The Path of Accompanied Promise

A sermon on Luke 23:39–43

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Mattia Poli on Unsplash.]

I have a question I would like you to reflect on:

If someone you had heard of but never met before was to make you a promise, what signs would you look for in order to trust that they would actually follow-through on that promise?

Take a minute…think about it. You don’t really know their character, so what do you have to go on?

I imagine that you might want to compare their demeanor to others who have or have not proven themselves to be trustworthy in the past.

You might try looking in their eyes to see if they really are windows to the soul, able to reveal sincerity.

But the most important thing you will consider, I expect, is whether the person is actually capable of keeping the promise. Is it something within their power to accomplish? Do the circumstances lend themselves to the desired outcome?

And no matter what you intuited about the person’s intentions or character, if they were actively in the process of being executed by the state… it might be hard to put much faith in the promise.

Of course, that is the situation we see in today’s brief gospel scene.

Jesus is in the most powerless state we have ever seen him.

He is being actively mocked, after being labelled as a dissident and criminal.

He is at the mercy of government authorities, after having been turned over by the religious elites who also stirred up the common people against them.

He is bereft of any agency over what happens to his own body…

which has been abused, and broken, and is now literally dying!

I am quite certain that when I asked you to imagine evaluating a promise from a stranger, NONE of you imagined that stranger hanging on a cross and thought:

“Oh, sure. It would be easy to trust a promise given in those circumstances.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus does not present like he is in a position to make promises of any kind, much less promises of eternal significance.

But notice that the gospel story does not make space for any questions about whether the second thief believed Jesus or not. The story ends with the promise as though everything that happens from that point on is a foregone conclusion.

And that narrative twist makes me wonder if the relevant circumstances in the story are not those of Jesus.

After all, the larger story has demonstrating Jesus’s trustworthiness from the beginning. Circumstances will not change that ultimate truth. The readers of the gospel know that he will keep his promises.

But the extremity of the circumstances likely do matter for the two men who are his companions in the humiliation and pain of the cross.

It is a context in which all the veils are ripped away… where they feel completely powerless and vulnerable… where their bodies are wracked with pain and they know they have only hours of life remaining.

Such a context reveals their instinctive response to desperately needing a hope-giving promise.

In this ultimate experience of desperation, the first thief lashes out.

From a distance, we can see how useless such a reaction would be, but I hope we can also understand it’s pull.

He is in a situation of complete and utter helplessness and that is the kind of reality that strips the soul bare.

He must have been afraid. But to admit such fear would have been the final indignity. A public confession that he had lost control even over his sense of self.

So, he disguises the fear with anger and derision.

He tries to pull the men suffering with him into his despair and thus acquire this ridiculous consolation… that at least he can still sneer. He can think better of himself because he has kept his pride.

It is a self-protective move, even though it isolates him from even his companions in death.

He cuts off even the desire to depend on anyone else for a hope-giving promise.

And it is probably the more recognizable reaction of the two.

Because the response of the second thief is truly remarkable.

He is facing the same exposure and pain as his companion, but rather than the desperation of his final hours turning him toward anger and despair, he centers himself in truth, even a truth that holds him accountable.

He does the emotional work of self-awareness, acknowledging the steps in his life that led him to this end.

He takes responsibility and in doing so he makes peace with his fate.

He does not request any help from Jesus, only to be remembered.

He has found himself in the exposing immediacy and realness of death on the cross, and even as his life ebbs away he finds peace in the possibility that Jesus can see him too, that he can be remembered by the one whom he is certain will live forever in communion with God.

And, of course, Jesus can see him.

The man puts up no defenses. He does not consider his vulnerability something he needs to hide with bluster and scorn.

Jesus sees him and sees his openness to a much bigger promise than remembrance.

“Tomorrow you will be with me in paradise.”

It is a stunning promise.

Paradise alone is an almost incomprehensible future for a man who has accepted his guilt and his impending death.

But the promise is not just a promise of paradise. It is one of accompaniment.

“You will be with me.”

And I can’t help but wonder if those two words are why the second man so easily believes the promise.

Because it is a promise that Jesus is already fulfilling.

The thief has declared Jesus’ innocence, the truth that Jesus does not deserve the fate that all three share.

But Jesus is there, on that cross, nonetheless. He has the power that the first man sneeringly evoked, he could call out to God for rescue.

And, instead, he has stayed on the cross. He has endured the pain, and the humiliation, and the mockery.

The second man faced his own truth, so he can see Jesus’ as well, and he knows that Jesus has made the choice to be with him in death.

And if he can do that, he can keep a promise to be with in him paradise too.

Now, I hope and believe that no one in this room will ever be in the kind of desperate context described in today’s gospel: exposed and condemned and waiting for our last painful breath.

But I know that even in less imminently desperate situations we will sometimes face pain, and fear, and disempowerment.

Life is messy, and we have very little control over when and how the mess spills into our lives… with a diagnosis, or a betrayal, or a local or global crisis that catches us up in its chaos.

Moreover, we live in a world where justice is conditional and wielded by powerful interests that sometimes twist it for their own ends.

And if we tell the truth about that we are likely to experience accusations that cause others to treat us with at least scorn, if not violence.

If we walk the Palm Sunday Path with Jesus we are walking a path that confronts evil

and we have seen over this season of Lent that the Palm Sunday Path confronts evil without leveraging the tools of power that we are challenging.

We will seek transformation, rather than control.

We will seek healing, rather than victory.

We will prioritize love and truth, rather than power.

And that will make us vulnerable.

The Palm Sunday path leads Jesus to the cross.

But today’s gospel offers us a new perspective on the cross. It shows us how even on the cross, there can be a glorious promise.

We do not have to respond to our crosses in the way that the first man does, with anger and pride to try to hide our fear and pain.

We can find in the crisis an invitation to know who and whose we are. To know that we are already with Jesus and he will never leave us alone, even if he has to suffer and die to stay with us.

And that is a promise that does not have to wait for paradise to come true.

Whatever we face, Jesus is with us. He sees us. And he promises to never leave.

Thanks be to God.