“Then he said, ‘Jesus, Remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus replied, ‘I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” – Luke 23:43-43

“Did you hear about Gedaliah?” Adinah asks as she sweeps the dust off her Jerusalem porch.

“No, we were praying for him last week at Synagogue Group. Is he still a…” She’s not sure if this is gossip or just sharing prayer requests, so she pauses.

Her friend, who’s the self-appointed fulcrum of information at Synagogue, quickly updates her.

“Yup, still a thief, and – listen to this. He was crucified last weekend!”

“Crucified?!” For being a thief?”

“For being a thief.”

“Crucified, for being a thief?”

That’s no ordinary thief.

It took some doing to be crucified in Israel. The church father John Chrysostom speculates that the thief on the cross might have lived in the desert where he robbed and murdered travelers.

So either the thief on the cross was the worst thief in all of Israel (a murdering one), or he was a pickpocket with the worst luck in all of Israel, which is failure, too, in a way.

I doubt his parents were at the cross that day. Either the shame of pride or the hurt of love kept them away.

Maybe old high school acquaintances came to laugh, and the thief thought, “I wish they wouldn’t remember me this way, but I’m getting crucified, naked, and now they can’t remember me any other way.”

We all leave a legacy, and when we fail miserably, we want to erase ourselves. Not just what we did, but actually erase our memory from the minds of others.

If everyone knew the worst of me, I wouldn’t want to try to repair my legacy or somehow make them think better of me.

I’d want them to forget I even existed.

And so the thief left a memory, and he must have known it was a terrible one, and who then would want to be remembered?

Now, of course, Jesus was also on the cross that day and, during their shared agony, the thief said this two word phrase to Jesus.

“Remember me.”

“Remember me” to God.

Strange. The Thief on the Cross was asking God, of all people, to remember him.  

The Greek suggests that, in using “remember me,” the thief was “making an active plea for remembrance.”

So it’s the thief’s desperate desire that Jesus think, “Oh, yes! The thief!” the first thing he gets to paradise, which is odd because if I’d spent my life robbing and killing people, the last thing I’d really want is for a holy God to remember me.

In fact, you and I have lived “better lives” than the thief, but there’s something in us that’s a little iffy over whether we want God to remember us when we die.

Sure, we want heaven, but maybe by sneaking past the Judge. You know, walk in the middle of a pack of saints and hope he doesn’t see us.

But if we’re faced with him, on our own, we fear God saying, “Yes, I remember you. In fact, I remember every single thing you’ve ever done and said.”

Then God pauses, “And I remember everything you’ve ever thought.”

Then The Judge pauses again, “And I remember all the times you sinned when you knew it was sin, and yet you thought this day of reckoning would never really come, and now it’s come (did you think I was a liar?), and I remember it all.”

That terrifies me.

I’d rather God remember nothing about me than anything about me.

But the thief still says, “Remember me.”

Why would the thief, of all people, plead with God to remember him?

There’s only one reason.

Somehow the thief saw a different God than the one we fear, and in that clarity, grasped perhaps more clearly than any other human being in history that being remembered by Jesus after death was actually a good thing, and not just a good thing, but the best possible thing.

In fact, it was the thing he begged for.

Think of that. He wasn’t begging the centurion for some kind of reprieve. That would seem the thing to do, right?

After all, win Hadrias over and you’re off the cross, at physical therapy for a few months, and then your life is back.

But the thief begged Christ for mercy. Why?

There are two reasons.

First, the thief must have believed, “I’ve got a better shot with Christ’s mercy than the centurion’s.” After all, humans tend to show up for mercy at the places they think they’ll find it.

And to the thief, it wasn’t an indifferent and immoral Roman soldier with a sword, it was the righteous God on the cross who knew everything the thief had had ever done.

That’s the way we’re all supposed to see Christ’s mercy, and yet I find myself believing the Roman more possible of mercy than Christ.

Now — not to call my wife a Roman centurion — but to call her a Roman centurion for a second – Katie shows me mercy every day, and it doesn’t surprise me. Sometimes, I think, “Wow, she’s a merciful woman,” but even in that brief marvel, I don’t struggle to believe the veracity of her forgiveness.

But her mercy has nothing on Christ’s.

And yet, if I died, and you asked whose mercy I’d prefer — God’s or my wife’s, I would instinctively choose my wife’s.

Wouldn’t you pick the nice human, too, and not the Burner of Bushes, the Fire Throwing Deity who destroyed Cities?

I’d pick the nice human. But it’s terrible theology, and the thief recognized it as such – not because his mind finally grasped the theological supremacy of Christ’s mercy, but because his heart simply saw it.

He must have seen something in Christ’s eyes, or the way he spoke, so deeply and lovingly, to those cursing and killing him – something that led him to believe that nothing else merciful was possible that day, except what lay in the heart of the God we fear.

And that’s why he asked Jesus, “Remember me.” He knew that Jesus saw his “Me” unlike anyone else in the world.

And Jesus sees our “me” unlike anyone else in the world, too.

We’re not the “me” the rest of the world sees. We’re not the “me” that I see. We’re a “me” that is so beautiful and easily forgiven that the thief longed for Jesus to remember it.

There’s something else behind the thief’s request that gives us a glimpse of Jesus.

Usually, if we’re confronted with someone powerful and big, we squirm. Even if they’re loving and good, we still squirm.

Christians love to compare God to C.S. Lewis’ lion, Aslan (or Aslan to God – I’m not sure who has primacy these days).

And one of Christians’ favorite lines comes from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe when Mr. Badger tells the children that Aslan isn’t safe, but he’s good.

That’s supposed to be comforting.

I’m not sure why that’s supposed to be comforting because if the thief thought Christ was like Aslan (not safe, but good), I doubt he’d have turned to Jesus instead of the centurion.

“Better to take my chances with the immoral centurion who’s got the power to free me from death than the Good One who might not save my soul from eternal death.”

But there’s no indication the thief turned first to the centurion, or that he squirmed or worried about Jesus’ answer, and there’s absolutely no indication Jesus gave him any reason to.

The thief saw Jesus as good and safe that afternoon.

And that is the way we’re to see our Jesus every afternoon.

In John, Jesus says we’re now his friends. If you were to boil friendship down to one word it would be safety. That a friend might see all of you today, and would still want to see more of you tomorrow, no matter what they saw of you today.

So Christians, let’s stop the Aslan thing! In fact, Jesus himself says we’re supposed to come to Christ as a child, and a child only comes to those they see as good and safe. In fact, children tend to view everyone as good, but very few as safe, but they flocked to Jesus. We can only feel safe with someone who is good, so the two go hand-in-hand. A child cannot come to anyone they do not feel is both good and safe.

There’s one more thing about this story.

I’d like to think the thief’s confession was somehow the lone bright spot in the horror of Christ’s crucifixion, he was the Father’s final mercy to his son before the moment of total excommunication. That the Father put the thief there to remind Jesus of why he came — because when you and I see visible fruit from our suffering, it gives the pain meaning.

“My son, this is why you came. You see that dying, wounded one there on the cross? That thief? He’s why you’re here. Push on a bit longer, my beloved son, and you’ll both come home.”

So the thief’s last gasp plea didn’t put off Jesus; instead, it must have touched him deeply, and so Christ’s proclamation that “today you will be with me in Paradise” might have sounded intimate and wistful — the way suffering soldiers often remind themselves of home, and in that longing, mixed with suffering, a kinship and intimacy is born that’s impossible to produce in our normal lives.

Jesus is your brother, your fellow soldier, too, and he still feels his cross, as you carry yours. He is good, he is safe, he is “your loving ally.”

So don’t look down to the centurion for mercy.

Look to Christ, the good and safe one who sees all of you, and forgives you with relish, as proof that his suffering was all worth it.

Turn to him and say, “Remember Me” and it doesn’t matter how the world remembers you, or even you how you remember you.

The only one who matters will remember you in a way they won’t, in a way that only he can, in a way that sees you as the beautiful masterpiece he loves, and he will say: “You will be with me in Paradise.”

[Painting: Christ and the Good Thief, Titian]

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