At The Cross: The Other Crosses Luke 23:39-43
I’d like to share with you two news stories that were
among those that caught my eye this past week when scrolling through the
headlines.
The first story comes out of Clayton County
Georgia. Earlier this week a Zaxby’s
restaurant was damaged. It was not the
result of a fire or of a storm, but the result of a customer. A woman who had ordered through the
drive-thru came inside complaining about her order. When she couldn’t get her order refunded, she
began cussing, throwing her fries and punched the register hard enough to
destroy it. The root of the complaint,
according to the police responding, is that her fries weren’t seasoned enough.[i]
The second comes out of Chicago. A young five year old was planning her sixth
birthday party. She told her parents
that she didn’t want to celebrate her birthday with her friends…that she wanted
to feed the homeless. Her mom told her
that they could pass out sandwiches, but the little girl insisted that they
feed the hungry with the food she would have had at her party. Her dad warned her that if they did that, she
wouldn’t be able to get any presents.
She said that she was fine with that as long as the people were able to
eat. When her birthday rolled around,
the little girl put on her birthday tiara, and with her parents and neighbors
and other volunteers, they fed chicken, fish, pizza, spaghetti, mashed
potatoes, fruit, and water to 125 of the homeless in their community. Along with the food, the little girl and her
family prepared care packages with toiletry items and a protein bar.[ii]
We’re in the midst of our Lenten Journey exploring the
gifts of the God found in Jesus’ crucifixion.
From Ash Wednesday through this past Wednesday we have considered the
gifts of: the spit, the nails, the crown of thorns, the sign, and the path. Today we come to another gift, the gift of
the other crosses…the gift we find in considering those who were crucified
alongside Jesus. How many of us have
ever thought that there might be a gift found considering those violent
criminals put to death alongside Jesus?
The gift we find here is a gift we exercise every
single day. It is the gift we use when
we open the refrigerator or the cabinets in the kitchen. It is the gift we use when we open our closets
or our dressers. It is the gift we use
when we pick up the remote and turn on Netflix (though Netflix might cause this
gift to be hard to use), or we when we walk into a library (again, possibly
making the use of this gift difficult).
What is this gift? It is the gift
of choice, the ability to choose. It is
the gift of free will. The gift is the
realization that we are not programmed robots and each day we live we are
blessed with the ability to make choices.
There on the hill, on either side of Jesus, we are
presented with the options we have in living each day. These two men, not simple thieves as many of
us have considered them to be growing up, but actually violent
criminals—possibly of the bandit variety such as the man encountered in Jesus’
story of the Good Samaritan, those that stripped and beat the man half to death
and then proceeded to leave him on the side of the road for dead, or possibly
they were men charged with a similar crime to which Jesus had been charged. It is possible that they were among those who
sought to overthrow Rome through violence.
Regardless of the reason, they hung there beside Jesus
and reveal to us the gift, or actually remind us of the gift, each of us has
from God. The gift of choice…the gift of
free will.
The two men hung there. Like Jesus, they had, most likely, had to
bear the weight of their execution on their shoulders and carry it up the
hill. Like Jesus, they had nails driven
through their wrists and ankles. Like
Jesus, their crosses had been raised and dropped into a hole…and they were
left, like Jesus, hanging there, to suffocate.
As they hung there, one of the men joined with the
crowd. Whether he had always been one to
follow the crowd or whether he was trying to deflect his embarrassment or his
pain, he echoed what he was hearing from the crowds surrounding Jesus, “Are you
not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” If we had been standing there, we would have
probably heard him muster up the strength to offer up a sarcastic laugh as he
poured out his contempt at the world upon Jesus. Of course, what more could we expect. He was a violent criminal who found himself hanging
beside Jesus meaning he wasn’t the nicest of folks. And who could blame him, really, he was
stripped naked and nailed to a cross…he was in pain. He couldn’t help it, could he?
Yet, then there was this other guy. He was like the first and like Jesus…nailed
to a cross and hung to die. He was a
convicted violent criminal, possibly and accomplish of the first. They had probably plotted their acts of
violence together. They most likely had
hung out in the shadows of Jerusalem.
They were both likely the kind of men that when you see them standing by
one entrance of Walmart, you choose to use the other entrance. We could almost expect him to hurl up the
same insults that the first did…but we’re caught off-guard. That is not his response at all. Rather than mocking Jesus, this third man on
the hill turned to the other bandit and chastised him: “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.”
We hear this story so much, we almost forget the shock
value that it is supposed to have upon us.
This guy is supposed to be a violent criminal. One of the bad guys. One of those folks that we think can’t have
an ounce of good in them. He’s supposed
to be like the other. You know…just
another of the ones who want to try and justify their bad behavior because of
what they are going through, or how they were raised, or because they had been
oppressed all their lives. Yet this man
doesn’t meet any of those expectations, instead he rebukes his friend and
defends Jesus, then turns to Jesus and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come
into your kingdom.”
God gives us the gift of choice…the gift of choosing
how we are going to respond to any given situation. It is the gift of being able to choose to
mock Jesus or surrender to His majesty.
It is the gift of being able to throw a violent tantrum over a lack of
seasoning salt or calmly and politely seek to have our fries replaced. It is the gift of being able to ask for every
toy in the store for our birthday or be willing to give away the entire day to
help those who have nothing.
Interestingly enough it is a gift that I learned to
embrace, not through Sunday School and not through a sermon, but through
therapeutic counseling. I’ve shared with
you before of my battle with bi-polar disorder.
One of the greatest gifts I think God gave me at that time was the fact
that while they were giving me meds to bring the mood swings into control, they
required that I enter therapy. The
social worker used “cognitive reasoning therapy.” To offer a brief summery of this therapy, the
bottom line, as the therapist expressed to me at the very beginning, is that we
have emotional control of ourselves.
Outside of extreme tragedies, he explained to me, we can choose how we
respond to anything that happens in our lives.
I scoffed at the idea to start with, but after two and a half years of
meeting from three times a week at first to every few months toward the end, I
learned that it was a true gift that God had blessed each of us with. We are not programmed to be mean, to be
hateful, to be walk around with a chip on our shoulders…we are not forced to be
sad, to be depressed, to live in the darkness.
Given the right tools, and given the right meds if we are clinically
depressed, we can exercise the precious gift of free will God has given us and
choose our response to all we encounter in life.
The two crosses alongside Jesus remind us that we are
given the opportunity to choose. To
choose the way of the world or to choose Jesus.
One is easy, one is hard. One
requires no effort, one requires practice and practice and practice and a great
deal of strength.
Jesus tells us that the road is wide and easy and that
many travel the road that leads to destruction.
It is the road that is filled with hatred, with bitterness, with lust,
with greed, with arrogance, with pride.
It is the road that allows us to choose ourselves above all else. It is the road of self-preservation. It is the road that says “I am more important
than anyone and anything else.”
The other way, the path less traveled, is the road of
humility, the road of self-sacrifice, the road of mercy, the road of grace, the
road of love. It is a narrow path. It requires strength, a strength not found in
ourselves of our own accord, but a strength found in the indwelling of the
Spirit of Christ within us. When we
choose that path, when we find ourselves in the place of the third man on the
hill, we will find that choosing this path leads not to death and destruction,
but leads to Paradise.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
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