April 13, 2025
Not the Messiah We Deserve, But the Messiah We Need
Luke 23:26-43
Rev. David Germer
Our second passage is Luke 23: 26-43.
We’ve been in the narrative of Jesus’ final week, from Luke’s gospel, throughout Lent. This is a text that we often read later in Holy Week, on Good Friday. As we’ve had the last couple of Sundays, this is a difficult text. And so I am going to read it, and then we are going to sing – a time to turn this passage over in our minds, and to offer our hearts to God, in this time of worship together.
Listen for God’s Word.
“As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
(Sing Hymn #227: Jesus, Remember Me)
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
I love singing that song because after a while, for me, it turns from a desperate and hopeful plea, into comforting assurance. This is exactly what Jesus is eager to do: remember me; remember us.
Throughout Luke’s gospel, we see Jesus as someone who is radically focused on others. In his treatment of women, and children, in a culture that dismissed them. In his instructions to and modeling for his disciples in how they are to see and respond to the poor, who were often overlooked. In the inclusion of those who some traditionalists and religious leaders wanted decidedly out, excluded.
In our passage, as he’s being led to his death, and then in the act of being crucified, Jesus, even in these moments… is focused on others.
“Don’t weep for me; I’m concerned by how awful things are going to be for you, for the most vulnerable, when things get worse,” Jesus says. “Father, forgive the people who are actively murdering me. They don’t understand what they are doing.” In his dying breaths, a criminal next to him reaches out, seeking mercy: “Jesus, remember me”… and Jesus, in his dying breaths, offers it. “Indeed you, who want to be, will be in my presence, even in death.”
In a time in which powerful people – leaders in government and even some Christian pastors – are buying into and promoting this idea that being attuned to the feelings and experiences of others, that empathy makes us soft and weak, and is somehow counter to the Christian message and life… I want to just take this opportunity to remind you, and to say as clearly as I can that this idea could not be further from the truth of the gospel, nor further from what Jesus taught and demonstrated in his life and in his death. Empathy is not a liberal ideal; it is a deeply human, moral value – a Christian value – that recognizes every other person as one of God’s beloved image-bearers.
Jesus is meek, but has a power they don’t understand; vulnerable, and full of compassion, but with the kind of uncompromising, sturdy conviction that is apparently unfathomable to some; realistic about the worst in others… but instead of that recognition shielding him from a life for others, bound to others… his love for flawed and sinful people led him to the cross.
This thing happening in pockets of our society and even the church is the kind of misunderstanding that makes me particularly grateful for our Book of Confessions – historical documents that help us see what the church has held as essential, throughout the decades and centuries.
To be clear: the word ‘empathy’ doesn’t show up, even in later creeds and confessions. But the call to look to and emulate Jesus does, throughout. In fact I want play a little game with you. It’s called, “How well do you know the Presbyterian Book of Confessions”? Do you want to play this game with me? It’s pretty simple. I’m going to read a phrase, and you just have to identify which creed or confession it comes from.
But I am going to make it easy on you. You just have to choose from two – does it comes from the Apostles Creed, our oldest and shortest confession – one we sometimes recite or read together (and we’ll do that next Sunday, on Easter), or the Brief Statement of Faith, one of the newest confessions, from 1983 (longer than the Apostles Creed, but still relatively short). And these are all lines, from one of those two statements of faith, about Jesus. Ready?
“Jesus proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor, and release to the captives.” Apostles Creed, or Brief Statement of Faith? [Brief Statement]
“…teaching by word and deed and blessing the children.” Apostles Creed, or Brief Statement of Faith? [Brief Statement]
“…healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted.” Apostles Creed, or Brief Statement of Faith? [Brief Statement]
“…eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners.” Apostles Creed, or Brief Statement of Faith? [Brief Statement]
One more: “…born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.” Apostles Creed, or Brief Statement of Fatih? [Apostle’s Creed]
Very good! You are excellent Presbyterians; you all know the Book of Confessions! Well done.
Did you hear the difference? Listen to that progression in the Apostles Creed again: born; suffered; crucified; dead.
What’s missing??
Yes! What about Jesus’s redemptive life? What about the teaching and healings and miracles and meals??
What I want to suggest, because I think it is what the Apostles Creed intuits, and what Luke has been preparing us for in the last several weeks, if not his entire gospel, and what Palm Sunday gets us ready for, and what the Apostle Paul consistently teaches in his writings, and what this passage confirms, is that the Cross – the crucifixion of Jesus, is the single, clearest self-revelatory action of Jesus – the self-revelation of God- that we have.
Jesus’ final week before his death began with a procession – the triumphal entry that we enacted earlier this morning. That procession included Jesus on a colt, shouting crowds, disciples, cloaks spread before him, and angry, onlooking Pharisees. Here at the end of the week is another procession scene:
-Simon of Cyrene, carrying part of the cross;
-Wailing, mourning women;
-Two criminals, to be crucified alongside Jesus;
-And a crowd – some silent watchers, some scoffing leaders, some mocking soldiers.
In the first procession story, Jesus entered the city to shouts of “blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Here he is, that same king, “the king of the Jews,” they sarcastically inscribed… crucified.
Sometimes we feel the need to choose between holding this space of worship, on this day, as either Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, but getting these passages together helps us to see that they are inextricably linked.
And within that link, we see the true nature and meaning of discipleship. Our passage from Luke 23 holds up models of discipleship:
–Simon of Cyrene, doing the very thing Jesus had told his disciples they must do – pick up their cross and follow after Jesus.
–Women, faithfully following Jesus, together, their hearts aching for him.
–We have a would-be disciple – the penitent criminal, showing that Jesus’ mercy doesn’t remove suffering, but puts it in perspective.
–And we have the one to whom we are discipled – Jesus, the crucified God.
One of the most significant theologians of the past century, Jurgen Moltman, gave that title to his most notable book – The Crucified God. In it, Moltman says, “When the crucified Jesus is called ‘the image of the invisible God,’ the meaning is that THIS is God, and God is like THIS.” Crucified.
The cross is neither an anomaly nor an embarrassment for God, and it shouldn’t be for us. The cross is the definitive self-revelation of God. That’s why even though I love those phrases from the Brief Statement of Faith about Jesus’ life – blessing children, healing the sick, eating with outcasts – the Apostle’s Creed doesn’t short-change us as much as we initially think; it misses a lot of details about Christ’s redemptive life, that the Brief Statement includes… but it has the cross.
THIS is where we see Jesus at his most God-like.
I’m gonna say that again, because this is an outrageous, scandalous claim:
The cross is where we see Jesus at his most God-like.
Do you know what I mean by that? Here’s an example (and I did clear this with Shannon).
Shannon is always Shannon, in wonderful ways. But I would say, and I think she would agree, that Shannon is at her most “Shannon-like” when she is taking beautiful photographs that help her connect with God, and using those pictures to invite others into seeing how they connect with God, and what God is doing in their lives. That’s Shannon at her most Shannon-like. The cross is where we see Jesus as his most God-like.
On the cross we see complete faithfulness, voluntary self-emptying, self-giving love, life-giving suffering and transformative power in humility, and the reversal of our defeat in our hope for resurrection. The cross was not a last-minute reversal or discovery for Jesus, in the face of death. He lived this way from the beginning. A life of humility and obscurity as a carpenter… and then even when he began his ministry, in the wilderness when he was tempted by the adversary to become relevant, spectacular, and powerful… and he said no… and spent his years in ministry living a life for others, confident in his own unearned beloved-ness.
Almost as outrageous and scandalous… is the message that disciples are called to emulate the life of Jesus. We’ve turned to, and been on the path to, the cross throughout Lent. That road leads to no other place. We don’t have to guess about what life will be like, walking that path, called to conformity to the crucified God. One author coined a term to describe it – this conformity to the crucified God: “cruciformity.” (You may have heard this before. I may have shared it). Cruciformity is a life lived in the pattern of the cross.
This kind of life is not easy… but it is beautiful.
All too often, the radical self-emptying, others-focused love of cruciformity, is not effective. Most of the time, non-violent, vulnerable self-giving and sacrifice does not, and will not change another person. It won’t stop violence, or bullying, or self-absorption.
It is sometimes met with joy. With fascination and curiosity. With wonder and changed hearts and celebration.
And even when it’s not; when it instead is met with indifference, or anger, or misplaced retaliation… there’s a beauty and even a joy in the faithfulness for those who are either courageous or foolish enough to commit their lives to it. To live a life unbound by ego and results and effectiveness and upward mobility. To embrace the freedom of living, as Jesus did, focused on others.
I want to end with one short story that I heard last week, on this pastor’s retreat down in the TX Hill Country, that was cosponsored by the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination. (Do you know Eugene Peterson? He wrote The Message and dozens of books over many decades that are incredibly helpful for pastors). A friend of Eugene’s told a story of Eugene and his wife Jan hosting a somewhat famous singer/songwriter at their home on Flathead Lake in Montana, in the early 2000s. This was the early days of the internet and Google had become popular. (Eugene was always a little late to tech advancements). The musician explained how Google worked, and Jan, with wide-eyes, said, “You mean we could type in Eugene’s name, and everything that people have said and written about him would come up on the screen?” “Yes,” he said, “that’s how it works.” With mischievous giddiness, Jan said “Oh let’s do it.”
So with Jan and Gene on either side, this man opened his laptop on the couch, and Googled Eugene Peterson, and instantly… pages and pages of results.
Eugene sighed, reached over, and gently closed the laptop.
About 20 minutes later Eugene approached Jan, and said, “ I want you to know that I’m not mad at you. It’s just that I have a hard enough time with my own ego, without worrying about what thousands of people I’ve never met think of me. I don’t need that, and don’t think anyone needs that.”
That’s a simple gesture, a small story, but one that exemplifies the refusal to puff ourselves up and allow our egos to blur or remove our focus on others – even others who we don’t think deserve our consideration, our empathy. On our journey to the cross, we see Jesus. We see God, most clearly, and vividly, hanging on the cross. Devoid of ego. A life poured out for others. God can look upon the cross and see Jesus – humanity as it should be – and love us… because it’s there that Jesus identifies himself with those we most wish he wouldn’t: the undeserving; the ego-full; the empathy-less; them… and also: us. It’s where Jesus identifies himself with us. The criminal next to Jesus recognized that what he and the other criminal deserved, is not this kind of Messiah… but this is kind of Messiah that we need, and that we have.
Thanks be to God. Amen.