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A Plea for God’s Justice
For this Good Friday, I wish to meditate on Jesus’ words from the cross. The first of these words is, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” found in Luke 23.34. The last thing we hear Jesus say in Luke’s Gospel before this is, “For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.31) The women of Jerusalem were mourning for him and Jesus says this as a warning to them. What did he mean? Pilate had declared that Jesus was innocent (Luke 23.22) but had still gone ahead and sentenced him to be crucified. Jesus was declaring his innocence in the face of the sentence he was about to endure. And on the cross, he declares clearly that his crucifixion was a result of the ignorance of those who were carrying out the sentence.
When the first humans were tempted, they gave in and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They wanted to be like God, possessing the knowledge of good and evil. What does this mean? The person who possesses the knowledge of what is good and what is evil is a person who needs no guidance in her life for she is fully able, due to the knowledge, to make the correct decisions in all situations. The knowledge of good and evil is something that God possesses. He knows, in every situation, what is right and what is wrong, in other words, what the wise course of action is. By reaching out and eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the first humans were declaring their independence from God. They wanted to be those who possessed this knowledge. They wanted to be those who could infallibly decide what was right and what was wrong in all situations.
Alas, when it comes to Jesus’ crucifixion, his words reveal that this human experiment had failed drastically. Not only did humans not know what is good and what is evil, but also, even when they know what was evil, they do not possess the moral fiber to refuse to go down that path. Pilate had declared Jesus innocent. His soldiers knew that he had declared Jesus innocent. Yet, here was Jesus, crucified by the very people who knew him to be innocent.
This first word from the cross is a stark indictment against human justice. Due to all the political machinations, the humans forgot the basis of justice and put to death a man they knew to be innocent. Pilate did not want an uprising on his hands. The Jewish authorities did not want someone in their midst who subverted the central symbols of Jewish life – Torah, Sabbath, and Temple. So despite knowing that Jesus was innocent, they chose to do what was most expedient and sentenced him to death. This is the nature of human justice – expedient.
Jesus’ first word from the cross tells us that human justice is not to be trusted because it is most often driven by expediency. However, his word also hints at a justice that remains to be uncovered and discovered – God’s justice. Jesus asks the Father to forgive those who were crucifying him.
What did this mean? Jesus was relinquishing his claim as the wronged party. He was the one who was facing the grossest injustice. And he could have been the one crying out for vengeance and retribution. However, with his first word, he relinquishes this claim and lays it at the feet of the Father. He knew that his Father is the source of justice and the one who has covenanted to set things right for all of creation. And so he gives up the demand for vengeance and retribution, trusting that, come what may, the Father would not allow this injustice to stand. The Father would overturn this injustice and set the record straight.
The Assurance of God’s Justice
To the dying brigand crucified along with him Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23.43) In the preceding word Jesus asks the Father to forgive those who were crucifying him. They were unrepentant, but Jesus was relinquishing his desire for vengeance and retribution, trusting instead in the Father’s justice. But here we see a different side of the crucifixion.
Crucified with him were two brigands. Only Luke tells us that the responses of the two brigands to Jesus’ crucifixion were different. One ranted at him just like those who were crucifying him. But the other recognized that Jesus was innocent. His words to the first brigand are telling. He says, “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)
What is it that this second brigand was trying to say to the first? They and Jesus were suffering the same sentence. All three of them had been crucified. But crucifixion was exactly the punishment that the two brigands deserved. But Jesus was innocent. Yet he too had been placed under the same sentence.
If crucifixion was something that Jesus was facing though he was innocent, the question arose, “What kind of punishment would God mete out to those who were guilty?” If Jesus, though innocent, had been crucified and if God did nothing about it, then what horrors awaited those who had actually been criminals?
The second brigand recognizes that Jesus’ crucifixion raised two possibilities. Either there was no God of justice, which is why an innocent man like Jesus was bearing the same punishment as two guilty men. In this case, there was no justice one could hope for. On the other hand, there was a God of justice. In this case, the crucifixion of Jesus was a huge miscarriage of justice that this just God could not overlook.
What he believed about Jesus is something we will know only when Jesus returns! But he makes a last ditch effort after recognizing the incongruity of Jesus’ crucifixion. If there was a God who was concerned about justice then this God would not allow the injustice meted out to Jesus to stand. He would act to remedy this injustice. And the brigand threw himself on that understanding of God’s justice. In desperation, he pleads, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23.42)
I think of another occasion in the bible where someone in dire straits asks another to remember him. When Joseph had interpreted Pharaoh’s cupbearer’s dream indicating that Pharaoh was going to restore the cupbearer, he told the cupbearer, “But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison.” (Genesis 40.14) The cupbearer, of course, forgot and Joseph had to rot in the prison for some years after that.
But Jesus’ words are telling. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” To the brigand’s ‘when’ Jesus answers ‘today’. Unlike the cupbearer who forgot Joseph, Jesus would not forget the brigand. And unlike Joseph who had to wait years before he was elevated, the brigand would find himself in paradise that very day.
But we dare not forget what Jesus was responding to. When the brigand had made a request about ‘when’ Jesus would come into his kingdom, Jesus had responded that it would be ‘today’. That was the very day when Jesus was going to receive his kingdom! Too many of us think that Jesus is going to return to receive his kingdom. However, the Gospels are clear that this has already happened. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. In other words, he had already received his kingdom! The crucifixion was, in a very real sense, his enthronement. The word to the brigand builds on the first word. While the first word was a plea for justice, the second is an assurance based on the knowledge that the plea had been granted.
The Justice of Relationship
“When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” (John 19.26-27)
Jesus has been crucified and his battered and bruised body is straining against the nails that hold him to the cross. Some people taunted him, reminding him of how he had saved others and challenged him to come down from the cross so that they could believe in him. What would that have accomplished?
Well, for one thing, he would have been been there to take care of his mother! Mary was at the foot of the cross, watching in agony as the life drained from her son. Given the lack of references to Joseph in the Gospels after Jesus began his ministry, it is quite likely that Joseph had died prior to this – perhaps when Jesus was still a boy. To him, as the eldest son, had fallen the responsibility, in that patriarchal society, of caring for the family – his mother and sisters and brothers. And if he came down from the cross, he could resume that responsibility. He could once again care for his mother.
But that would mean turning his back on the task set for him by his Father. It seemed that he had to choose between the will of his Father and caring for his mother. A difficult choice in any circumstances and Jesus was on the cross!
And Jesus saw his mother. What was she thinking? Did she think back on the prophecies of Simeon and Anna when Jesus had first come to the Temple? They had spoken of how a sword would pierce through Mary’s own heart. Surely this was the occasion they were speaking of. All the other instances when Jesus hadn’t fit her expectations paled into insignificance in the face of this atrocity before her. What was she to do? Soon her son would breathe his final breath and she would be completely distraught. She had borne him into the world and now her world was being torn away from her. Jesus would have seen the despair in her eyes. Those eyes that had always loved him would now have reflected the emptiness of death. How could he leave her like this?
But Jesus, creative as he always is, saw a solution. Mary was not alone at the foot of the cross. The disciple he loved was also there. What was this disciple thinking? The Gospel does not identify the disciple, but Church tradition has held that it is John who, though a prominent figure in the other Gospels, is not named in this one. So I will assume it is John. Some years back he had been fishing with his brother when Jesus strode along and called him to be his disciple. He had left everything then to follow Jesus. But never in his most bizarre nightmares did he see anything close to what was before him. This Jesus, in whose love John had lost himself to such an extent that he could only refer to himself in terms of that love, hung from a brutal cross, the life slowly draining from his body along with his blood. Jesus would have seen the horror in his eyes. Those eyes that had received his love with joy were now forlorn with anguish. How could he leave him like this?
And so he does not leave either of them without someone as support. He entrusts his mother to this disciple he loved and entrusts him to her. Why? Easter was less than two days away. Why did he have to entrust them to each other? We, who live on this side of Easter, know that it was less than two days away. But neither Mary nor John knew it. For both of them, this was the end of the Jesus they had known and loved. Perhaps the two of them needed the support of each other even if only for the crucial next two days. Since Jesus entrusted them to each other from the cross, this became his dying wish and neither of them would have taken it lightly. And so because they had each other there was less room for despair. They had to hang on because of the other – Mary because of John and John because of Mary.
Jesus’ wisdom here is remarkable. Most of us cannot boast such wisdom even when we are in a good situation. And Jesus was on a cross! Yet he realized the need for both Mary and John to not sink into the despair brought on by a relationship that had prematurely ended. And so he gives both of them a new relationship with a new purpose. This is not a denial of the ending of their relationship with Jesus nor a minimization of its importance nor a rejection of the loss they are experiencing. Rather, this is a redirection of grief toward another similarly grieving person so that the shared grief can be experienced but not allowed to dominate. Jesus does this because he knows that, as persons created by relationship for relationship, we can find the hope of justice only in relationship.
The Justice of Abandonment
Midway through our meditations this Good Friday, we have reached the fourth of seven words spoken by Jesus from the cross. Commonly called the ‘cry of dereliction’, we read this in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, the only word to appear in multiple Gospel accounts. Hanging from the cross, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Of the seven words spoken by Jesus from the cross, this one is the most problematic. Do we or do we not affirm that Jesus is fully human and fully divine? Do we or do we not affirm that in Jesus these two natures – human and divine – were perfectly united? Then what would it mean for Jesus to say that God had forsaken him? These questions are so embarrassing for later Christian doctrine that the only reason the words appear in the Gospels must be that Jesus actually spoke them. But we are still left with the question, “What does it mean?”
We need to avoid the trap of suggesting that Jesus was merely quoting Psalm 22.1 and pointing out that the contents of the psalm were being fulfilled. That would render Jesus’ word empty and make them ring hollow.
The way Matthew and Mark narrate the events leading up to the ‘cry of dereliction’ is telling. Pilate is unable to identify a crime to charge Jesus with. Nevertheless, the innocent Jesus is handed over to be crucified. While he was hanging from the cross, the jeering onlookers speak about Jesus’ words concerning the temple. As if in response to this, darkness – the darkness of judgment – comes upon the land.
Jesus had been crucified as ‘king of the Jews’. This was a show of brute strength on the part of the Romans. This is what they did to any so-called king of the Jews. It was a way of deterring other potential revolutionaries. Crucified as ‘king of the Jews’ Jesus was there on the cross as the representative of Israel. He was bearing, in his body, the punishment that Roman would mete out to anyone who dared challenge Roman authority.
And as the representative of Israel he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” You see, Jesus was not stating that he himself had been forsaken by God. That line of thinking requires a God who turns away from the one who is most faithful to him. That line of thinking, in other words, requires a god who is not the God revealed in and through Jesus.
Rather, Jesus, as the representative of Israel, was declaring the judgment that was now descending on the people of Israel. Israel’s temple would now be forsaken by God. Jerusalem would be abandoned by God. And the Jewish people would face the hammer of God’s judgment. Just as God was not coming to rescue Jesus and take him down from the cross as required by the onlookers, so also, God would not come to the rescue of the Jewish people and their temple.
The Jewish people, in crucifying Jesus, had demonstrated that they could not recognize the way that made for peace. They chose instead the path of bloodthirsty revenge. And so God would give them their just desserts.
The ‘cry of dereliction’ then is not a cry about some strange dynamic within the Godhead – the Son forsaken by the Father. Such a view is not orthodox since it proposes that there could be a rift between God the Father and God the Son. Unfortunately, too many teachers teach this view without even reflecting on how it cannot be considered an orthodox belief. Neither is it a declaration of what Jesus was feeling – abandoned by God. Despite the pain and anguish he was experiencing, it was his immense faith in the faithfulness of his Father that had brought Jesus to the cross. To now posit that he forgot this central and centering belief of his life would be to render his entire life pointless. Just as the early martyrs proclaimed their faith and trust in Jesus while they were being killed, so also it is most likely that Jesus knew that his Father had not abandoned him. Rather, the unfortunately named ‘cry of dereliction’ is the pronouncement of judgment on the people of Israel in general and its temple in particular.
The Justice of Divine Yearning
“I thirst.” (John 19:28) A single word in the Greek text of John’s Gospel. Very often this word from the cross is taken to be a proof that Jesus is human. His being thirsty is considered a sign of his humanity. However, after having gone through the first eighteen chapters of John’s Gospel, which begins with the central claim that “the Word became flesh” no one should have any doubt that Jesus is fully human. And therefore such a sign would have been superfluous.
On the other hand, because John adds the comment that Jesus said these words “so that Scripture would be fulfilled” many Christians look for a scripture passage that refers to this event in Jesus’ life. And they likely go to Psalm 69.21 which reads, “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” I do not care much for such ‘proof texting’. Indeed, the rest of Psalm 69 is so general that pointing to v. 21 as the scripture that is being fulfilled seems to be special pleading.
However, it seems better to think that what John means here is that Jesus was bringing scripture to its climactic goal. I think Jesus is pointing out to the first question God asks in the bible. We find it in Genesis 3.9, where, after Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit and had hidden themselves, God asks, “Where are you?” Human sin had driven a wedge between themselves and God. Humans now felt inadequate and exposed in God’s presence. And while God knew what had happened, his question, the first first question, reveals God’s desire, God’s thirst.
After pronouncing judgment on the people of Israel and the temple in what is normally called ‘the cry of dereliction’ Jesus now reveals that God’s thirst for his human creatures has remained unquenched through all the centuries that had passed since humans first turned their backs on him.
In other words, rather than revealing Jesus’ humanity, the words “I thirst” reveal Jesus’ divinity! Through them Jesus tells us that the goal of scripture – revealing the origins and depths of the human problem and the solution – was at hand and that God’s thirst for his human creatures was about to be quenched.
John also perhaps intends us to see the irony in Jesus’ words. In chapter 4, while speaking to the Samaritan woman, and then again in chapter 7, during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus had announced that he had access to unquenchable streams of living water. To the Samaritan woman he had declared, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.” (John 4.14) And at the Feast of Tabernacles he proclaimed, “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7.38) What had happened to those promises? Were they empty?
In chapters 4 and 7 the living water refers to the Holy Spirit. This is made clear in chapter 7. Jesus reveals the thirst of God for his human creatures, but, ironically, this thirst will be quenched beyond his death when, after he is raised, he gives the Holy Spirit, the living water, to his disciples. God’s thirst that Jesus reveals, in other words, will be quenched when the Holy Spirit reveals to the disciples how thirsty they themselves need to be for him! And since God has created us for a deeply refreshing relationship with him, Jesus’ declaration of God’s thirst for us and his revelation of our response in thirst for him is what will finally be satisfied beyond Jesus’ resurrection.
The Justice of a Mission Accomplished
Jesus has just revealed God’s thirst for humans to be reconciled to him. Misunderstanding his declaration, someone gives him wine vinegar. According to Matthew’s account of the crucifixion, Jesus is offered the drink twice. The first time, he refuses to drink (Matthew 27.34). The second time, he drinks (Matthew 27.48). John only records this second instance at which Jesus accepts the drink. And immediately after Jesus accepts the drink, he says, “It is finished.” Why did Jesus accept the drink the second time? Matthew tells us that the first time the wine was mixed with gall, an analgesic agent that would have served as a painkiller. Since he intended to experience the injustice of the crucifixion, he refuses the wine mixed with the painkiller, but willingly accepts the pure wine later offered to him.
Now, in Luke’s Gospel we read that, during the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22.17-18) Yet, at the cross, Jesus clearly drinks the wine vinegar, which, being a derivative of wine, is a drink that comes from the fruit of the vine. What sense can we make of this?
There are only two possibilities. On the one hand, we could say that Jesus intended not to drink the wine vinegar, but because he was on the cross and in immense pain, he either forgot about his earlier words or decided that they were not important. That is, we could admit that there is a dissonance between Jesus’ earlier words and his actions on the cross. I don’t know about you, but this is not a Jesus I could follow for he shows us that, when the going gets tough, we can simply contradict our earlier commitments.
On the other hand, we could say that Jesus intended to be true to his earlier words and that he was! What this means is that, he drank the wine vinegar because the kingdom of God had come. This may be surprising for us, because many of us think that the kingdom of God will come in the future. We are led to believe that this is something that is only a future hope.
However, if Jesus’ earlier words and his actions on the cross are not contradictory, then the only conclusion we can reach is that he drank the wine vinegar because the kingdom of God had come. At some instance between the two occasions on which he was offered the drink the kingdom of God had come.
This should not be surprising. The Gospels clearly indicate that Jesus began his ministry with the announcement that the kingdom of God was near. It was imminent. It was being brought close in and through his ministry. When he began his ministry he clearly indicated that bringing the kingdom of God was the task with which he had been charged. It was his divine vocation.
However, if we believe that the kingdom of God is only a future hope, then we must conclude that Jesus was mistaken when he claimed that the kingdom of God was at hand. We must conclude that his life and death did not accomplish the task he claimed to have been charged to do. We must conclude that he was horribly wrong about his divine vocation. We must conclude that he was mistaken when he claimed that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given him. If this is where our beliefs lead me, why am I still a Christian? Therefore, I’m not comfortable going down that rabbit hole!
The only possibility then is that Jesus drank the wine vinegar because the kingdom of God had come. He had finished the task God had assigned to him. He had brought to fruition his divine vocation. And indeed, this is precisely what he says in this sixth word from the cross. After all, what else could he have meant when, right after drinking the wine vinegar, he declared, “It is finished”? We often take it in a very self-centered way. We say that ‘it is finished’ refers to what he had to do to provide forgiveness for us. This self centered approach to Jesus’ work is, ironically, exactly what the first humans did and we reveal that we have not learned from their mistakes.
But Jesus’ mind and heart were always primarily concerned with doing the will of the Father who had sent him. And so when he says, “It is finished” the primary meaning should be that he had finished the task given to him by his Father. And that task was to bring the kingdom of God.
Trusting in God’s Justice
With this seventh word from the cross found in Luke 23:46 we are reaching the end of our reflections for this Good Friday. Jesus has just announced that he has finished the task entrusted to him by the Father – the task of bringing the kingdom of God to earth as in heaven.
In his ministry he had demonstrated the prodigious love of God and his unimaginable acceptance and welcome of all kinds of humans. He had shown that God is a God of mercy and justice and not of petty law observance and retribution. And in a divine irony, it was precisely showcasing this character of God that had led to his being crucified. But in a double irony, it was precisely the move to silence him by crucifying him that had led to him completing his vocation of ushering in the kingdom of God and transforming the words nailed to his cross (Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews) from word of derision and mockery to the deepest of truths. This Jesus of Nazareth, who hung from the cross, was now, having completed his Father’s task, indeed the king of the Jews and the lord of the earth.
But this king was dying. He hung there, his physical thirst only matched and superseded by the thirst of God for his human creatures. And he hung there, each moment bringing him closer to the moment of death. On the cross, he had been enthroned as the sole legitimate ruler of all the earth.
However, none of the witnesses to this horrific event would have told you that at the time. His disciples – both female and male – and his mother were in shock. His opponents were in a celebratory mood. None of his friends or foes would have been able to understand then that this was not the moment in which Jesus was defeated, but the moment of his victory. To all appearances he was the one with the battered and bruised body and therefore the one who was in despicable and detestable desolation.
Jesus knew that he had won the victory. That is why he had cried, “It is finished.” The work of redeeming the old creation and of beginning the new creation was complete. But he also knew that he was going to die. And to all appearances he had been a failed messianic pretender, a wanna be deliverer, who had been revealed as a fake.
But without the knowledge of his victory, the world would continue to live in darkness despite being rescued into the kingdom of light. And so the world needed to know that the cross was Jesus’ enthronement, not his defeat. They needed to know that he had succeeded and not failed. They needed to know that his way was the way of God.
And Jesus knew that the Father knew this too. So, having declared his victory with the words, “It is finished” he now entrusts himself to the hands of his Father. His Father knew what needed to be done to reveal to the world the truth about the cross. His Father knew what needed to happen so that the people would see the truth behind the mocking words nailed to the cross – that Jesus was indeed the king of the Jews. Jesus had done what his Father had sent him to do. Now it was up to the Father to reveal to the world what had been done. And so, as his final act, Jesus entrusts himself to his Father, ending as he began by trusting in God’s justice.