Like the first word of the seven last words, ("Father forgive them....") this second word attributed to Jesus from the cross is unique to the gospel of Luke. And, again like the first word, if any of the four gospels would provide this moment, it would be Luke.
Though all four gospel writers record that Jesus was crucified along with two other individuals - identified as "bandits" in Matthew and Mark, "criminals" in Luke, and merely referred to as "others" in John - the relationship between Jesus and those crucified with him is interpreted differently.
For John, there is no interaction between the three men. Matthew and Mark add the voices of the two bandits to those who are deriding Jesus on the cross. But not Luke. Luke, who throughout his gospel has been the champion of the downtrodden, the outcast, the marginalized, the unclean, speaks of a conversation from the cross between Jesus and a seemingly repentant criminal that has captured the hearts of Christians over the centuries.
In Luke's account, both criminals speak. The first one, unrepentant to the end derides Jesus,
"Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us."
The second criminal rebukes the first,
"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 into your kingdom.'"
And it's in response to the second criminal that Jesus offers these hopeful words in Luke's Gospel:
"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
Sometimes I've struggled to reconcile this image of a momentary, immediate experience of life after death with the historic creeds of the Church. In the Apostles' Creed, we affirm our belief in "the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." In The Nicene Creed, "We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come."
When we experience the death of a loved one, we can find great comfort in this Lukan conversation between Jesus and the second criminal on the cross, because it gives us hope that there is an instantaneous cross-over from this life to the next. Several years ago, while preparing for a funeral with a family in the church I was serving, I was asked to focus on the immediacy of the afterlife, rather than focusing on the more creedal understandings (and other biblical teachings) that support a final resurrection theology.
Some reconcile this tension between a "now or later" experience of Heaven, by envisioning a person's soul/spirit entering into heaven upon death, awaiting to be reunited with a resurrected body at the resurrection of the dead at Christ's Second Coming. Others have wondered exactly what Jesus meant by "Paradise". Is it heaven, in the way we imagine heaven? Or could it be likened to a kind of Roman Catholic understanding of Purgatory?
Of course, maybe fixating on exactly what Jesus meant regarding "Paradise" and its relationship to the afterlife is missing the point. After all, whenever and however and wherever it is that we shall find ourselves brought into the fullness of God' presence, and what form and shape that will take is far beyond our pay grade. These are God-sized matters. In death or in life, our role is to trust the One who knows and holds those deep truths that we cannot begin to fathom.
Maybe Luke offered this conversation between Jesus and the criminal, not so much to provide us with a full-proof, hard-clad doctrine of life after death. Perhaps he shared with us this moving moment, simply as a way of bearing witness, yet again, to the heart of God revealed in Jesus.
Maybe this moment can simply be seen as one more in a series of moments when Jesus welcomes sinners, providing another example of Jesus offering hospitality to the "least, the last and the lost" (a phrase Disciple Bible Study Students will remember). Perhaps Luke offers this moment not so much to try and give us a peak into the next world, as to give us hope in this world.
I, too, find comfort in hearing Jesus speak of "Paradise" in light of my own view and hope of Heaven. But maybe the themes of repentance and faith, hospitality and welcome, compassion and love are more central to Luke's intent.
In Luke's crucifixion narrative, one criminal remained defiant and unrepentant to the end. The other criminal, in the presence of Jesus, realized that the kingdom of Christ was to be desired over the kingdom of Caesar, over all the kingdoms of the world.
Maybe, after all is said and done that's really at the heart of the matter here. Maybe Luke is simply bearing witness to a cross-shaped truth:
Paradise is the fruit of aligning our lives to the right kingdom....
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