Scripture can be found here...
What did Jesus say as he was
dying? What do Jesus’ words from the cross tell us about him?
In many churches Good Friday is
marked by a service of the Seven Last Words of Jesus from the cross… we have
done that here. Those seven “words,” which are really sayings, are cobbled
together from the four gospels. The gospel according to Luke contains three of
the traditional seven sayings. And if we, together, look closely at those three
sayings, we realize that Luke is telling us something incredibly important:
Jesus died as he lived.
For the past three months we’ve
been reading the story of Jesus as found in the gospel of Luke. One professor
describes the story this way:
Jesus announced the reign of God. His works of compassion restored
people to wholeness. Dining with [religious elites] Pharisees and sinners
alike, Jesus demonstrated the all-inclusive nature of God’s reign. His parables
invited people to imagine a world in which [the stereotypical bad guys]
Samaritans demonstrate righteousness, scoundrels model wisdom, and widows win
justice. [i]
On Good Friday we mark the day on
which the reign of God as announced by Jesus has resulted in his being tried
for blasphemy and sedition by both civil and religious courts. The guilty verdict has been pronounced,
and our passage describes the carrying out of the punishment.
The first words we hear from
Jesus are a paraphrase of a verse of Psalm 31: “Father, forgive them; for they
do not know what they are doing.”
Speaking as someone who holds a
grudge against those who pass me on the right, I want to take note of what an
astonishing thing it is, to be confronted by this vision of one who, at the
height of pain and torture, utters words of forgiveness, one who prays pardon
for his torturers—because, that is what crucifixion is, it’s torture, whether
we’ve managed, by our gold and silver and bejeweled crosses to obscure that
fact or not. Crucifixion is a very effective means of torture and execution. Its
success lies in the fact that, in most cases, the bodies of the crucified were
left on the crosses until nature had stripped them to the bone. Crucifixion was
a kind of vivid and gruesome billboard for the Roman Empire that said, “Don’t
mess with Rome (us).”
Jesus died as he lived. He died
breathing forgiveness for those who didn’t even ask for it.
In death, Jesus has two
companions, “criminals,” Luke calls them, though, in another gospel, they are
called “rebels.” One of the criminals sees in Jesus a potential golden ticket
out of this bind… the soldiers probably gave him the idea, joking amongst
themselves that this so-called Messiah wasn’t really living up to his job title.
“Come on, King of the Jews,” they yelled, even as they were pushing a sponge of
sour wine in his face. “Save yourself!”
And so one criminal pipes up,
pushing Jesus, trying to provoke him. Clearly someone who has been used to
playing the bully in life, and who still, apparently, is under the impression
that this might be an effective strategy as he faces the likelihood of his own
death.
The other criminal has no such
illusions, and he has no strategy of any kind. After all the brutal words and
images, his sorrowful, truthful statement is like cold water on a hot day.
Don’t you fear God? Can’t you
tell the difference between what we’ve done and what he has done, this Jesus?
Don’t you get it? We are guilty. He is not. The first criminal’s bluster comes
to an abrupt halt, and Jesus speaks to the second, the sorrowful truth-teller.
“Truly I tell you, today you will
be with me in Paradise.”
Jesus died as he lived. He died
breathing welcome to an outcast criminal.
When we come to the last hours of
Jesus’ life, Luke paints a scene of the natural world joining in response to
the deep injustice of Jesus’ death, this innocent and Beloved child of God
tortured and soon to be killed. The sky turns dark. The curtain in the holiest
inner sanctum of the temple is torn in two… there is no longer a division
between where we can expect to find God and where we human beings can sojourn. The
death of Jesus has broken down that barrier.
And now, Jesus is praying:
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Jesus prays a lot in the gospel
of Luke. In fact, he prays more in Luke than in any of the other gospels. He
prays at his baptism, the beginning of his ministry, and he prays when he is welcoming
followers to his little band. He prays when word begins to spread about the
nature of his identity, when that word, “Messiah,” “Anointed One of God,”
starts to get out and about. He is praying on the mountain when suddenly his
appearance is transfigured, and his clothing glows a startling white, and his
disciples drop their jaws because Moses and Elijah have shown up. He tells his
followers to pray for strength, and for help when they are trying to share
God’s healing power.[ii] Jesus prays
throughout his life. Jesus prays as he faces death.
Jesus died as he lived. He died breathing
a prayer to God, surrendering himself into the care of the source and ground of
his very being.
Jesus died as he lived, and for
us, that is important information, because it invites us to walk that very same
path, to see all our living and our dying as one, as a whole.
We too can live as people steeped
in forgiveness, giving it as well as receiving it.
We too can live as people
committed to welcoming the outcast, offering them bread and comfort, trying to
make every shared cup of tea a little paradise.
We too can live as people bathed
in prayer, in constant communing and communicating with God, the source and
ground of Jesus’ being and ours.
And if we live steeped in
forgiveness, extending welcome, bathed in prayer, there is a very good chance
that we too will be able to die just as we live.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Greg Carey, “Comment on the
Narrative Lectionary 077 for Good Friday, March 29, 2013,” Working
Preacher.org, http://www.workingpreacher.org/narrative_lectionary.aspx?lect_date=3/29/2013.
[ii] Ibid.
No comments:
Post a Comment