Is This the King?

[This message was shared earlier today during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 23:27-43
Two things seem, more than others, to show us a lot about who we are and what we believe: how we live and how we die. 

Some people live and die with arrogance or resentment or fear being the prevailing themes of their living and dying. 

A few live and die with the faith, humility, love, and hope they have been given by Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Himself lived and died with faith, humility, love, and hope, of course. But, on this Christ the King Sunday, we also remember that He lived, died, rose, and lives still as the King and Lord, the Savior and God of the universe.

Kings and other power-holders of the world, you know, like to advertise their power, their supposed strength. They have symbols of their power: homes and offices, jets and helicopters, official seals and aides at their constant beck-and-call.

Jesus, in fact, divested Himself of the power and authority that has belonged to Him from all eternity, in order to reclaim His fallen subjects--you and me--so that all who repent and believe in Him will live in His kingdom forever. He didn't look like a king to most of the people who came in contact with Him.

As Luke tells it in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 23:27-43, on the day of Jesus' crucifixion only one person--a κακοῦργος in Luke’s manuscript: a doer of bad or of evil, a criminal--saw that even as He died on a cross, Jesus was and is the King. Only this one man saw that Jesus holds life, death, and eternity in His hands. 

When we look to Jesus on the cross, do we see our King? 

And should we? 

Let’s follow Jesus to His cross today to find the answers to these questions.

Our lesson begins by telling us about the grim procession that followed Jesus to a spot called the Skull, apparently a common site for criminal executions outside Jerusalem’s walls. Women, following after Jesus along with the crowds out to see the spectacle of Jesus’ death, weep. Jesus tells them that one day if Jerusalem and the rest of God’s people continue to reject God and His Messiah, destruction will come. Jesus says that the destruction will be so horrible--and that destruction did come to Jerusalem, Israel’s pretensions to nationhood, and the temple in 70 AD--that Jewish women, who always aspired to motherhood, will be considered blessed for not having brought their children into a world of such pain. Jesus says: “...if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (verse 31). 

In other words, “If the Romans do this to one they pronounce innocent, what will they do to a rebellious city.” Or, “...if God [hasn’t] spared His innocent Son, how much worse will it be when the Romans inflict [God’s] judgment on the city?”*

Even on the brink of the agonies of the cross, Jesus isn’t thinking of Himself, but of others. This is a characteristic of a true King, One Who understands that power is never to be used selfishly, but only for the benefit of others.

Beginning in verse 32, we see Jesus being taken to His cross, suspended between two criminals, evildoers.

In ancient times, those who were thought to be righteous or blameless spent their dying breaths cursing those who wronged them or killed them. 

Not Christ the King. 

“Father” Jesus prays, “forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (verse 34) 

And, lest we think that this is the prayer of a defeated idealist, we learn in the book of Acts that Jesus, once crucified and now risen, shares His kingly power over sin, death, and darkness to those who believe in Him. The first martyr of the Christian faith was a Greek-cutured Jew named Stephen. Filled with the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus to His disciples, Stephen prayed for his murderers, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:60) 

I don’t know about you, but I am sure that in my own power, I am incapable of forgiving others as Jesus forgives me. 

This  is why Jesus tells Christians to pray for His power in our living and dying: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Alexander Pope famously said, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Only King Jesus, God the Son, Who lives in those who have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, can help us to forgive those who have wounded us the way He has forgiven us for the wounds we have inflicted on Him by our sin.

Do you remember that when, at the beginning of Jesus' ministry when He was tempted by the devil, the devil left Jesus vowing to tempt Him again at a more opportune time? Clearly, Satan regarded Jesus' crucifixion as that more opportune time, a time to try to prevent Jesus from fulfilling His mission of dying on the cross for you and me.

At the cross, Jesus is taunted several times at the cross. Each taunt represents a temptation to sin for Jesus, to depart from the will of God the Father. 

Taunt number one: Referring to Jesus’ many miracles, the crowds and the rulers of Jewish religious life say, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” (verse 35) But Christ the King didn’t come to save Himself. He had already been safe and sound in His heavenly Kingdom. Instead, He stripped Himself of His advantages as our King to live as one one of us, although He never sinned, to become the perfect sacrifice for our sins. 

Taunt number two: The soldiers mocked Jesus and, playing the part of a king’s cup-bearer, they offered Jesus wine. Only this wine was bitter, like that drunk by the poorest and weakest. “If you are the king of the Jews,” the soldiers tell Jesus, “save yourself.” (verse 37) “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” Jesus had asked His disciples at the garden of Gethsemane. “But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?" (Matthew 26:53-54) Jesus kept His eyes on the prize, saving us from sin and death by dying on the cross on our behalf. He wanted to save you and me for His kingdom. 

Taunt number three: Verse 38: “There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.” Pilate had said Jesus was innocent. Yet He had so little regard for Jesus’ life that He sent Him to the cross anyway. In those days, the crimes of the executed were posted on signs above their heads. Pilate mocked both Jesus and God’s people by labeling Jesus the King of the Jews. Yet, Jesus Who could have escaped all the taunting and death itself, chose to remain on His cross.

Taunt number four: Verse 39: “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’” Be honest: When you’re shown pictures of yourself with family members or friends, who do you look for first? We are born prisoners of self, sinners. There’s no one that we trust more than ourselves. Yet, dead and dying people, we can’t save ourselves from ourselves. Only the King with the love and self-discipline to forget about Himself can save us. Jesus is that King. Jesus says of Himself that “...the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." (Luke 19:10)

Amid this scene in which the whole world--Jewish and Gentile, religious and secular, rulers and common people--rejects Jesus, one person sees what no one else, not even Jesus’ closest followers, sees. 

He sees how Jesus lives and dies. 

He hears the gentle, powerful Word and witness of Jesus and by it, the Holy Spirit creates within him faith in Jesus. He sees that Christ is the King, the King, Lord of heaven and earth. 

That one person who sees and hears is one of the evil-doers, one of the criminals. 

He confesses his sin as he tells the other criminal, “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.” (Luke 23:40-41) You can’t have Jesus as your Lord and King if you refuse to first own your need of being saved from your sin. 

And then, this man convicted of a capital crime, turns to Jesus and confesses faith: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (verse 42)

Jesus is bloodied, beaten, battered, pierced, on the brink of death. He doesn't look like someone who could save anyone. He doesn't look like the kings or power-holders of this world. 

But even at this moment, the criminal sees that Jesus is His King: The Word, powered by the Holy Spirit, gives him saving faith in Jesus. He welcomes that Word that tells us--no matter how crazy or painful our lives get--that Jesus is “the Messiah [the Christ, the Anointed King], the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16)

Some who heard the exchange between the criminal and Jesus may have thought, “Everyone else is against Jesus and the only one who believes in Him is this thug. Some king!” But Jesus, the Word of God, had done His life-saving work in the criminal. The criminal clung to the truth that Saint Paul would later experience and write about, “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)

The criminal’s faith in Jesus is rewarded instantly. After his confession of faith, Jesus tells Him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (verse 43) In Jewish thought, Paradise was a garden, like Eden, where God’s people, the subjects of Christ the King, went before their resurrections. And even now, in this moment and in all the moments of this life, as we receive Jesus in faith, we are part of His eternal kingdom. As we confess our faith in Him, Jesus says as He did that day in the house of the repentant sinner Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man [this woman, this child], too, is a son [is a daughter] of Abraham,” a child of God’s promise that “the righteous shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17)

In John 3:31, the apostle writes: “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all.” Jesus, the One Who comes from heaven is above all. He is Christ the King, the One Who destroys the power of sin, death, and the devil over our lives. 

We can see this is true in how He lived, how He died, how He rose, and how, even today, He comes to us in Word and Sacrament and the life of His Church. 

Turn to Him when He calls you to repentance. Turn to Him when He calls you to faith. Each time you turn to Him, you will live as His subject, His child, His chosen, His friend, now and forever. Amen

*The Lutheran Study Bible

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Christ's Return for Judgment (Part 13, The Augsburg Confession)

We Lutherans confess our belief in it almost every time we gather for worship.

What is the "it" we confess?

Well, in the Apostles’ Creed, we claim to believe that the risen and ascended Jesus will one day “come again to judge the living and the dead.”

In the Nicene Creed, we say that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.”

Lutheran Christians have always accepted the historic creeds as faithful expressions of, not just belief, but of essential truth revealed to the world by God. And that includes their assertion that one day Jesus Christ will return to judge every human being.

Today, as we continue to consider what it means to be a Lutheran Christian, we look at the topic of Article 16 of The Augsburg Confession, “Christ’s Return for Judgment.” The first paragraph of the article says:

Our [Lutheran] churches teach that at the end of the world Christ will appear for judgment and will raise all the dead....He will give the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting joys, but He will condemn ungodly people and the devils to be tormented without end... 

For those who seek to bring God under human authority or subject Christ to their own preferences, the very notion that Jesus Who made Himself our servant and bore our sin on the cross is going to one day send some people to hell is disagreeable. "All because they don’t believe in Jesus?" they wonder. “That’s awfully arbitrary,” a woman said to me once.

But I couldn’t help but wonder if she also thought it arbitrary of God to extend the possibility of forgiveness and new life to sinners who deserve condemnation and death.

If you and I are willing to accept the Jesus Who is so arbitrary that He offers eternity as a free and undeserved gift to all who turn from sin and believe in Him, we must also be willing to accept the Jesus Who acquiesces to the desires of some for lives without Him. There will come a point when Jesus will accept that as people's final answer to Him.

But should we fear judgment day? What will it be like?

Please turn to the passage that the Confession mentions first, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:2.

Paul wrote the letter from which these verses come to the Christians living in a place called Thessalonica, a Greek city set on the Aegean Sea. He wrote it in about 51 AD.

The Thessalonian Christians were disappointed, less then twenty years after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, that the Lord hadn’t yet returned to bring His new creation to its final, eternal fulfillment.

In the meantime, believers had died. What, the surviving Christians wondered, would happen to those who had already passed away if they weren’t around when Jesus returned to this world?

Paul sought to calm their fears. He writes: “...I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.”

Paul is saying that the deaths of believers will bring grief to those who loved them as surely as the deaths of non-believers bring grief to their loved ones. But, he’s saying, if the one you loved was a believer in Jesus, there will also be hope in your grief, the hope of living eternally with a Savior Who conquered sin, death, and the devil for those who believe in Him!

That’s why Paul writes what he does next: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.” (In other words, those who died believing in Christ will be raised at the moment of Jesus’ return and they too will witness Jesus’ return.)

Then, Paul describes what will happen on the day of Christ's return. “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with a trumpet of God. [There will be no mystery about it when Jesus returns. He won’t show up incognito. The whole human population, Christians and non-Christians will hear it and see it at the moment He makes His appearance.]

"Then [Paul goes on] we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”

What Paul is trying to convey here is not what some people refer to as a rapture, but a reunion between Christ and His people.

After telling the Thessalonians to comfort one another with his words, he goes on: “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you.” In this, Paul reflects Jesus’ words to His apostles when speaking of the day when He returns and judges the living and the dead: No one knows when it will happen. And anyone who claims they do is lying.

In fact, Christ's return will come perhaps when the world least expects it, when most of its inhabitants have no thought of Christ. Paul says, “that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

But what will Jesus be judging on judgment day?

Jesus will be judging one thing. One thing only. It’s this: Do we have faith? That means...

• Do we trust Jesus? 
• Have we trusted Him enough to confess our sins in His Name? 
• Have we trusted in Him enough to confess our doubts about Him? 
• Have we trusted in Him enough to let Him lead and direct us through His Word, found in the Bible, even when where He leads isn’t where we want to go and what He directs us to do is the last thing we want to do? 
• Have we wanted Jesus even when we wandered down the blind alley of sin? 

Faith is what Jesus will be judging.

Faith is that gift we receive as we openly take the Word of God about Jesus Christ and the Sacraments of the Church. The just--the people made right with God--live by faith, the Bible tells us (Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, Hebrews 10:38).

In Matthew 24:13, Jesus tells us how powerful this faith is within the context of talking about the day when He returns to the world: “...the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

What does it mean to endure in our faith in Christ?

There are superstars like Paul and Peter, Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie ten-Boom and Mother Teresa to inspire us with their enduring faith, of course. Despite persecution, sometimes in spite of their own doubts, they endured in trusting in Christ.

They kept heeding the Word about new life for all who believe in Jesus Christ, even when sin, death, and the devil accosted them.

But I want to hold up a different saint as an example of faith to you right now. You don’t know her. In fact, I’m not even going to use her real name. She was a member of one of my former parishes.

Joan had been afflicted with a disease that had kept her from doing many of the ordinary things people do in life since she was a teenager. But she had married. She had become a mother. She had become a grandmother.

But now, at just age 54, she was about to lose her life. Her hospital room was dark the day I visited her because any light seemed to cause her pain and she never opened her eyes. She barely had the strength to speak.

“Oh, pastor,” she told me, “I’m afraid to die. It’s not the dying that frightens me. It’s just that I’m an awful sinner.”

Now, we all know that all sins are violations of God’s holiness. In the eyes of a holy God, every sin we commit--from failing to keep a day for Him to taking His Name in vain, from stealing to gossiping, from sexual intimacy outside of marriage to murder--is equally damning.

But as I sat with Joan, I felt certain of two things.

First, I was certain that she was a sinner, just like me. Just like you.

And second, I felt certain that only a person who recognizes their sin and realizes how wonderful the God we know in Jesus Christ receives the forgiveness for sin God offers to those who repent and believe Christ.

As gently as I could, I asked, “Joan, do you remember what Jesus told Nicodemus? He said, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.’”

“Do you believe in Jesus?” I asked Joan. A tear poured down one of her cheeks and she said, “Yes.”

I tried to assure Joan that soon, she would see Jesus face to face.

To many of us, the biggest mystery about God is this: He has saved unworthy sinners like us.

It does show how gracious God is. But, you know what? We need to get over  thoughts like that. They’re too much about us. We need to focus on Christ instead.

Even if you and I found a way to go through a single day without sinning, we still wouldn’t deserve forgiveness or eternity. In my natural inborn self, I’m a sinner who deserves death.

Thank God that on judgment day, I will not be judged for whom I am, but for Who Jesus Christ is and that, through faith in Him, He has come to live in me.

Please look Galatians 2:20. Paul writes there: “I have been crucified [that is my old sinful self] with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Martin Luther had this passage in mind when he spoke of how he dealt with the devil's temptations to sin. When Luther sensed the devil tempting him, knocking on the door of his heart, Luther didn't dare go to to the door. Instead, he sent Jesus to answer for him. Luther sensed Jesus telling the devil, "Martin Luther doesn't live here any more. I do. Now go to where you belong!"

Listen, Lutherans: Your old sinful self died at Baptism. A new self, your Christ self, rose then.

People can commit spiritual suicide as surely as they commit physical suicide, of course. They can walk away from Christ and His promises as I did when I was an atheist. Had I died in those years, Christ would have respected my preferences and allowed me to enter eternity without Him.

But if you and I keep holding onto Jesus, I can assure you that when we are genuinely repentant for sin, on the day of Christ’s return, God the Father will look not on us as the sinners we are. Instead, He will only see Jesus Christ living in us.

God makes of every person who repents and believes in Christ another Christ--a "little Christ," as Luther put it, another child of God, each with our own personalities and gifts, but each surrendered to the God Who made us and loves them, who pray with Jesus, “nonetheless, Father, not my will, but Your will be done.”

God covers the sins of those who believe in Christ with the grace and forgiveness of Christ and imbues our lives with Christ-like purposes and pursuits.

And as we keep repenting and keep believing, the old sinner is drowned all over again in our baptismal waters and the new self is enlivened again by the Word of God and sustained again by Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion.

First John 3:2 says, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed [in other words, when Jesus returns to judge the living the dead], we shall be like Him...”

We will be just like Jesus, fit for eternity, not because we did good or holy deeds, but because, like Joan, we held onto the promise of forgiveness and new life God makes to those who turn their backs on sin, death, and the devil and keep on following Jesus, when their faith is weak and when their faith is strong.

At the day of judgment, all who have endured in following Jesus will hear Jesus tell them--you who believe in Jesus will hear Him tell you: “Enter the joy of your Master.”

Could there possibly be better words than those to hear? If there are, I can’t imagine what they might be!

This week, ask God to give you the chance to share the good news of Jesus Christ with every person you can, to invite them to worship and study and pray with you, to ask them how, as a believer in Jesus, you can help them. Do those things, I beg you, so that everyone you know or love will come to believe in Jesus and hear those same words on judgment day that you want to hear: "Enter the joy of your Master!” Amen!

***********************************************************************************
 [This was shared during both of this morning's worship services at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.] 

After this morning's early service at Saint Matthew, I was asked what happened to Christians when they die: do they sleep until the resurrection or do they go immediately into the presence of God? The answer, I think is, "Yes." I talk about this question in this blog post from 2008, Where Do We Go When We Die?