Strange way to become famous. To commit a felony and be sentenced to death
by imperial Rome, a death by crucifixion.
And then to find the day of execution was the same day, and the place of
execution the same hill as those chosen for Jesus of Nazareth.
Strange way to become famous – to be crucified alongside Jesus.
But that’s the story of the Penitent Thief. A life story we know hardly anything about except for its dying moments. We don’t know his crime, his name or the finer details of the life he’d lived. Yet we know something of his end.
This man doesn’t have to go through baptismal classes or recite a creed, he doesn’t need to become a church member or be confirmed. There are no hoops for him to jump through, no formula of belief to which he must assent.
He simply asks that Jesus remember him. To which Jesus says: today you will be with me in paradise.
I suspect that many of us have more in common with the penitent thief than at first, we might imagine.
Perhaps like him we don’t view our faith journey as primarily a set of protocols through which we must pass.
Often those protocols are good because rites of passage like baptism or expressions of belonging such as church membership have honourable intentions.
Yet, I suspect, there must be something else that draws us to faith.
Strange way to become famous – to be crucified alongside Jesus.
But that’s the story of the Penitent Thief. A life story we know hardly anything about except for its dying moments. We don’t know his crime, his name or the finer details of the life he’d lived. Yet we know something of his end.
This man doesn’t have to go through baptismal classes or recite a creed, he doesn’t need to become a church member or be confirmed. There are no hoops for him to jump through, no formula of belief to which he must assent.
He simply asks that Jesus remember him. To which Jesus says: today you will be with me in paradise.
I suspect that many of us have more in common with the penitent thief than at first, we might imagine.
Perhaps like him we don’t view our faith journey as primarily a set of protocols through which we must pass.
Often those protocols are good because rites of passage like baptism or expressions of belonging such as church membership have honourable intentions.
Yet, I suspect, there must be something else that draws us to faith.
I sense the thief saw something in Jesus that
made sense to him. And so, he asks that
Jesus remembers him.
I feel continually inspired and challenged by Jesus Christ. I’m not sure that Christianity is so much about signing on a dotted line, or saying we understand pages of doctrine as much as it is being drawn to God, a God whose character was expressed in the life and death of Jesus.
As far as we know this thief hadn’t travelled on the road with Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount had passed him by.
His encounter was brief and focused in mutual suffering. They were executed together yet Jesus had to bear not just the brutality of the officials who hammered in the nails but also the taunts of the other thief. The way he suffered, the way he bore that burden seems to have made the deepest impression upon the penitent thief.
This Lent a member of our congregation here at AFC has introduced me to one of his favourite hymns from the old Congregational Hymn Book. The words are by the early 19th century poet Jean Ingelow and it’s her hymn: And dids’t thou love.
The hymn focuses on the idea that we see in Jesus’ character something of ourselves and maybe even the better person we could become.
Here are just a few lines:
And didst Thou take to Heaven a human brow?
Dost plead with man’s voice by the marvelous sea?
Art Thou his kinsman now?
I feel continually inspired and challenged by Jesus Christ. I’m not sure that Christianity is so much about signing on a dotted line, or saying we understand pages of doctrine as much as it is being drawn to God, a God whose character was expressed in the life and death of Jesus.
As far as we know this thief hadn’t travelled on the road with Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount had passed him by.
His encounter was brief and focused in mutual suffering. They were executed together yet Jesus had to bear not just the brutality of the officials who hammered in the nails but also the taunts of the other thief. The way he suffered, the way he bore that burden seems to have made the deepest impression upon the penitent thief.
This Lent a member of our congregation here at AFC has introduced me to one of his favourite hymns from the old Congregational Hymn Book. The words are by the early 19th century poet Jean Ingelow and it’s her hymn: And dids’t thou love.
The hymn focuses on the idea that we see in Jesus’ character something of ourselves and maybe even the better person we could become.
Here are just a few lines:
And didst Thou take to Heaven a human brow?
Dost plead with man’s voice by the marvelous sea?
Art Thou his kinsman now?
O God, O Kinsman loved,
but not enough;
O Man, with eyes majestic after death,
Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough,
Whose lips drawn human breath:
By that one likeness
which is ours and Thine,O Man, with eyes majestic after death,
Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough,
Whose lips drawn human breath:
By that one nature which doth hold us kin,
Love that line describing the likeness which is both Christ’s and ours – a sort of mutual kinship.
And maybe on this Good Friday we, like the Pentitent Thief look upon Jesus and we are inspired by his character, his longsuffering, his dignity. It’s his humanity that touches us and in his dying something of his life blesses ours.
I suspect we have all been touched by the example of family, friends and colleagues who have faced suffering and sorrow with a dignity and courage that has inspired us.
Good Friday speaks into our life and says it’s sometimes at our weakest moments that our lives will send out the strongest message about the God we believe in – it’s the way of our Christlike God – it’s the way of the cross.
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