somebody knows.  There is just no room in the sufferer for anything else, no way to think or speak.  But Jesus heard this man through the difficulty of his breathing, through the tearing of his muscles, through the dislocation of his shoulders, through the screaming, blinding pain.  He blocked out nothing.  And he heard not just the sound or even the words, but all that was behind them.  How could on a cross still care about a stranger?

But Jesus cared.  To the end he cared.

Push it one step further still.  He cared, and he offered hope.  The bitterness of the thieves could have been his own.  He could have done what Job’s wife told him to do in his suffering, “curse God and die.”  Jesus did no such thing.  He did not let go of God’s promise to the end, and would not let anyone else let go.  He would be in paradise, not oblivion; heaven, not the grave.  Nor would he let anyone else fall without hope into death.  “You will be with me.  In paradise.”

Jesus remembers us, too.  And he has come into his kingdom.