Holy Trinity & St. Anskar

Lord, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom

+ In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity

I would like to offer a revision of “The Penitent Thief”, as we sometimes call him in the Western Church: he was neither penitent nor a thief – exactly. A close reading of today’s gospel turns up no repentance. Jesus’ comrade in death acknowledges that he was getting what he deserved for what he did, but he doesn’t say he was sorry for doing it. Any penitence he may have felt has to be read into the story. It’s our interpretation. (“He MUST have been sorry, otherwise, Jesus wouldn’t have approved of him.”) But the Gospel doesn’t say that. By the way, he is “penitent” only in the West. The Eastern Church calls him “right-thinking” or “holy,” not “penitent” or “good.” Luke doesn’t define his crime, either. Today’s Gospel just calls Jesus’ two fellow-victims “evildoers”, not “thieves”.

This is one of the details of the Passion story that is found in all four gospels, but the two crucified with Jesus are variously evildoers (in Luke), simply others (in John), and thieves (in Mark and Matthew). At least that’s how the King James Version reads Matthew and Mark, but it’s not precise. It may even be misleading. What pops into your mind when you hear the word, thief? A burglar, a pickpocket, a smash and grab artist? But that kind of evildoer was not usually crucified. The RSV and the Jerusalem Bible have “robbers”, but there again you get an image of a stick-up or a mugging. The New RSV is the most accurate, with “bandits.” But even that conjures a guy on a horse in a Lone Ranger mask – or a gang of armed horsemen with kerchiefs over their faces holding up a stage or a train.

Or maybe Pancho Villa. And here is where an alternative to the traditional interpretation presents itself. Pancho Villa was a bandit, but his band was political – an army of insurrection. They weren’t primarily interested in money, but in revolution. The lexicon translates Mark’s word as brigands: an archaic word that makes me think of pirates – or Johnny Depp! - but its precise meaning is armed irregular soldiers. It can mean mere freebooters, but it can also mean guerilla fighters.

In Jesus’ time, the colonial authorities were plagued by such partisans, who supported themselves by preying on merchant caravans and official convoys. They were known as zealots. They thought of themselves as holy warriors, after the manner of the Maccabees. They were dedicated to making life miserable for the Romans. They operated in decentralized bands – or cells – picking battles they could win, out in the countryside and smaller towns. To the imperial occupation forces, they were simply terrorists, and when they were caught, they were crucified.

So, the two evildoers who were crucified with Jesus may have been – I would say very probably were – insurgents. In Luke’s story, they represent two opposite motives for uprising. One is a fanatic, motivated by bitter hatred; the other, was as Che Guevara famously remarked “at the risk of seeming ridiculous…motivated by great love.” The wrong-thinking one has nothing but contempt for Jesus, the ineffectual rural preacher to the poor. He taunts and derides the Savior, just as the religious authorities do. (They are two sides of the same coin.) But the right-thinking one rebukes his comrade, in the name of respect for God and humanity. “We knew what we were getting into; we knew it might come to this, when we took up arms against the empire; we can expect no mercy from the Romans. But this Man has done nothing to deserve this death.”

We have no way of knowing what he was thinking when he turned to Jesus and asked to be remembered in His Kingdom. Maybe he was sorry, maybe not. He didn’t say. Maybe he had become a believer in Jesus’ Kingship, maybe not. Maybe he was just showing a little compassion to a poor well-meaning Fool who never hurt anyone and Who was trying to help His oppressed countrymen in His own crazy way but had run afoul of the same brutal power that had condemned him and his partner. Maybe he was trying to humor Jesus and comfort Him somehow in His last, terrible hours. In any case, the Gospel does NOT record any expression of remorse. He didn’t say he was sorry for what he did. He just asked to be remembered in Jesus’ Kingdom.

That, you will remember, was the accusation: JESUS OF NAZARETH KING OF THE JEWS. What Pilate intended ironically, the insurgent honored, and threw the truth right back in Pilate’s face by acknowledging Jesus as King, without renouncing one bit of his own past. And Jesus accepted him with words that say nothing about forgiveness of sin.

Now, from the perspective of the later Church, which was at peace with the Empire, this terrorist had to be rehabilitated. He had to be sorry and Jesus’ acceptance had to be forgiveness. And so we have always interpreted it. Furthermore, it would be better if we forgot all about the possibility that he was a partisan and just called him robber or a thief. The Empire can live with a penitent thief. An unrepentant insurgent, personally escorted into heaven by the God-man, however, is another matter. King James I certainly didn’t want to hear about that!

If you wish to consider my alternative interpretation a bit of a roman a clef, feel free. If you think it may be a not-so-veiled code for current events, I leave it to you to speculate who in our own time might correspond to Romans and Zealots, to occupiers and insurgents. If your speculation is uncomfortable, believe me, I share your discomfort. But I am afraid that a certain Minnesota Lutheran theologian – Carl Braaten – was right when he observed that there are hidden in the Gospel little sticks of dynamite that can blow up our settled way of thinking and living – even our whole World Order.

That’s precisely what today’s feast is about. Pilate, in his stubborn carelessness, was inadvertently right: Jesus of Nazareth IS King of the Jews, not Caesar. And His Kingdom is not just “up there” or “in here” or “after we die” or “at the end of time”, but here and now in this world – not, as He said to Pilate, “of this world” for His authority does not come from us, but definitely in this world and in our history. Today’s little stick of dynamite reveals something of what that may mean: the doom of Empire. The Man we confess as Savior and Lord referred to His own death as “the Judgment of this world and the overthrow of this world’s Prince.” And He died in solidarity with violent revolutionaries. The Empire killed them all for the same reason: they were intolerably dangerous to imperial power, because they spoke for the poor, the dispossessed, the used, the enslaved. To be subject to Christ the King means solidarity with the Empire’s victims. That solidarity can be costly. We express our willingness to accept the cost when we eat his Body and drink his Blood.

Our brothers and sisters of the Orthodox Church, just before they do so, say this prayer:

Of your celestial banquet, O Lord, make me this day a communicant. For I will not speak of your Mysteries to your enemies, neither, like Judas, will I betray you with a kiss, but like the Holy Brigand will I confess you: ‘Lord, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom.’

We renounce Judas, who connived with the collaborationist authorities, and take as our model no “Penitent Thief,” but an Insurgent, Right-thinking in his recognition of Christ as King. And the King’s majestic reply – surely the most gracious words ever addressed to a human being – is the beginning of His judgment of this World’s Order, his undoing of its injustice, and the doom of its power:

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me, in paradise.”

AMEN

MARANATHA

COME, LORD JESUS!