“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” Luke 23:43

What did this executed thief really say to Jesus that merited his salvation? I sure didn’t hear the sinner’s prayer. I know we don’t really believe in works, but come on this guy did nothing. The question is then if we have done the nothing that this thief did so that we might also be invited by Jesus into the feast of new creation. Maybe Stanley Hauerwas can throw some light on these three men being executed on crosses:

“Why does one thief taunt Jesus while the other seems to recognize who Jesus is? What does it mean to say these are criminals? Could it not be that they are zealots who sought to overthrow the Roman occupation of Palestine? Does the one mock Jesus because Jesus did no turn out to be the liberator Israel had long desired? Is this taunting thief like the two on the road to Emmaus, who have been told that Jesus no longer is in the grave, but they are leaving Jerusalem because, as far as they are concerned, this Jesus does not appear to be the one they had hoped would ‘redeem Israel’? After all, what kind of redeemer ends up on a cross? But if the problem is that Jesus does not seem to be the kind of redeemer Israel desired, what made it possible for one criminal to recognize that this loser hanging on the cross will come into a kingdom?”

If I had been steeped in Jewish tradition at the time of Jesus I would not have believed that he was the Messiah, or at least I don’t think I would have. Not only because he dies on a cross as a criminal, which is no way to win anything, but also because of the people he associated with. When I read this cry, the first question i had is 'why did this man believe in Jesus dying on the cross?' But the second is what kind of a kingdom is this, that with one word allows a man in who has proven himself a criminal?

Not that it mattered at this point in the story, but how much would this piss off self-righteous Jews. The whole idea of the first covenant had been (wrongly) understood as separated and glorifying one nation alone, and only the faithful among that nation. If you were on the outs with the religious leaders it meant you were on the outs with God. But here is a man hanging next to Jesus, every Jew knowing that he was being rejected by God because of his sin, and Jesus who claims to be God invites him into paradise that very day.

Something I have begun to understand from this story is that it is not as important that we have a legacy, that we are remembered, but that it is more important who remembers us. The religious leaders were working to be remembered as Holy Jews, this criminal realizes that the only person in the cosmos whose remembering of a person matters is in fact this very Jesus dying next to him. So he turns to the Messiah, and ask not to be forgiven, nor for God to come into his heart, he doesn’t confess his belief in the cross, he simply ask that the God of the universe remember him when He is back on His throne.

So before we start acting like the older brother from the Prodigal son story about Jesus remembering this guy in paradise, we need to remember who he partied with on earth while he was here. He avoided those who sought to make their mark, to be remembered, and he journeyed through life with those who sought only acceptance and to be remembered.

“After all, we ourselves are only at Jesus’ table because he made a habit of celebrating parites with all the wrong people. Isn’t it about time we started to copy him?” – N.T. Wright