The Company You Keep

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Luke 23:32-43

March 3/4, 2012 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO WEEK 2

Once upon a time, a man set out to purchase a donkey, but before he paid the final price, he asked permission to test the animal. The current owner agreed, so the man took the donkey home and put him in the field with his other donkeys. He watched as the new donkey strayed from the group to join the laziest donkey the man owned. He quickly gathered the new donkey up and took him back to his owner. When the owner asked how he could have tested the donkey in such a short time, the man answered, “I didn’t need to see how he worked. I knew he would be just like the one he chose to be his friend.” That’s one of Aesop’s Fables, and the point is this: you’re known by the company you keep. Or, at the very least, you are often judged (rightly or wrongly) by the company you keep.

It begins fairly early in life, doesn’t it? We put people in groups (at least in our mind), and once we label someone, we think we know all about them. We label them by where they are from, what school they go to, what groups they hang out with. The jocks. The band nerds and the drama geeks, and so on. And we tend, then, to surround ourselves with people who are just like us. We’re comfortable then. Nothing challenges us. We even tend to go to church with people who are mostly like us, or in a church this size, we at least want to sit with or near people who are generally like us. Because we know we’re judged by the company we keep.

What, then, do we do with Jesus? From the moment he started preaching, he rarely hung out with the popular people, the powerful people or the beautiful people—at least as the world defines those categories. He ate dinner with tax collectors and even welcomed one of them as a disciple. He talked with prostitutes and with people who were demon-possessed. He touched lepers and dead bodies—those sorts of actions could get you kicked out of church in his day (maybe in our day, too). Jesus hung out with everyone—except the good, respectable people of his day, the religious folks. He didn’t spend much time or have patience with those who were “the good people” or the “holy people” in his day. In fact, those folks loudly complained, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2; Hamilton, Final Words, pgs. 36-37). Of course, Jesus didn’t have the nicest words for them, either. He called them “hypocrites” and a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 3:7; 15:7). Way to win friends and influence people, Jesus! Especially in the Gospel of Luke, as we’ve discovered again in our Disciple class this year, Jesus is very focused on the least, the last and the lost—the ones nobody else wanted anything to do with. That’s even true when you talk about his disciples. I mean, several of them were fishermen—not the most educated men in the first century. Do you realize they were his disciples because they had failed to be someone else’s? By the time Jesus called them, they were much too old to be disciples; normally, you asked a rabbi to be his disciple in your early teen years and he decided if you had potential or not. These men had not been chosen. They were fishermen because they were religious rejects. But Jesus chose them. Jesus wanted them. Jesus always wanted those no one else cared about. In fact, one time, when the religious leaders were complaining about the company Jesus kept, he told them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick…I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13). 

To the very end, Jesus was focused on the least, the last and the lost. Even on the cross, Jesus is still willing and able to save those folks whom no one else cares about. During this season of Lent, we are studying the final words of Jesus, the seven last gasps he uttered from the cross. And, as we said last week, they are gasps because crucifixion made it impossible to say lengthy sentences. When a crucified man would push up for air, he could call out a few words at best. Last week, we saw how Jesus’ first final word was to offer forgiveness to those who killed him. His word of preemptive forgiveness is a model for us all. The cross here in the sanctuary reminds us this Lenten season that forgiven people are called to be forgiving people. But that was only Jesus’ first lesson from the cross. His next one was directed at a man no one else cared about.

Luke says, “Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed” (23:32). So three men are being executed this day. Jesus, we’re told, is on the cross in the middle, and on either side of him are these condemned criminals. They aren’t petty thieves; you weren’t crucified for a small theft. They’ve been convicted of a serious crime of some sort. One translation suggests they are insurrectionists or terrorists (Willimon, Thank God It’s Friday, pg. 19). Matthew’s Gospel suggests they were involved in an armed robbery, but Luke simply calls them “ones who do evil” (Hamilton 38; Tidball, The Message of the Cross, pg. 161). We don’t know how long they’ve been in jail, waiting for death, but suddenly, perhaps without any warning, their day has come, and they have been led out with Jesus and nailed to their own crosses. They’ve heard Jesus pray forgiveness for his executioners, and for at least one of them, that’s too much. He can’t take it. And so, with what little breath he has, he joins the crowd in taunting Jesus. “Aren’t you the Messiah?” he yells. “Save yourself and us!” (23:39). I doubt if he thought Jesus really could save them, but what was the harm in asking? From what Luke tells us, he probably said worse things than that to Jesus. Most likely, as the pain got worse, so did his mouth. He “hurls insults” at Jesus (probably laced with profanity), until the other criminal finally speaks up.

In perhaps the longest speech at the cross, the other criminal tells the first one off: “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong” (23:40-41). Maybe he knew of Jesus before this day, or perhaps he just sensed in Jesus’ earlier prayer that a great injustice was happening here. Either way, he turns next to Jesus and prays one of the Bible’s most memorable prayers: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (23:42). Jesus—remember me. Remember. We all hope to be remembered. We sometimes call it “leaving a legacy” or leaving our mark, but at a very basic level, we’re afraid we’ll be forgotten, and that if no one remembers, our life will have had no meaning (Hauerwas, The Cross-Shattered Christ). We fear no one will show up at our funeral and no one will care. Some people give lots of money to have buildings named after them or endowments set up in their name just so they’ll be remembered at least by name. Is that why the thief asks this of Jesus? But what did it matter if a dying man remembered him? Since this criminal is likely Jewish, he’s probably recalling something he learned as a child, how in the Old Testament, when God “remembered” a person or a nation, God came to their aid; he delivered them. In Exodus, when the Hebrews cry out to God because of their slavery, we’re told that God “remembered” them (Exodus 2:24). Had God forgotten them? Does God have a bad memory, that he suddenly heard the people’s cry and said, “Oh, I wondered where they had gotten to”? No, of course not. God hadn’t forgotten them, but they had forgotten him. And God never pushes his way into our lives. He waits for us to call to him, so when his people called out, God was ready to do something to help them. “Remember us, God! Come to our aid!” That’s what the criminal is asking. In Jesus, he recognizes someone who can provide hope beyond the pain and the suffering of the cross. So he asks Jesus to remember him, to save him (cf. Hamilton 43; Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 256).

This passage disturbs a lot of people, particularly people (like me) who want to be able to pin down the way Jesus works. I grew up in a church where it was well understood how you came to know Jesus. You confessed your sin, you prayed a prayer, and if you were really, really brave, you went down to the communion rail on Sunday morning during the altar call and prayed with the pastor. My pastor growing up even had a set prayer called “the sinner’s prayer” that you would pray to find salvation. And there is certainly adequate Biblical support for such an approach. I mean, we’re told in one of John’s letters, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). And Paul says, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Confession is affirmed. Public witness of Jesus is affirmed. It seems to be all orderly, until you come to this story. Up there on the hill, there is no confession of sin (unless you count the thief’s statement that he’s getting what he deserves). There’s no acknowledgement of Jesus as Lord. There’s no sinner’s prayer. There’s no baptism. He doesn’t have the Scriptures explained to him, and he doesn’t have any opportunity to demonstrate his faith. All he asks is to be remembered. All he wants to know is if Jesus can save even him. Maybe we don’t have Jesus as figured out as we think we do. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus can save people outside of our formulas and our routines—because that’s what Jesus does here. When confronted with a simple cry of trust and heartfelt desire to be where Jesus is, the Savior responds: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (23:43).

It’s a powerful promise. That phrase “truly I tell you” is an ancient way of emphasizing something; it’s like saying, “Listen carefully, because I really mean this, it’s really true.” And then Jesus begins with the word, “Today.” What day, Jesus? When? “Today.” As a pastor for nearly nineteen years, I have lost track of the number of people who have asked me when, exactly, we go to heaven after we die. Is it right away? Do we have to wait? Is there some sort of intermediate state or waiting room? This question presses on people’s minds especially around a funeral. Do you know why we usually have a funeral within three days? It was believed in ancient times that the spirit of the dead person would wait by the body for about three days and then, when it didn’t recognize the body anymore, it would depart (Card, The Parable of Joy, pg. 135). There’s no real Biblical basis for that, but it does explain why Jesus waits four days to raise Lazarus from the dead in John 11. He wants those who witness the miracle to know that Lazarus was really, really dead and not just in some deep sleep.

So, how soon do we go to heaven? Three days? Four days? What does the Bible say? Well, to be honest, not a lot. It’s not really clear what happens exactly after death. I was talking several years ago with a retired pastor who was part of my congregation at the time about this very issue and he told me, “I’ve decided it doesn’t matter to me that much, because no matter if it’s one day or a thousand years, the next thing I know, I’ll be in Jesus’ presence.” And that’s true, but we still want to know, don’t we? So here’s my best guess, based on my reading of Scripture and what Jesus says here, because Jesus promises the thief “today.” So I believe that when we die we do go immediately to Jesus’ presence—to heaven, if you will. There are glimpses of that in the book of Revelation. But I also understand from Scripture that we wait until the final day to receive our new bodies, our resurrection bodies. That’s when all of creation will be made new, when heaven comes down to earth. Jesus’ promise to the criminal is that “today” he will be with Jesus, and I don’t think that’s a promise just for this one man. So, in a sense, it’s “both…and”—we will be with Jesus when we die, and on the final day, we will be made new.

“You will be with me,” he says, “in paradise.” Adam Hamilton points out that the word for “paradise” in this passage originally referred to “the King’s garden” (48). And it’s not a garden for vegetables. This was an elaborate showpiece, sometimes containing a small zoo, beautiful plants, well-manicured bushes, and perhaps a pond or a water feature or two. [When we were in Germany a year and half ago, we got to see a King’s garden at Linderhof, the palace of King Ludwig. But normally, “common folk” wouldn’t see that place.] All of it would have been walled off from the common folks. Only those who were privileged enough to be invited into the King’s presence could view the garden. In Jewish thought, this word came to represent a place of rest and refreshment before the final resurrection where those who are faithful are invited in. Paradise was a place where the righteous would go after death (Wright, Luke for Everyone, pg. 284; Bock, NIV Application Commentary: Luke, pg. 596), a recreation of sorts of the perfect Garden of Eden before sin entered the picture (Tidball 162). Not that they thought of it as a literal garden. It might be, but that’s not the point. The point is that paradise is the place where Jesus is. It’s the image we encountered in our reading of Revelation a couple of weeks ago, the promise we heard spoken from the very throne of God: “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation 21:3). And the promise of the Bible is that paradise begins now, when we turn our face toward Jesus like the criminal on the cross did. “Paradise is whenever, wherever you are with Jesus” (Willimon 22). So even though this world may not look like paradise or a King’s garden, for the one who believes and trusts in Jesus, for the one who walks with Jesus, every moment becomes a foretaste to that ultimate moment when we see him face to face.

I saw this lived out in the life of a dear saint named Dorothy. She and her husband, Kenny, had never had much. They had enough to get by, at least in later years, and they had a loving family surrounding them. But to look at their house and their farm, you wouldn’t think much of it. It wasn’t a shack, but it wasn’t fancy, either. By the time I knew Dorothy, she had walked with Jesus for a long, long time, and I loved to talk with her because the love of Jesus just flowed out of her no matter what you were talking about. I never failed to find my faith strengthened just by talking with Dorothy. Every moment to her was sacred. Every moment was paradise, whether she was at church or in her kitchen. In her later years, Dorothy’s health failed a lot, to the point where she didn’t remember much before her death. At her husband’s funeral, she knew who Cathy was, but not who I was. And yet, in all of that, one thing never wavered. She was always in Jesus’ presence. She lived in paradise even when her outward circumstances might have been depressing to you or me. Those things never bothered her, because she was with Jesus, even before she died and went to literally be with him. She’s one of those people I want to be like when I grow up, one for whom every moment was an opportunity to be with her savior.

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “today you will be with me in paradise” (23:43). It’s a powerful promise, and not just to that man on the cross. It’s a promise that comes down through the centuries to our time. What do we do with this final word? The first thing is to determine whether or not we have joined the criminal on the cross in a cry for Jesus to “remember” us. The beautiful truth of the Gospel is that Jesus offers this same promise to anyone who will come with simple faith, simple trust. The promise is that whoever calls on Jesus’ name will be saved (cf. Acts 2:21)—even a criminal who is dying on a cross. Paul says, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). Have you opened the gift that’s been offered to you? Sometimes we say we’ll wait until some distant point in the future to make a real commitment to Jesus. We don’t want Jesus to get in the way of our lifestyle now; we’ll go to church and try to live a good life and hope the scales balance in our favor in the end. But that’s not the way it works. Salvation is a gift, not something we earn. That’s what “grace” means. This criminal hanging next to Jesus had done nothing to earn God’s favor and in fact had done much to deserve punishment. He says that himself; he deserved what he got. And he gets what he doesn’t deserve because he calls out to Jesus. The criminal came with simple trust, which is all Jesus asks us to come with. Simple faith that says, “Jesus, remember me. Save me. Deliver me. Keep me close to you.” You can do that today and know that he will respond to you as he did to the criminal on the cross: “You will be with me in paradise.”

This passage, this story, also challenges us who are followers of Jesus, because it asks what our commitment is to the least, the last and the lost—the ones Jesus cares so much about. Do we care about them as well? And how well do we do at reaching out to those society despises? That applies to us as a church as well as to us as individuals. Are we maybe too afraid to reach out to those no one else cares about because we know we’ll be judged by the company we keep? Maxie Dunnam tells the story of a tent evangelist who came to a small Pennsylvania town during the 1950’s. Among those converted to Jesus in that revival was a man and woman who had lived together for many years, had a bunch of kids, but had never gotten married. When they came to know Jesus, they approached the Methodist pastor and asked him to marry them and allow them to join the church. He did, and pretty soon, one of his church leaders was in his office. “Do you expect us to associate with trash taken in by a fire-and-brimstone preacher? I never thought I’d see the day when a Methodist preacher would marry people like that. It’s a disgrace.” And the pastor calmly replied, “The only disgrace is that some preacher didn’t do it sooner. In all the years these people have lived in this town, we have never invited them to our church. I’m grateful that a tent evangelist did our job for us” (Irresistible Invitation, pg. 265). That church leader was afraid of being judged by what he considered to be unworthy company. Jesus wasn’t. He was, to the end, concerned about the least, the last and the lost. The “good” people were mocking him; the criminal was reaching out in simple trust. Hanging between heaven and earth, Jesus responded to a soul who hoped for help. Before his death, he had told his followers that those who would enter the kingdom of God are those who care for “the least of these” (cf. Matthew 25:31-46). On the cross, he’s still living out what he taught. Jesus is known by the company he keeps—he has a heart for the least, the last, and the lost. How are we known? What company do we keep? Do people see Jesus in us? Do they see us “keeping company with” those who are in need—the poor, the lonely, the stranger, the outcast, the homeless, the children?

And I’m not just talking about writing a check—that’s usually what we do. That’s comfortable. But Jesus got close to people. Jesus touched those in need. He spoke to them. They saw him face to face. Our lives are often so insulated we can go through our days without seeing one person in need. We’re even well-trained at turning our heads and not seeing the guy at the stoplight who has a sign that says, “Have kids, need work.” Yes, there are plenty of scammers out there today. I’m as judgmental as the next person. In my line of work, you get awfully cynical about those in need. I can write that person off just as easily (maybe more easily) than you can. But what if that one is not lying? What if that one really does have a need?

In 1988, Cathy and I had the opportunity to spend the summer working with a group in inner-city Chicago under the direction of a man named John Hochevar. John was one of the most compassionate men I knew. He cared for the least, the last and the lost, but he also knew how to not get taken. I remember him taking the group of us on the ‘L’ one day when we encountered a woman who said she needed money for the train. John approached her and offered to buy her ticket if she would come with us. She refused, and John was still kind to her even though, at that moment, he knew she really didn’t want a ticket for the train. John taught us a lot that summer about buying people meals rather than handing them money, about meeting real needs and helping folks get connected to agencies that can do that, about churches working together to meet bigger needs than they can alone. Here in Portage, we have an alliance called Compassionate Ministries that I’ve never seen work quite so well anywhere else. It’s a group where churches and social service agencies sit down together and actually communicate and cooperate. Because of that, needs are able to be met that wouldn’t be if we were all working against each other or in competition with each other. You need to know that many if not most of the leaders in those agencies are followers of Jesus, and they are motivated out of that deep concern for the least, the last and the lost. I’m proud for our church to be part of that.

But let’s bring that even closer to home. And I mean that literally. What about the person who lives next to you? Or the person who works next to you? Or the person you see every morning at the coffee shop? Do you know them? Do you know anything about them? If you’re like most people, probably not. We don’t take time to know people, to find out their situation, to be Jesus to them. Even in the nicest houses in our community there are people who are lost, who are least, who are last—who are desperately unhappy because their spirit cries out for more. Unlike the thief on the cross, they’ve not found that one who can meet their deepest needs because we’ve failed to introduce them to him. With their lives, they are crying out, “Jesus, remember me” (even if they don’t realize it), and we often turn a deaf ear. There are people around us who just want to know someone cares, that Jesus cares. How do we respond? We’re called to help them know Jesus loves them. That’s not the pastor’s job; that’s everyone’s job. I want to challenge you this week to look for opportunities to share Jesus with someone, to share with someone why this faith is so important to you. Remember, as I’ve said before, a witness simply tells what they know. That’s all you have to do. “Jesus has made a difference in me because…” Why? What difference has he made? Can you share that with someone who needs to hear it this week?

All around us, people are crying out with their lives, “Jesus, remember me.” They long for the hope that only he can provide. Will you offer it to them? Will you be his witnesses, inviting others to join him in paradise? That is, after all, our mission: becoming a community where all people encounter Jesus Christ. We love God, love others and—yes, we offer Jesus. How will you do that this week? Let’s pray.

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. I want to be with you in paradise. Help me to reach out and love nonreligious and nominally religious people so that they might see your love through me. Amen. (Hamilton 50).