TRISTAN SHERWIN

Here’s my longer sermon notes from this afternoon’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 20th November 2022), continuing our new series ENCOUNTERS.

As with most of our Sunday ministry, you can also watch/listen to this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded 😉)

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DIMMED

We are continuing our ENCOUNTERS series, looking at a handful of the gospel accounts where people have these stunning interactions with Jesus.

It will be our final week of this series next Sunday, and I want to thank you for the encouraging feedback. There are many encounters in the gospels that we could have looked at, and so my hope is that we will return to this theme, sometime late 2023, and look at another set of encounters.

But regardless of whether we do a particular series or not, whenever we meet and open the scriptures our hearts should always be open to being dazzled by God.

The problem, however, is that we can open the Bible with dull hearts and a dimmed view because of our expectations. Wrongly, we can think we are experts on God—that we know all there is to know, that we’ve journeyed a long time and have now reached solid conclusions—and so when scripture is read, or someone preaches, our reasoning clouds our vision.

We don’t listen attentively (thinking we’ve heard it before).

We only hear what isn’t said (what we would have wanted to be said).

We pour our understandings onto the words of others, mishearing and misunderstanding them in terms of what we think they’re saying instead of listening to what they are saying in the context they’re saying it in.

We miss so much because we can be so preoccupied with ourselves.

This is especially true in the encounter we will explore today: We’re turning to Luke 23:26-43, and we’re going to read about Jesus’ encounter with the cross.

There’s a lot that could be said from this passage, and so, inevitably, as always, there’s a lot that will not be said this morning. We could discuss Jesus’ parable of the ‘green tree and the dry tree’; We could mention the fascinating debate around where the comma should be in verse 43; And, there is, I feel, a sobering visual statement being made in the soldier’s gambling.[i]

We won’t touch on those things. As I read this passage, I am struck by the lack of perspective the people have on God as a result of their preoccupation with themselves.

The cross is the most dazzling revelation of God. Here is God incarnate, God the Son, suffering and dying, emptying himself out, in order to conquer the power of Sin, Death and Satan; Here is Jesus, liberating humanity and bringing life to us; Here is salvation; Here is the outpouring of forgiveness; Here is the ultimate expression of God’s love for humanity.

As John Stott beautifully expressed it, ‘God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us.’[ii]

Yet, the majority of those witnessing this are blind to this revelation. They are not dazzled. Instead, they ridicule; they assume and reject. They have dull hearts and a dim view. They see, but they don’t see. They hear, but they don’t hear. All because they think they are experts on God, and this is not how they think God would act.

READ: LUKE 23: 26-43 (NLT)

RADIO STATIONS & ROAD TRIPS

One of my sons, who shall remain nameless—but who, for the sake of this illustration, will be called Corban—has a deep passion for most music, except his Dad’s music.

Most of the time, this isn’t an issue: He sits in his bedroom, wearing headphones, and I (generally) only listen to music when I’m alone. The tensions tend to erupt when we are in the car together, because when Corban rides ‘shotgun’, Corban normally wants to play with (and for play with, read control) the radio station when I am driving.

I want Classic FM (yes, I am that cool); Corban wants HITS radio (he calls Classic FM ‘granny FM’). I want Radio 2; Corban wants Radio 1. Our road trips, be they the school run in the morning or a longer journey somewhere, normally have his attempts to change my soundtrack.

Jesus has been on a road trip. The final journey to Jerusalem dominates Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s gospels, and it’s a journey that contains plenty of encounters (some that we have looked at in this series). While he’s on this journey, Jesus is playing his music, so to speak; his life, teachings and actions are announcing and transmitting sounds about the Kingdom of God.

Some people don’t like the music Jesus is playing.

It’s not just that Jesus goes to those and invites those into this Kingdom that others would exclude. It’s not just that his authority with scripture challenges the ideas of the religious elite. One of the main struggles people have—including his disciples—is that Jesus doesn’t play the music they would have the Messiah play.

They have been waiting for God’s Messiah to come. Understandably, they expect a warrior King who will lead a victorious military campaign against their Roman oppressors. It is this song that they want Jesus to sing along to.

It’s with this tune playing in his head that Peter attempts to correct Jesus on his political vision (Mk. 8:31-9:1). This tune is playing in the background to James and John’s request to have thrones—positions of power and privilege—next to Jesus when his glorious Kingdom becomes a reality (Mk. 10:35-45). As the disciples argue, like kids in the back seat of the car, over who is going to be the greatest in the Kingdom, they do so in keeping with the military beat of war and dominance (Mk. 9:30-37).

So, while Jesus has been on his final road trip to Jerusalem, his own disciples, believing the finale of the journey will be the big showdown with Rome, attempt to mess with His radio and tune it into their preferred network.

Again and again, Jesus (with more patience than I have with Corban) switches the radio station back to correct their perspective on the Kingdom of God. Every time he does so, they fail to understand because they are too preoccupied with their own music tastes.

They want a Kingdom of warfare and supremacy; Jesus talks about servanthood, forgiveness and loving your enemies. They want to become powerful; Jesus talks about the power of emptying yourself out on behalf of others. As they seek to restore their nation’s greatness and centrality, Jesus desires them to restore the marginalized and forgotten.

On at least three occasions, when someone played with Jesus’ radio, Jesus delivers what we have come to call the Passion Predictions, where Jesus talks about his own suffering.[iii] He is explicit with his disciples that he has not come to wage war against Rome; the only death that will take place at Jerusalem will be his own, and through that death, God’s Kingdom power will be displayed.

Jesus will conqueror evil, but he’ll do it without mirroring it. Jesus will become King, but he’ll do so because he will give his life to win our freedom from sin and death, he won’t do it by taking the life of others. He has not come to impose suffering onto others, but has come to take onto himself the suffering of the world.

Jesus is revolutionary—but he is not the revolutionary they want.

That’s partly why, when Jesus refuses to fight in the garden of Gethsemane (Mt. 26:47-56; Mk. 14:43-51; Lk. 22:47-53), his disciples flee. This is why the crowd ask Pilate to release Barabbas, someone who had already led a violent insurrection in Jerusalem against Rome, instead of Jesus (‘we’ll have the fighter’) (Lk. 23:28-25). And it’s why, even as Jesus, innocent though he is, is being executed in a way reserved for those who revolt against Rome, that the leading priests, the soldiers, the crowds and those being crucified with him, insult and ridicule him (Mt. 27:38-44; Mk. 15:16-32; Lk. 23:35-43).

To paraphrase their words in this scene, ‘you’re Messiahship is an absolute joke!’

WITH A REBEL YELL

In Luke’s gospel, the only person who doesn’t attempt to play with Jesus’ radio station, the only person who appears to grasp something of the shape of His Kingdom, is this criminal dying next to Jesus.

It says criminal (or thief), but this man is no pickpocket, shoplifter or cat burglar. If he’s being executed by crucifixion, it’s more likely he’s participated in some sort of uprising.[iv] He’s a rebel. Seeing the criminal next to Jesus as a rebel makes Luke’s contrast between the sound of Jesus’ Messiahship and the desired military Messiah all the more poignant: The first person to recognize God’s sacrificial self-giving Kingdom is a man who had previously been violently loyal to what he thought God was like.

The first person to recognize God’s sacrificial self-giving Kingdom is a man who has previously been violently loyal to what he thought God was like.

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Like those mocking Jesus, he originally had a certain soundtrack about God’s Kingdom playing around his head. Matthew and Mark’s gospels tell us this man was, at some stage, insulting Jesus too. Yet, now, somehow, unlike those around him, he has stopped hearing that music and singing along with it, and something else, something life giving has caught his ears…

Something has dazzled him, while everyone else’s hearing remains dulled by their own expectations.

It reminds of those times when I’ve accidently rang someone while my phone has been in my pocket and somehow, in the midst of the surrounding noise, I’ve heard this little voice going ‘hello.’

What different song has this man heard?

I can only speculate, but I wonder, could it have been Jesus’ prayer, ‘Father forgive them…’ (Lk. 23:34)?

Luke’s the only gospel account to mention this prayer, and Luke is also the only account that mentions the Criminal’s request to Jesus. I can’t help but think that they are related.

I’m no expert in Greek, but the Greek in verse 34, for ‘Jesus said/prayed’ is λέγω (légō), and it can mean a repetitive action. So, Jesus would not be saying this once, but praying it over and over and over again in response to everything that is happening to him.

As they are nailing him to the cross, he’s praying, ‘Father forgive…’

As the soldiers are gambling for his clothes, he’s praying, ‘Father forgive…’

As they insult him and ridicule him, as they offer him a drink of sour wine, as they fix the signboard above his head, as people tell him his Messiahship is an absolute joke, Jesus repeatedly prays, ‘Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.’

Even here, humanity is attempting to fiddle with Jesus’ radio, trying to get him to come down from the cross and prove his dominance. But Jesus remains faithful to the chorus of Heaven.

Unlike most revolutionaries, ‘who died [speaking] a curse against their torturers’,[v] or calling for vengeance and threatening retribution, Jesus repeatedly calls on God to forgive.

Now if this criminal could hear the cursing from the other criminal, who is on the other side of Jesus, he would surely have heard this song of forgiveness coming from Jesus’ lips.

In the midst of all the darkness, ugliness, brutality, violence, mockery, condemnation, ignorance, hatred and cruelty which infests this scene (and which still plague our world), this want-to-be renegade hears the truly rebellious yell of Divine forgiveness, of love over hate, of light over darkness, of peace over violence. And he wants in!

In his lifeless-ness (and maybe that’s the key), he asks to be under of Jesus’ Kingship. ‘Remember me…’ is his simple request. His wish for the Kingdom is the only time in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus does not respond with an object lesson or a parable to correct someone’s thinking about the Kingdom of God; Jesus doesn’t have to change the radio station back.

Jesus, in his dying moments, sees this man has grasped the grace he is extending, and, in the Greek language, Jesus simply replies, ‘amen’.

‘I promise you’

‘I assure you’

THE REBELLION OF GRACE

This scene is legendary! There are millions of sermons throughout church history about this encounter. In some legends, the two criminals on either side of Jesus are given actual names. Sometimes, they’ve just been referred to as ‘the good thief’ and ‘the bad thief’. And the contrast between them both has been played upon again and again as means of talking about ‘saving faith’ or, and more oddly, what “works” need to precede our salvation.

But if there is a message in this encounter, something Luke wants us to see, then it is certainly not about works. This is pure grace.

This man is lifeless—he has nothing to offer or to barter with.

He can’t say to Jesus, ‘if you do this, I’ll become this…’—his time is up, and he knows it.

This man is incapable of doing anything except dying to self and entrusting Jesus to raise him up.

We don’t know how much he knows or understands about Jesus, so it’s not the size of his ‘intellectual faith’, nor the depth and breadth of his theology. It’s definitely not a measure of his good deeds or holiness. It’s not even (dare I say it) the depth of perception about his self; about knowing how “sinful” he is.

Yes, this man acknowledges that he ‘deserves to die for what [he] has done’ (v. 41), but this doesn’t necessarily mean he’s shown remorse!

I’m not saying those things are unimportant or they have no place at all in a life of discipleship—being trained in the life of God’s Kingdom certainly involves those things. But they are not instrumental in Salvation! Salvation is God’s gift, God’s work.

This man doesn’t look to himself at all—that’s the point! He’s dazzled by the posture of Jesus in this moment and, in contrast to those who think Jesus is a joke, he says ‘I want a King like that.’[vi] He looks to Jesus, and finds eternal life.

As the American pastor and author, Max Lucado says, when he describes this man, ‘It makes me smile to think that there is a grinning ex-con walking the golden streets who knows more about grace than a thousand theologians.’[vii]

We don’t like grace. It makes us uncomfortable. We would rather take two polar opposite approaches to it all: We would rather take approach a) and say that God’s love endorses everything about us, and so it doesn’t matter[viii], or approach b) where we attempt to earn God’s love by our goodness and morality and ability to perform.

But Divine grace threatens the very foundations of both those approaches, which are merely towers of self.

Grace has nothing to do with you. ‘I assure you’, Jesus said, not the other way around. Grace is not an endorsement and it is not a reward. As Charles Spurgeon said it, ‘God’s love has no reason except in his own bowels.’[ix]

God’s Son dies on the cross, an embodiment of Divine forgiveness to us and the power of salvation. And it begs the question: Are we dazzled by its brightness—is our self overtaken by it and eclipsed by it? Or, in our preoccupation with our self, have we closed our eyes and are we blind to this revelation?

Look to Jesus, and not to your self, and find eternal life.

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”

Ephesians 1:18-19a (NIV)

“Taste and see that the Lord is good!

How blessed is the one who takes shelter in him.”

Psalm 34:8

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[i] If you’re intrigued with the soldiers, check out my Good Friday Reflection: Of Dice & Men

[ii] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (InterVarsity Press, 2012)

[iii] In Mark’s gospel, these predications are as mentioned in the previous paragraphs. In Luke’s, they can be found in Lk. 9:21-27, 43-44; 18:18-31-34.

[iv] This is where word studies alone can fail. When we translate this man’s charge as thief or criminal, we maybe walk away with the idea of petty crime floating in our heads. The Greek word used in Luke is κακοῦργος (kakourgos), and, in general it does mean wrong-doer and evil-doer. Mark and Matthews accounts opt for the word λῃστής (léstés), which means robber/brigand/bandit. These words, on their own, don’t offer enough to clarify the ‘crime’ of the two people crucified along Jesus. However, the method of execution, via crucifixion, does imply these men were not merely small-time crooks. Crucifixion was a method of execution generally reserved for those who threatened the peace and stability of the Roman Empire. It could be then, that the two men crucified alongside Jesus were insurrectionists, and that their violent banditry was aimed at destabilising the Roman occupation. It would be too far, I think, to speculate that they were involved in whatever coup Barabbas led in Jerusalem (Lk. 23:18-24), but their crime was certainly seen to be at a similar level, and there deaths, Rome felt, had to be a dehumanising public spectacle to squash further related incidents.

[v] Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (SPCK, London, 2012), p. 284

[vi] Everyone else looks at Jesus dying and sees God-forsakenness and a ‘Godless’ Messiah. This man looks at Jesus and, as Jesus had promised his disciples in Mark 9:1, he sees the Kingdom of God arriving in great power.

[vii] Max Lucado, No Wonder They Call Him Savior (W Publishing Group, 2004), p.18

[viii] Change does happen when we respond to God’s embrace in Jesus (and it is a life-long process). All relationships affect and change us. If they do not, then it is not a relationship, but it us using others as a tool to self. Further than this, and further to the crude and false dichotomy driven between religion and relationship, God wants union with us.

[ix] Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Faith: What It Is and What It Leads to. (I should say, this is a great book, but I do not agree with Spurgeon’s view on election).