Grace At Last. Luke 23:39-43. 09/22/2024.
Grace At Last
Luke 23:39-43
September 22, 2024
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Blevins
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
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I went to college two hours away from home. And you know how college kids are—always lugging stuff between home and their college dorm room or apartment. I was no different.
On one of those “lugging” episodes, I traded cars with my dad for a week or so. I left him my little red Dodge Daytona and borrowed his truck to schlep my stuff. Except it wasn’t a truck. It was a souped up, V8, maroon El Camino. Car in the front—pickup in the back. And it was a stick shift. No worries. My first car was a stick, so I was a pro. That El Camino was one ugly muscle car! And it was a ton of fun to drive!
So one day I had a friend riding with me, and I decided to demonstrate the car’s power and show off my exceptional driving ability. Armed with the ignorance of youth and a fair amount of red-neck cred, when a light turned red, I gunned it. Screeeeeeech! Then I threw it into second. Screeeeeeech! Then third. Screeeeeeech! Then fourth. Screeeeeeech! I burned rubber at every gear. Impressive, right?
Impressive, at least until I saw blue lights in the rearview mirror. Apparently, I screeched right past Putnam County’s finest.
I pulled over. The police officer came up to my window. I rolled it down. “Did you realize you were burning rubber at every gear, ma’am?”
How would I play this? I decided to play dumb.
“Oh, officer, you see, this is my daddy’s truck. And it’s a stick shift. And I’m not very good at driving a stick. It’s screeching every time I change gears for some reason.”
The officer grinned. He didn’t believe me for one second. But what would a ticket say? I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t breaking any law, to my knowledge.
“You know that’s really bad for your daddy’s tires, right?”
“Is it?” I said, knowing full well it was.
The officer shook his head. “I’m going to let you go, but you need to take it easy with this thing.”
“Thank you, your honor, er, officer!” I replied. And I eased on down the road, recognizing that I had just experienced something from that officer . . . something I now recognize as “grace.” I was relieved and grateful.
During this series called “Outlandish Grace,” we’ve been exploring the meaning of grace. Unmerited favor. Unearned mercy. I probably earned some kind of ticket that day—but instead, I received grace.
In our scripture lesson today, we meet a fellow who did nothing to earn grace but found himself the recipient of ultimate grace given to him from Jesus.
We don’t know this man’s name—he has gone down in history as “the thief on the cross.” We don’t know if he was a thief or not—the word in the scripture is best translated as “criminal.” He was a convicted criminal. Whatever his crime, the punishment for it was execution via Roman crucifixion. He happened to be crucified alongside two other criminals that day, including one Jesus of Nazareth, who had been hastily convicted of blasphemy.
Three men, all criminals according to the law of the land. One (Jesus) convicted of blasphemy. The other two for unknown crimes. One of the men being executed alongside Jesus began to mock Jesus, saying: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” The other man rebuked him for his cynicism, saying: “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.”
And that’s it. That’s all we know about this man. Maybe this man was a good person, a decent guy. Maybe all he did to earn his spot on a cruel Roman cross was steal a piece of bread to feed his starving children. Maybe his whole life had been one heinous crime after another. We simply don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if this is a good man or a terrible human being. It doesn’t matter.
Why doesn’t it matter?
It doesn’t matter because God’s grace is equally available for the just and for the unjust—for good people and for bad people. That’s the nature of God’s grace.
In Matthew 5:45, Jesus makes this truth very clear in the “Sermon on the Mount” when he tells his listeners that God: “Makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
This is why God’s grace so outlandish!
We humans—it’s our nature to pick and choose to whom we will extend mercy and grace.
We extend mercy and grace to people we like . . . people like us. We’re also more likely to extend mercy to people we find attractive. Numerous studies have shown that: “More attractive defendants are perceived as less guilty and receive more lenient sentences”[1] according to a 2023 article in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. And according to the Harvard Library, “Today, Black Americans are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and given harsher sentences than white Americans who commit the same crimes.”[2]
Thanks be to God that God is not like us! God does not play favorites. God’s grace and mercy extends to all people! Even you. Even me. How . . . outlandish!
It surprises our human sensibilities that a criminal . . . a thug perhaps . . . is the recipient of the outlandish grace of Jesus. We want people to get what’s coming to them. “An eye for an eye” makes sense to us. But in that same Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges that “sensible” notion of justice:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (Matthew 5:38-39)
This story of the thief on the cross . . . this story is the bane of those who traffic in religious fear-mongering . . . those who peddle some notion of eternal torment in hell and build their religious empires off such fear.
In the religious tradition of my youth, the theology taught that in order to avoid the fiery pit of hell, one must pray the “sinner’s prayer.” The “sinner’s prayer” goes something like this:
“Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. I believe You died for my sins so I could be forgiven. I receive You as my Lord and Savior. Thank You for coming into my life. Amen.”
There’s nothing wrong with this prayer. In fact, it’s a lovely prayer. However, the notion that everyone who doesn’t at some point utter this prayer will spend an eternity in hell? I suggest that’s nothing less than blasphemy. Why? Because if blasphemy is the act of speaking sacrilegiously about God, what could be more blasphemous than suggesting that God requires some kind of formula to be spoken in order to avoid an eternity in torment? What could be more blasphemous than accusing God of being void of grace except for those who know the “formula?”
I don’t remember the first time I questioned the punitive theology of my youth, but I do remember arguing, whether out loud or only in my mind, that the story of the thief on the cross seems to fly in the face of the notion that a person must say the “sinner’s prayer” in order to avoid hell and enter heaven. “But the thief on the cross never said the ‘sinner’s prayer’ and Jesus promised him a place in heaven,” I questioned.
And if we allow ourselves to think about that, we’ll begin to understand grace a bit more fully.
· The thief on the cross, an admitted criminal, did everything to earn a place in hell.
· The thief on the cross, an admitted criminal, did nothing to earn a place in heaven.
Yet Jesus promised him a spot.
Here’s the thing:
· There is nothing we can do to earn a place in heaven. Nothing.
· There is nothing we can do to earn a place in hell. Nothing.
That’s grace.
If we truly believe in God’s grace, then we must believe that God’s grace is universal and not selective. Otherwise, we’re just making God in our own image.
But that fear-mongering faith has a hold on lots of people. It had a hold on me for many years.
When my father died of cancer, I wasn’t sure if he had ever said the “sinner’s prayer.” I was really bothered about this. Dad hadn’t attended church. He’d expressed little interest in religion as far as I could tell. Never spoke about his faith. So I wasn’t sure that Dad was in “the good place.” As far as I knew, Dad hadn’t done the things one does to “earn a spot” in heaven. He died, leaving me concerned for his eternal destiny.
Then somewhere along the way, I encountered the outlandish grace of God. A grace not just for holier-than-thou churchy types like me who uttered some formula one day to secure my spot in heaven—but a grace that extends to all people.
And you know who helped me find my way to a more expansive idea of God’s grace?
The “thief on the cross.”
Today I am not worried about my father’s eternal destiny, because I believe in the outlandish grace of God. I am not worried about the eternal destiny for any of my loved ones. And I’m not concerned about the eternal destiny of any of your loved ones either.
Why?
Because God’s outlandish grace is far more powerful than any sin.
You can disagree with me. You are absolutely free to disagree with me. But please be honest in your disagreement. If God’s grace is selective, then God’s grace is impotent. If God’s grace is selective, then God’s grace is no more profound than the human kind of grace that is selective in nature.
Friends, the Apostle Paul said it best when he wrote:
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
—Romans 8:38-39
As for me, I am convinced that at the end, what we’ll find is grace. We won’t have earned it. But we’ll receive it. Grace . . . at last.
I close with hymn lyrics written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend:
No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life’s first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
‘Til He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.
[1]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17470218231218651#:~:text=Abstract,and%20receive%20more%20lenient%20sentences.
[2] https://library.harvard.edu/confronting-anti-black-racism/criminal-justice