Jesus’ Kingdom Welcome Message—Lectionary Reflection for Christ the King/Reign of God Sunday (Luke 23)

Luke 23:33-43 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

³³ When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. [[³⁴ Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”]] And they cast lots to divide his clothing. ³⁵ And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” ³⁶ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine ³⁷ and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” ³⁸ There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”

³⁹ One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” ⁴⁰ But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? ⁴¹ And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” ⁴² Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” ⁴³ He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

*****************

                As the king declares in History of the World, Part 1, “It’s good to be the king.” At one level that’s true, but at another, it might not be. Just ask Charles I of England and many a Roman Emperor who faced assassination regularly. With this Sunday we bring the church year to an end with a word about the realm over which Christ is said to reign. While the word we hear in Colossians 1 celebrates Christ’s exalted role, in this reading from the Gospel of Luke Jesus the king is hanging from a cross. And, unlike in Life of Brian, the folks on the cross weren’t singing “Look on the Brighter Side of Life.” With that, the Gospel of Luke has a lot to say about the realm of God, and one of the words Luke shares is that the cross plays a significant role in revealing the nature of that realm. Of course, that’s not the sort of thing one would expect from a treatise on how God’s realm is made known to the world, and yet it is.

                Whether it’s a monarchy or American-style democracy, it is understood that when all is said and done, “to the victor goes the spoils.” It’s expected that anyone who desires a leadership role must have at least a bit of ambition. Such a person might even need a bit of hubris, though hopefully not an overwhelming amount of narcissism. We might simply say that such a person has a “healthy ego.” The message we hear in our culture is that if you want power, you must grasp it. In fact, Nietzsche suggested that the desire for power is what makes humans tick. So, the idea that the meek will inherit the earth, something Jesus spoke about, is nonsensical to much of our world—including the church. We see the desire to achieve power seemingly on exhibit everywhere in Scripture—Indeed, it was the night prior, after Jesus shared a final meal with the disciples that they got into an argument about who was the greatest in their little band (Luke22:24-27)—despite what the world tells us about power Jesus offers a different path.

While the reading from Colossians 1 chosen for Christ the King Sunday emphasizes Christ’s supremacy over things visible and invisible, “whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers” (Col.1:15-16), here in Luke we see a vision of how Christ’s realm was actually revealed in this world. Luke tells us to look upon the one who has been declared king, the one who represents to us the realm of God on earth. When we look upon him, we find a man hanging on a cross buffeted with abuse. While some proclaimed him to be the Christ and king of the Jews, from the vantage point of Good Friday Jesus would appear to be simply another messianic pretender whom the Romans dealt with expeditiously before things got out of hand.

Not only did Jesus experience the humiliation of being hung on a cross, but according to Luke, he was hung between two criminals. There is a trend in scholarship to speak of the cross as a form of execution used primarily to deal with political types (revolutionaries), in Luke’s description of the scene, the two men hanging with Jesus are identified not as revolutionaries but as common criminals. Thus, Jesus is pushed further down into the muck of humanity. Surely this is not the one whom we are called to embrace and follow?

While Jesus is described as being in a rather unflattering position, this is how the realm of God is being revealed. For those in our time who seek power in the name of Jesus (that is, Christian nationalism or the Russian war in Ukraine), this should serve as a clear reminder that the realm of God will not come into reality through political means. The fact that Luke presents Jesus dying on a cross, it’s also fitting that he began his story with Jesus starting his life in a barn surrounded by shepherds and not noble courtiers (Luke 2:1-20). Yes, there is Easter and Ascension yet to come, but they do not set aside what we see here as the culmination of the story.

Keeping in mind this reality—the reality of a life that began and ended in anonymity and ignominy—with Jesus nothing is as it seems. With this in mind, Luke invites us to stand, watch, and listen to the sights and sounds of this scene on Golgotha. We get to watch the crowd and see and hear community leaders and soldiers. We even witness one of the criminals hanging with Jesus questioning his calling. The question posed to Jesus is this: If you’re the Christ, then save yourself. Use your power to climb off the cross, and while you’re at it, one of those hanging with him suggested that if Jesus can do this, might he take this criminal with him? Is this not the “last temptation of Christ?” That culminating scene in the Scorsese film adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis novel reveals the possibilities that lay before Jesus. What if he could climb down from the cross and continue with life as normal? Why not get married, have children, and enjoy life? Why stay on the cross? Why suffer needlessly when you can demonstrate your power and authority in a dramatic way?

Of course, Jesus doesn’t climb down from the cross. That’s not the way he chose to reveal God’s realm. So, he endured the humiliation and suffering that came with the cross. It wasn’t because God required a bloody sacrifice to appease God’s wrath. Rather, it was due to humanity being unable to fathom the kind of realm Jesus offered the world. He was an embarrassment who needed to be done away with. We humans tend to have short attention spans. We’re quick to abandon our heroes if they demonstrate any form of weakness. But that’s not true of everyone. There are those who can see beyond Nietzsche’s will to power as the ultimate driving force in human identity. On that infamous day, according to Luke’s account, one of the criminals hanging with him offered a different perspective. So, while one of Jesus’ “neighbors” joined in the chorus of abuse, the other man simply asked Jesus to remember him when he come into his kingdom. He didn’t ask for a position of power. He simply asked to be remembered. Jesus responded to that request with a word of grace that included an invitation to join Jesus in Paradise that very day.

Luke’s word here about Paradise is an intriguing one. It also can open a can of worms if we choose to dive too deeply into the question of what Jesus was offering the man (for a full description of possible understandings of the realm of God and the way Christians have imagined it see my forthcoming book co-authored with Ronald J. Allen—Second Thoughts on the Second Coming). The ancient church writers, such as Cyril of Jerusalem, understood Paradise to be the Garden from which Adam and Eve were exiled, separating them from the life-giving nourishment of the Tree of Life. The invitation here would seem to suggest a reopening of the gates to the Garden so that access to the Tree of Life would once again be made available. That would seem to be an appropriate interpretation, one that finds affirmation in the closing chapters of the Book of Revelation.  Whatever the nature of this promise, it is connected to the promise that the cross is Christ’s throne, from which he invites humanity to follow him into the realm of God. Because the cross is the entry point, it is a reminder that the nature of God’s realm is quite different from all earthly realms. Therefore, Jesus is a different kind of king than Caesar, under whose authority Jesus was being crucified, or any other similar pretenders to power.

                What we see and hear in this exchange between Jesus and his neighbor on a nearby cross is a word of welcome into the community. Thus, Jesus offers him a word of grace and forgiveness. So, as Nancy Westfield notes: “Jesus spent his entire ministry teaching and preaching about the kingdom of God. One of Jesus’ last forgiving acts on earth was to proclaim that repentant sinner would be with him that day in heaven. Oh, praise God!”  [Feasting on the Word, C, 4, p. 336]. This offer is in keeping with Jesus’ own sense of calling that was expressed in his “inaugural address” delivered in the synagogue in Nazareth. In that address, Jesus drew from Isaiah, and announced that the Spirit had come upon him, anointing (chrismation) him to “proclaim release to the captives.” (Luke 4:16-21). Even if this wasn’t a literal release of the captive, it was a spiritual release of a captive in the sense that for this man there was hope for the future.

                What then does this word from Jesus to the penitent criminal have to do with the realm of God? I can’t help but picture the three men, each hanging on their own crosses. The second man tells the first, who had mocked Jesus, that, unlike Jesus, they deserved their sentences. This is Luke’s way of reminding us that Jesus is the innocent one. The repentant criminal seems to recognize a different spirit in Jesus. Because he recognized this difference, the repentant criminal receives a word of grace that is ultimately available to all. With this confession of faith, Jesus draws the man into his inner circle. One of his final acts in this life is to remind us that the realm of God consists not only of those who are rich and powerful in this world but even a criminal hanging on a Roman cross. Earthly power does not guarantee seats of honor at the banqueting table in Jesus’ realm. In fact, it appears that those whom the world pushes to the side are the ones whom Jesus chooses to honor with a special status in the realm of God. This, according to Luke, is how we should understand God’s realm. As we take to heart this vision, might we sing together: “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun does its successive journeys run; his love shall spread from shore to shore till moons shall wax and wane no more” [Isaac Watts, Chalice Hymnal, p. 95].

Image Attribution: Cranach, Lucas, 1472-1553. Christ on the Cross Between the Two Thieves, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57236 [retrieved November 15, 2022]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cranach_il_vecchio,_calvario,_1515-20.JPG.