One of this week’s lectionary readings is Luke 23:33-43. I try to read each of the readings every week and jot down some thoughts from the passage as if I were going to preach it. The whole exercise takes about 20-30 minutes, but it is encouraging to me and builds my hermeneutic/homiletic muscles.
Sometimes, I’ll shoot those thoughts up here. This is supposed to be “Sermon Leftovers” after all.
1. Jesus words for the soldiers.
- Everything about this setting is depressing. He’s being crucified. The crucifixion is happening at a place called “The Skull”. He’s having nails driven through his body. He’s got criminals on both sides of him. The soldiers who are killing him are also playing poker, using his clothes as chips. We might understand if Jesus was tempted to have a pity party.
- He says, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”
- This wasn’t an act of God, it was an act of a man. He wasn’t forgiving them of their sins. He was forgiving them for their sins against him. While we cannot forgive people their sins, we can absolutely offer this kind of forgiveness to those who have wronged us.
- I guess we can officially be excused from forgiving people when the depravity of their treatment of us exceeds the treatment Jesus received.
2. The crowds words for Jesus.
- “He saved others, let him save himself if he is really God’s Messiah, the chosen one.” These words demonstrated the deep misunderstandings held by the people (particularly the leaders) in the crowd.
- They misunderstood the Messiah. The whole point of the Messiah coming was that He would live for the benefit of others. He wasn’t to be concerned with himself. If he is really God’s Messiah he won’t worry about saving himself. Had Jesus come off the cross he would have proven he wasn’t the Messiah.
- They misunderstood themselves. In their pronouncements, they felt like they gained the moral high ground. “See” they said “he isn’t really all that good, he’s dying like a criminal.” And in saying it and thinking it, they felt much better about themselves. Sadly, they couldn’t even comprehend the life of a person who was willing to save others, but not himself. What they really proved was that they were nothing more than selfish people who think only of themselves.
- They misunderstood salvation. Jesus didn’t need saving. By not saving himself, he brought salvation to those who truly needed it. Those who think they don’t need to be saved, never will be.
3. Words among the Criminals and Jesus.
- The men on either side of Jesus had two very different perspectives of Jesus and of themselves. In some ways, they are representative of the two basic ways people approach God.
- The first criminal joined the crowd in mocking Jesus and demanding he prove he was truly God. Many people refuse to accept the truth of God because they believe He has failed to meet their standard of proof. Because they don’t buy into the “proofs” of His existence, they refuse to accept him as a savior. Ultimately, they are saying, “My intellect is the ultimate standard of truth. If you can’t prove yourself to me, I refuse to accept you.” Much of humanity has too high a perception of themselves to consider the reality of God.
- The second criminal saw things completely differently. “We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.” Whereas the first criminal demanded things from God, the second criminal begged for mercy. Rather than hold God to a standard of proof, he held himself to the standard of God and saw that he came up wanting.
- Jesus promised life to the second, but nothing to the first. How we think about ourselves determines how we approach God. We cannot be with Jesus in Paradise if we think we are so good that God needs to prove himself to us.
BIG LESSON: Don’t ask God to meet your expectations. Realize you’ve already missed His, and beg for mercy!
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