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Nov 25, 2007
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Luke 23:35-43
“Save Yourself!”
“If you are king of the Jews, save yourself” the soldiers cried out as Jesus hung helpless on the cross. “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us?” cried out another prisoner being crucified beside Jesus.
Jesus said nothing. He did not respond to any of the comments made at him. Hanging on the cross he let them speak and mock unhindered.
Finally, another prisoner turned to the condemned Jesus, requesting, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus responded to this. He did not comment on this man’s earlier remarks about Jesus being an unjustly crucified prisoner.
Only when this man requested to be with him in his Kingdom did Jesus speak: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Luke’s story of the death on the cross is about the condemned. It is story about a dysfunctional justice wielded upon the one true Judge of all persons. Jesus, the Judge of judges, is judged by a perverse community in this passage.
But what is most interesting, is that he was not wrongly judged according to Roman standards of justice.
Certainly, as the astute prisoner to Jesus’ left recognized, Jesus was “innocent.”
Still, the “innocent” were allowed to be crucified within this justice system. Capital punishment upon the “innocent” was within the framework of Roman justice.
It was not Jesus’ bad behavior that led him to the cross:
He did not steal, he did not murder—he was innocent of all that.
Even Pilate said before Jesus’ condemnation, “I find no crime in this man.”
Jesus’ punishment, according to Luke’s telling of the story, finally came down to a simple pleasing of the crowd, to pleasing the community.
That was the justice of their judicial system: the innocent could be punished for no good reason, except for the fact that somebody needed to be punished.
So Luke exploits the arbitrary nature of Rome’s justice. The entire community assumes Rome’s judicial system as real justice.
Looking on from the outside as readers we see Jesus’ crucifixion as an injustice. But we also hold his death to a different standard.
We should not forget that, according to Luke, Jesus’ crucifixion was perfectly legal and therefore just according to Roman law.
This is not to say that Roman justice was equally beneficial for all persons: indeed a Roman citizen could not be crucified willy-nilly, for they had certain rights that other conquered and exploited peoples did not have.
But alas! Jesus was not a citizen—and so it was only right and just that he become the spectacle of Roman authority.
Despite the perverse justice according to Rome, Luke’s gospel asserts that the crucifixion of Jesus is sinful. In fact, the judging of the Judge is the ultimate sin so that Jesus even cries out, “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
But there is irony in Luke’s gospel. The irony is that within Rome’s system of law and justice is rationalized sin so that what is sinful becomes the definition of what is just for the whole community.
The innocent can be crucified according to the standards of this justice system;
And so, the crucifixion is sinful not because it is an abuse of the Roman judicial system. It is sinful because the whole system of justice is against God.
“Save yourself!” That was what they sarcastically requested of Jesus, “you are the messiah, save yourself!”
Now, we certainly have trouble relating to the antiquated justice of the Romans, but we can resonate with this: “Save yourself!”
This mocking phrase made at Jesus has become an entire philosophy that governs social life for us moderns:
Save yourself because nobody else will. And by the guidance of some invisible hand, if everybody saves themselves, there will be perfect harmony among individuals.
This is individualism, where all persons are seen to be on a level playing field able to rise above any situation, like messiahs.
The ethic is not that people need to work together in order to be saved, but that every person must save him or herself because each person is his or her own messiah.
If somebody fails, if, for some reason, a person cannot pull him or herself up by the bootstraps that person has become an anti-virtue. This person is lazy, or decrepit, or a mooch.
According to our cultural individualism, which has become the foundation of our own judicial and political system, anybody in need of a messiah is a social problem, and not an adequate individual.
But, much like the Romans, according to us this is all perfectly ethical and just.
He who does not better himself, is not worth the time for another’s consideration.
Community is not understood by how it functions for the whole, but how the whole functions for making individuals.
In other words, we don’t have community and society so that we can be together as people. We have organized society so that we can function separately as individuals.
And so all of our rights, our freedoms, they are all defined in reference, not to the community, but to the self.
Each individual is supposed to advance and progress beyond expectations, and succeed with hard work and diligence; and failure, for whatever reason, is not an option.
Luke’s telling of the crucifixion is a story about the condemned. It is a story about a failure.
Jesus was mocked, because he failed to live up to expectations according Roman law and social norms.
Now we look at Jesus as “innocent” according to our standards, but the mere fact that he was crucified means that under Roman law he was equivalent to outcasts and lazy beggers — He, like them, was not worthy of life in the Roman empire.
But that is not the moral of Luke’s story. Luke’s gospel is filled with a subtle irony.
As the people mocked Jesus, daring him, shouting out “save yourself, King of the Jews,” what they did not realize is that what they were saying about him is true.
Jesus is the messiah. And he doesn’t save himself, because that is not why he is here.
And even on the cross, a not so comfortable death-bed, Jesus still saves others—he is still the Messiah.
It is only when somebody finally turned to Jesus, and admitted that he could not save himself, that Jesus made a response to him.
We are called to be Christ-like, and this is something that neither our modern society understands nor that the Romans ever understood.
A messiah does not save himself. A messiah turns to others, and not simply because others need a messiah, but also because the messiah needs others.
It is sheer pretense to believe that single individuals are enough, that people do not need each other and everyone should simply save themselves.
Being Christ-like is a calling to rediscover community—and not community before ourselves, but community before God.
Since it is community before God, we need to be ever wary of our systems of justice that all too often rationalize evil.
This is not a gospel of “save yourself.” This is a gospel that informs us of how we are desperately in need of each other, and ultimately of God. Amen. |
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