Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

Morning Promise Service, Christ the King Sunday – 11/25/01

By Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Text: Luke 23:33-43

Jesus Has a Good Memory

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Jesus has a good memory.  I don’t only mean that he has a long memory, but that when he remembers very good things happen.

When we sing the words (as we will during our prayers today), “Jesus remember me, when you come into your kingdom…”  I think most of us are asking him to take us along with him into heaven.

When he said them, I believe the criminal on the cross was asking something much less bold.  I think he was literally only asking Jesus to remember him.  He felt his hopelessness, and had even accepted it.  He was headed for death and darkness …or worse.  So, he asked for just one small kindness from the innocent man hanging beside him—so that his life might not come and then leave in complete and empty forgetfulness.

“Remember me,” he asked.  Across the chasm that separates eternal life from death, or perhaps nothingness, the criminal hoped that maybe this one person who hung beside him and shared his death would at least remember that he existed at all.  “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.”

 

It has always struck me that when that even though the criminal asked only to be remembered, the result was immediate and far beyond anything that he had asked: Today!  “Today,” Jesus answered, “you will be with me in Paradise!”

 

We do not know that criminal’s name, but we remember him and we keep alive his important and powerful witness.  What we learned from him is that even at your worst and loneliest moment you can reach for God.  —He is already holding you.  Today.  “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.”  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Today.

 

And that scene on Golgotha showed the unreasonable and incredible power of Christ’s kingship.  All those people around were mocking his kingship: “If you are the king, the chosen, then save yourself, and then save us!”

He appeared so terminally vulnerable, stretched out, naked and dying in front of them, and was lifting no finger to help himself.  They missed the irony: it was precisely by remaining on the cross that Jesus saves. 

Jesus’ Kingship is shown from the cross.  He cross sarcastically labeled him as a king—of the Jews.  But he rose from it as The King, the Messiah, even beyond what any of the prophets ever knew they were describing!

 

By remaining on the cross that Jesus saves…in as few words as: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”  And I am convinced he was looking far beyond the crowd, and straight into my heart, when he said that.

Then, even without words.  All that the criminal asked was remembrance.  Here was the smallest of faith, the weakest of hope, and still he was promised Paradise.

This King Jesus is powerful!  To simply be remembered by him is a very good thing.  And he has a good memory—a memory that opens his arms in welcome into his kingdom.  There is no explicit formula, no tasks to complete, no proper prayers, last rites, or incantations to say, no sufficient begging or pleading is needed.  We are simply welcomed.

 

That promise is ours.  Unlike the criminal who died and passed on his witness through his memorial, we are blessed to live in it.  We are commissioned to live and pass on that promise to each other and to others.  We are commissioned to tell them Jesus Christ, King of heaven and earth, remembers us.

 

This morning, as you came in, you were asked to write your name on a block of wood on one side and, on the other side, to write the word “remember.” 

I want you to take that piece of wood, and find someone here who has a different last name and is ten years older or younger than you.  You will then exchange your piece of wood with that person.  Tell them one thing that is most important to you.  Then, I want you to remain with that person for just a few moments, until I tell you what to do next.

 

Now, each of us will keep that person’s piece of wood—keep it in your purse or jacket pocket, or on your desk—somewhere where you are going to stumble across it, or touch it from time to time (or get a splinter from it).  Each time that you do, I want you to think of that person.  In that brief moment, remember them, remember them before God.  No elaborate prayer is needed.

Just remember, and remember that, in just the same way, you are being remembered, thought of, and lifted before God.

 

We are lifted before God who never forgets.  And in that simple remembrance, he always welcomes you, and all of us, into Paradise.  Today.

 

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