The Repentant Thief

Holy Week Reflection on Luke 23:39-43

This week is regarded as the holiest week of the year. Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem denying Himself for the sake of our souls. And so let me offer a pastoral comment:

Do you get it?

The only way to Get the Resurrection is to travel with Jesus to the cross. We cannot ever know the meaning of the empty tomb without experiencing the bloody cross! The repentant thief on Golgotha got it!

The repentant thief did not justify himself when he was on the cross. The unrepentant thief tried to blame Jesus and his powerlessness to pull himself down from the cross in justifying his pain. After all, we cannot be the ones to take responsibility for our pain. I scream profanity when I stub my toe because someone put a rock in my way. I am justified in my cursing because someone put a stone in my way. The fact I was not looking and walking barefooted is not the cause of my pain! We can never justify ourselves. Blame does not take away my carelessness nor does it take away my pain.

When St. Paul uses the word justify in his letters, he is using it as a synonym of acquit as in the accused has been acquitted in a court of law! In other words, to be found 'not guilty'. We are not acquitted because of our innocence. We are acquitted because God took upon Himself our deserved punishment. The blame is still ours to bear. The repentant thief got it! And with the blame comes the pain. The repentant thief got it!

The English word justify means to make right or to make straight. When the printing press came into being, the printer would have to justify the margins of his text. This was done by taking each letter, placing it in a box in its appropriate spot and then taking the palm of his hand and slamming all the letters against one side of the box before the paper was placed on it. Hence, the terms left justified or right justified which should be familiar to us from using word processing programs. Sometimes when things do not go our way, it is because God is taking the palm of his hand and slamming us to make us into the people He wants us to be. He is justifying us, making us right. We cannot do it ourselves. He is giving meaning to our pain. He is the printer, we are the message! Only by knowing our guilt, our deserved punishment and who paid our debt to the Law, can we ever get it! If we tried to absolve ourselves by not accepting the pain, by blaming someone else, even God, we will not see how He is justifying us! This is what St. Paul is trying to tell us when he writes:

But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26NLT)

If you can appreciate the work of Jesus on the Cross for you, then you will get it. But more importantly, your soul will reflect it though your thoughts and behavior. So this Holy Week truly test yourself through self-reflection. Do not tell Jesus what you want Him to do for you. This was what the unrepentant thief was asking. But ask Jesus to show you how He is dying for you!

So the next time someone throws up your past to you face, know that the blood of Christ covers your guilt and the accuser is in the wrong. This even works when we punish ourselves for past mistakes. But and this is a big but, let us be the message of God's love and not bring up the past mistakes of others. Let us be forgiving as we are forgiven and remember our sins no more! (Hebrews 10:26-39)

Thiefs, Cars and Johnny Cash

Today is Palm Sunday. A very important day in the Christian Calendar, the first day of Holy Week. I am a priest and so it is my job to be present for Holy Week. Yesterday my car broke down on the return trip of taking my oldest son to college. Of course this was not my will. But nonetheless, I returned home by the grace of God using my cell phone, debit card and Triple A Motor Club!

This morning I preached on the two thieves hanging on the cross. For me they represent the 2 types of Christians that exist. The first thief mocks Jesus asking that He save him from the punishment he deserves. The second understands he deserves his punishment only asking Jesus remembers him in paradise! Jesus responds to the second thief! The first thief has an agenda and expects Jesus to fulfill his agenda. The second thief has abandoned any hope in his agenda accepting any mercy provided by the one who is Innocent. The second thief knew himself well and knew who Jesus truly is! You see, many Christians pray to God telling Him how to answer their prayer. How selfish! How self-centered! The second thief knew his condition and his only hope was to accept his need for salvation in Jesus. After all, Jesus is Lord knowing what we need. The first thief wanted to tell Jesus what to do. The second thief knew who the true Lord was accepting His judgement.

Like the first thief I knew what I wanted God to do when my car broke down. The car was to miraculously be healed and I could return home without any cost to my wallet! But God had other plans. After calling AAA and paying for an upgrade I was towed home riding in the cab of the tow truck. But God had a different plan for me. After an hour of praying to God to take away my poverty, my frustration God wanted me to know His mercy. God does not take away our inconveniences. He shows us His mercy.

My tow truck driver was a young Johnny Cash loving tow truck driver. Johnny reminded me that our problems may be God's way of being with those who have problems. My goodness! Jesus died between two criminals. He is in the midst of our problems, our screwed up world. But only one thief knew it. Like I said, the two criminals are like Christians in the Church. One type wants to tell God what to do. The other lets God do what He needs to do for our salvation!

Revival

When we think of revival, we may think of a big tent and a service to move our souls to repentance. But in his book, The God of Second Chances, Eric Kobell returns the reader to the authentic meaning of the word, revival. It means to make alive again. To make alive again is what Jesus does!
Now if we need to be made alive again, then there is the presumption we must be dead! In fact we are dead. We are dead men walking! Everyone of us will die. It is our reward for the sin we inherited from our primal parents eons ago. Long ago, first man and woman were created in the image of God, eternal. Adam and Eve were in their naked splendor playing in the Garden of Eden. (cf. Genesis 3:1ff) This garden had at its center the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. To make freedom real, Adam and Eve were given choices. But choices do have their consequences. For if you eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, on that day you will surely die, God said with loving authority. Tempted by a talking snake, Eve bites the fruit and gives it to her husband. As the story goes, their eyes were opened and they saw they were naked. Now let’s pause right here! Were Adam and Eve blind stumbling through the garden inventing words to say when they stubbed their big toe on a rock? No! They could see. But everything they saw was without judgment. They did not know what they saw bad or good! Once, they ate that juicy fruit, they had the capacity to make a judgment. And that judgment was whether something was good or evil! And so they looked over each other and did not like what they saw and were ashamed. Their nakedness was not a God created piece of art anymore, it was something that needed to be covered up as Adam and Eve were different from one another. Their true self did die that day in the Garden as a false self pretending to act like a god took over. When we recognize our differences, we often make a judgment defining what is good and bad! No longer could Adam and Eve be with each other. They had to hide from each other and ultimately from God who is perfect in Being! So in a sense, they died to the potential of their being. And God could not have them living forever with this capacity to judge what is good and bad as they could no longer see as God sees. Forbidden to partake of the Tree of Life, they would indeed die one day.
We can see the effects of this wayward knowledge by contemplating the humble half-glass of water. We all know the half-glass of water is a litmus test for humankind. The pessimist sees the glass as half empty and the optimist sees it as half-full. In truth, we do not know if the glass is being emptied or being filled. But we make a judgment based on our desire to know what we think is true. We pretend to be God! We cannot be all-knowing like our Creator. Like Adam and Eve, what God sees and what we want to see can be two different things. To solve this problem, God sent His Son into the world to save us from all judgment. But Jesus’ incarnation was not just about defeating death, the cost for our disobedience, but to show us how to be alive once again. After all, He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. (John 14:6)
St. John the Evangelist tells of an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well. (cf. John 4:1ff) Jesus is thirsty and wants a glass of water. That’s right, the proverbial glass of water existed in Jesus’ time! But the Samaritan woman could not see a thirsty man. Because of sin, our separation from God and one another, she could only see a Jew, just one more man whose people have been mean-spirited to her people. She could not see the possibility that this Jew did not mind associating with her! Jesus responds with His Being, His desire to give life, revival to her soul by saying, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink’, you would ask Him and He would give you living water.” The woman still cannot see beyond her reality. “Where’s your bucket?” she demands. “Just how can you give living water if you have no bucket?” But Jesus, not missing a beat, says this well will have to be drawn many times as we all get thirsty. But He will give us water that will be like a well within us springing up for eternal life. We will never be thirsty again. Seeing an opportunity to avoid the gossip of the well, she asks for this water. And Jesus asks that she go get her husband at which point she confesses to Him that her partner is not her husband. Jesus knew this all along and tells the truth about the temporary nature of her relationships. Now the Samaritan woman sees who Jesus really is, the Christ, the Giver of Life. She goes home exclaiming to everyone, “Come, see a Man who told me everything I did!” Can we hear the excitement in her voice? Gone are the categories that seek to define who we are. Jesus sees her nakedness and seeing His non-judgment in her desire for revival, goes and exclaims to all who will listen, “Come, see the Man who sees me as I am!”
Most of us hide who we really are. We have learned to judge ourselves as either half-empty or half-full when all along we are just a glass of water. But Jesus desires to fill us with new life, to revive us. He knows who we are. We cannot impress Him! We are naked to Him. Our need to be like God desiring to know what is right and wrong gets in the way of seeing God in our midst. Remember God walking in the Garden after Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience. His call was, “Where are you? Who told you were naked” But now Jesus invites us, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Mt. 11:29) How we go about life can be a burden if we do not look for what God is doing, for He is present in our midst. The Samaritan woman was burdened by the collective story of her people as outsiders, and by her story of failed relationships. But Jesus says to her come, and drink from my well. Let Me revive you! You do have a second chance!
Korbell writes, “If in our estrangement we are to be brought back to life, it will be less because of the circumstances of our lives change than that our perceptions of them do.” (p. 132) The woman at the well was still a Samaritan not married to the man with whom she lives. But she became alive telling all in her community who was willing to give her eternal life in spite of her condition. We become connected to God and each other if we allow that well of life to feed our souls, to revive us.
This happened to me not long ago while standing at the checkout line at Hannaford’s. There I am at the express line waiting for the woman ahead me. Here I am in the express line with only one item to purchase and she had a cart with several items. Not a small red basket but a big cart with wheels. One at a time she would put her items on the conveyer belt. I was certain in my all-knowing way she had 15 items when the sign said 14 maximum. Once all items had been tallied, the customer proceeded to make sure the clerk would have the exact change which meant a detailed search through her purse for every penny that was hiding. How much longer will this take I ask looking at my watch. Out of my self-centered impatience, I beseech God asking to move this woman along! Then in the silence of my heart, God showed me what He saw. There before me was his daughter, my sister, an heir of His Kingdom. She may not have known it but as far God the Father was concerned, He saw her as precious. I, too, then saw her as He saw her. Time did not seem to matter anymore. In fact, she could take all the time she wanted. After all, she was on God’s time. I said a silent pray asking that she may see herself as God saw her. And asking my Father in Heaven to forgive me for not seeing the world as He saw it! In spite of my sin of being self-centered, I saw her in a different light. I was given a second chance to see what God sees by being refreshed with the well-spring of life! Rather than judging the glass of water as having to be something to fit my category, I just saw a glass of water. I just saw this woman as a child of the living God, neither too slow nor too fast! Neither too young or too old. God sees us as we are, naked with nothing to brag about. It is we who judge ourselves and each other. We make ourselves live under the judgment we inherited from our first parents in Paradise long ago. But through Christ, we can live again. No longer do we have to be blind to the beauty of others seeing only liberals or conservatives, blue eyed or brown eyed, smart or dumb. If we want, He will revive us when we accept the simple invitation to drink from His eternal wellspring of life seeing life as he sees it!
In fact, we are left with these words of our hope in Jesus by John who writes in the last chapter of our bible, “Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations.
No longer will there be a curse upon anything. For the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there, and his servants will worship him. And they will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads. And there will be no night there—no need for lamps or sun—for the Lord God will shine on them. And they will reign forever and ever.
Blessed are those who wash their robes. They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life. The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come. ‘Let anyone who hears this say, ‘Come.’ Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life.” (Rev. 22:1-5, 14, 17) Revival is God’s promise for us in Christ Jesus. It is ours if we see our lives as He already sees it! Amen.

When The Church is Sick!

¹⁹ And if they were all one member, where would the body be?
²⁰ But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. ²¹ And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ²² No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. ²³ And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, ²⁴ but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, ²⁵ that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. ²⁶ And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
²⁷ Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. ²⁸ And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues. ²⁹ Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? ³⁰ Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹ But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way. (1 Corinthians 12:19-31, New King James Version)

The Essence of Prayer

So often when we pray, we present to God what we want. But think about it! We are not God and what we want may not be God's will! We can pray for ourselves but we must have an honest assesment of what we need and what God is willing to provide! Read the Lord's prayer carefully. We ask God's kingdom to come and HIS will be done! Hence, the the Lord's prayer is prayer at its essence!