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Praise, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the Gospel of the New Testament. It’s all about those who revile our Lord, wagging their fingers, shaking their heads, and crying out, “If you are the Son of God.” This evening we have two unlikely characters. Unlikely because they are not Jews. They are Gentile sinners. They confess Christ as the King of Israel. They confess Christ as the Son of God.
If you look at the people that were gathered around the cross and had anything to do with the cross, these were your powerful people: Herod, the king who had given his approval and passed him off to Pontius Pilate; Pontius Pilate, who loved to have the power to say yes or no, thumb up or thumb down; and then the chief priests, scribes, and the elders. They all were powerful ones, for their testimony was what brought to light the conundrum that loose faith spread to the wildest man who loosed fire out.
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like had those powerful people come to faith? What would it have been like? Welcome. What would it have been like had Herod come to faith? What would it have been like had Pilate come to faith or the Sanhedrin? It would have been a totally different situation. And the problem with that thought is that it’s attractive to us, isn’t it? You see, whenever you want to find out about what Jesus has done in someone’s life, you don’t ask someone who is of low estate. You ask someone who is of high value or noble standing who they are, and then the example they provide tells you about what God has done in their life. We would love to have those kinds of people.
But that’s not the kind of people that God chooses. In this evening’s text, he chooses two specific men. And not just specific men, but hardened Gentile sinners. The first, the thief. The thief. Now this thief, we have no idea about his name or anything that he did, but whatever he did was finally worthy of crucifixion. You can think he probably was hardened in the sense that he had been doing this for many weeks, months, or years—a habit of his life. He saw in himself the just punishment being meted out. He knew he was to die for such sins. That was the consequence, and it was true.
But as he looked at the man next to him, hanging just like he, there he saw a man who was not guilty of a sin deserving such death. Now, so what motivated this man to make this statement? Did this man think in his heart, “I need to influence these Jews with the gospel message, so I want to make sure they hear me ask this question”? I don’t think he thought that hard. You think that hard, and so do I. I don’t think he sat back and thought, “Wow, I don’t want to say this because if I say this statement, then these Jews are going to think I’m a hypocrite, and I’m, oh yeah, it’s your last will and testament before you die, and you’re wanting him to save you.” He doesn’t think about that either. He’s only thinking about himself.
In the midst of him only thinking about himself and his soul’s destiny, God uses him. When he says, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” he is implying Jesus is the king of which the placard above his head proclaims. And everyone there, all of the Sanhedrin that gathered, and all of the other Jews that believed in him and those who didn’t heard this dying, hardened criminal confess faith and heard Jesus’ response: “Today you’ll be with me in paradise.” Not someday in the future, not thousands of years when I return with glory, but today you shall be with me in paradise.
And the thief didn’t think in his head, “I don’t know if I’m going to say this right.” He just said it. Very public event. It was not a private thing that Jesus utilized this dying man and his wish. It was God’s design. Sometimes we are so concerned about how we get the message out, we forget to get the message out. And again, the motivation for this man was not saving anybody’s soul. It was completely and totally self-serving and self-centered, and God used him. Just like he uses you.
He wanted to be saved from the eternal consequences of his sin. And he is very, very powerless. He is not the kind of person you will see on Oprah Winfrey’s show or any other kind of television show or any kind of Christian channel, nor will there be a movie made out of him because he was completely and totally powerless. He didn’t even come to faith until the final moment, and God used him. And he had no idea.
The other one was a hardened soldier. He was a centurion, which means he was the leader of over a hundred men. He didn’t just get that right out of basic training. He had been through many battles and had proven himself both skillfully as a soldier on the battlefield and discipline and leadership-wise. And let’s face it, sometimes the way to keep other soldiers in line at that time was to be a brute yourself. So he had seen and done many horrific things, as any soldier in the army of the Romans did. And yet God had been picking away at this man’s exterior callousness by his Holy Spirit, using the people that had been around Jesus and this crucifixion and his job as a part of it.
When this man puts all of this together by the Holy Spirit’s prompting and confesses a statement of faith, he’s not thinking to himself, “Gosh, I probably shouldn’t say this because what will the other soldiers think of me?” He’s not thinking, “How could I say this? Because the Jews and the other people are going to think you’re not worthy to say that.” And he’s just overwhelmed with emotion. Are you calling yourself a soldier? And he’s only a soldier. He has no power. He only has power over a few men, and he’s told what to do, and the man who told him what to do was Pilate.
So as he watched and looked, he also had to say, literally, “I am the one who brought this to pass.” And yet God used his words in front of all these people. Don’t you find it remarkable? John doesn’t say anything profoundly important to anybody there like these men did. The mother of our Lord doesn’t have anything recorded of any profound importance like these men did. Only these two hardened Gentile sinners does God give the front stage to proclaim truth about Jesus being the King and the Son of God.
And we sometimes worry whether we have what it takes to proclaim it. You’ve been given it. You’ve been given it. If he can use two different kinds of men, but both very hardened sinners together, to further his kingdom, he can use and has used you. And if he can use men who are completely consumed with themselves and haven’t thought too much about these ramifications, he can use you. You see, Jesus marvels and revels in using the low, the humble, the powerless. Because then the focus isn’t on the vessel, but what the vessel proclaims.
You know and I know as they looked at these two men, one about to die, one who did the deed of death, they could look at their confession of faith with any kind of cross eye or slanted head and say, “Hogwash,” but not your God. He used this, and he still uses it today to bring people to faith, to see the kind of people that God loves and brings to faith and changes.
Wouldn’t you love to know the rest of the story? We’ll never know about the thief because he died and went to heaven. But the Roman centurion, wouldn’t you have loved to see how this plays out in his life? Dealing with the ramifications of being a believer now that he is a Roman soldier. How would he and the men that are underneath him treat him? And those who are over him, how would they treat him? But he’s in good company, isn’t he? There was another Gentile sinner who became a believer. His name was Naaman, the soldier from the north. He too brought the faith back to his northern country. And a hardened man was he if he was the general of all.
We’re in good company. We’re in good company with the powerless who have only the power of the gospel. We have no huge amount of influence. And in fact, sometimes what people do know about us has turned them off to us. But we’ve got the power of these words, and we speak them as they spoke them faithfully, not knowing what will happen and not really caring what will happen other than that it’s proclaimed in love. How amazingly powerful are the words that the powerless speak to other powerless people.
And those who think themselves to be powerful, how pitifully powerless are they on the outside of the kingdom of God looking in and never being able to come in without acknowledging their powerlessness. Jesus exalts the lowly, and he has exalted you, calling you his child and feeding you from his hands. Be at peace, dear brothers and sisters. This is good news of great joy for you to live out in his holy name. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
