Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 39

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1 Today: Paradise March 1, 2015 Luke 23: 32, Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: Aren t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us! 40 But the other criminal rebuked him. Don t you fear God, he said, since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong. 42 Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. 43 Jesus answered him, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Well today, we are continuing our study of the seven last words, or more accurately phrases, of Jesus. These were the statements that Jesus made while he was dying on the cross, having been crucified. Last week, we looked at the statement, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing and we talked about how remarkable a statement that was. If you missed it and want to catch it you can go to the church website and read or listen to it. This weekend we move on to another statement of Jesus from the cross, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. Let s look at what prompted Jesus to say this Jesus was crucified between two criminals. One on his right and one on his left. As we discussed last week, crucifixion was a cruel method of capital punishment. The goal was to publicly humiliate and torture a criminal so that others would see it and be deterred from committing crimes. So, crucifixion was for the worst of the worst offenders. It was for those that the Romans really wanted to make an example of. The word used in Luke for criminal is the Greek kakourgoi. This referred to those who did works of evil (i.e. really bad things) In Matthew and Mark s Gospels the Greek word used is lestai. This is a word used to describe armed robbers. Lestai is the word used to describe the thugs in the parable of Good Samaritan that robbed and beat and stripped and left for dead the man on the side of the road that the priest and the Levite passed right on by, but that the Samaritan stopped and cared for. The lestai were criminals who used violence to do what they wanted. Today s equivalent might be of someone who beats and steals from someone and then shoots and kills them just because The Gospels all depict that same type of criminal as hanging on the crosses next to Jesus. They are the very worst of the worst. They have no regard for the life of another. They 1

2 are only out for themselves and if someone else got hurt or killed in the process of getting what they wanted they had no remorse, no regrets. So be it! As could be expected, one of these criminals was joining in the taunts of the crowd that day that were being hurled at Jesus, Aren t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us! This criminal must have thought that Jesus was a wimp a pansy. I mean he had earned his place on the cross, but here was this goody two-shoes guy Jesus on the cross next to him. This guy hadn t done anything and he was being crucified. The criminal must have thought, What a joke that I am being crucified next to this guy what a phony. If he is who he says he is then he should jump down off that cross and prove it. But, the other criminal the other criminal saw it differently. Maybe he had a hint of remorse for what he had done. Maybe as he hung there on the cross and saw the grief and pain in the faces of his family he wished that he d made better choices in his life. Maybe he wished for another chance. At this point, he was going to die anyways, he must have known. I can imagine him wondering if maybe just maybe if this guy Jesus was who he says he was then maybe I have a shot at redemption. I m dying anyways it s worth a shot. So the second criminal says to the first, Don t you fear God, he said, since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong. In other words, Would you please just shut up? You are only making things worse. Now if they hadn t already been on the cross, this would have been a dangerous thing to say as the other criminal probably would have gone after him. But at this point, he has nothing to fear from the other criminal. And then the next statement, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Wow! I think that took some bravery on the part of the criminal. But really, he had nothing to lose. But just what was he asking for? What does it mean to ask to be remembered? Well let s look back at some other biblical examples. Modern Theologian Richard John Neuhaus says remember is a loaded word. He said to remember me meant to be asking help me and deliver me. It is something more than when we run into an old acquaintance and say, remember me? It has deeper meaning. In the Old Testament there are many examples of God remembering his people. Think about some of these examples: 2

3 Genesis 8:1 After Noah and his family had been floating in the Ark over a flooded earth for a long time it says, But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Genesis 19:29 When God was disgusted with the behavior of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah where Abraham s nephew Lot lived (who was a faithful man), it says, 29 So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived. Genesis 30:22 Jacob loved his wife Rachel, but she seemed to be unable to bear children and that made them very sad and then it says, Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive. Exodus 2:24 The Hebrew people were in slavery in Egypt and were heavily burdened and it says, 23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. This was then when God sent Moses to lead the people out of slavery. In each of these instances when God remembered, he not only remembered who the people were, but he remembered that he loved them and that he wanted to bless them. So, remembering also had an element of remembering and then doing something positive for the person (s) who was remembered. So, when the thief on the cross asks Jesus to remember him, he not only wants Jesus to acknowledge his existence, but to do something positive for him to bless him. It was worth a shot, right? The criminal hoped that maybe, just maybe, if Jesus was who he said he was that something might happen. But why? This criminal had done nothing to deserve Jesus attention. He d done really bad things. He had certainly lost his way from God. He had dug himself to being the least in society. But that was Jesus specialty wasn t it? In his life, Jesus hung out with the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the thieves, the outcasts Jesus concern was for the least and the lost and the last. We especially see that in Luke s Gospel. Luke 19:10 even spells it out for us For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. It was people just like the thief on the cross that Jesus came to show the way back to God. And what was Jesus response to the criminal who reached out to him? Did Jesus say, Leave me alone, you bum. You made your bed, now you are going to lie in it? 3

4 No, Jesus said, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. But just what does Jesus mean by paradise? Well, the word we translate as paradise is a translation of a Persian word from Jesus time which meant a walled garden. Typically it referred to a walled garden of a king. The king s garden wasn t just your average run of the mill flower garden or vegetable garden. These were often quite extravagant. When Tom and I were with his family in Vienna, Austria several years ago we went to Schonbronn which was a king s palace just outside the city. As we waited for our tour of the castle or palace, we walked the grounds the garden. It contained not only beautiful flowers and shrubs and trees, but fountains and statues and even a small zoo. To be invited to walk with the king in his garden was quite a treat back then even today Think of the Garden of Eden. It was a place where Adam and Eve walked with the King of the Universe, side by side. So, Jesus was saying you get to walk with me side by side in my garden not eventually, but today. Today, you get to be with me in the garden walking side by side with the king my father God. Wow! Now that is remembering the criminal isn t it? Can you picture it? Paradise? Adam Hamilton puts it this way, The thought of spending eternity in the King s Garden with the people I love, without hate or violence or stress or anxiety, sounds like paradise to me. - p. 48 Final Words Imagine the most beautiful place you ve ever been. For me it might be Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C. or Shore Acres State Park on the Oregon Coast. Maybe for you it s some place you ve been like Hawaii or a mountain top somewhere. Then imagine being there with God and all those you love. That s paradise. And we all are invited to go there. All we have to do is to ask. That s what the thief on the cross did. So, what does that mean for us? Well, it means that all of us have the opportunity to spend eternity in God s kingdom, in paradise, in his garden if we ll only ask God to remember us. We have to ask to receive the gift that God wants to give us. We have to turn towards him. Even if we think we are as bad and as sinful as that thief on the cross, there is room for us. 4

5 Jesus said, Today, you will be with me in Paradise. The man on the cross next to Jesus didn t have to jump through hoops. He didn t need to clean up. He didn t have to memorize scripture. He didn t have to go through a waiting period. All he had to do was to turn to Jesus and Jesus offered him salvation. No questions asked, strings attached. That s the grace and mercy of God. As the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 2:8 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God Our God is the God of the second and 5 th & 25 th & 95 th chance He offers us another chance and he offers those around us who ve lost their way another chance, too. Just as we are, God welcomes us. All we have to do is to turn to him, to acknowledge who he is and to ask him to remember us that s what the criminal on the cross next to Jesus did. And when we do that, we, too will begin to see paradise unfold in this life and in the life to come. Let s pray 5