35 The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” 36 The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37 and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” 38 There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. 39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus has been unjustly condemned to the worst punishment the ancient world had: crucifixion. He is mocked by the Jewish crowd around him who deride his claims to Messiahship while the Gentile Roman soldiers taunt his kingship, even putting a sign about it on the cross. Both groups call on him to save himself without realizing that his real job is saving humanity. To make things worse, his sentence placed him between two real offenders. Note that Luke doesn’t tell us they were thieves but only uses a word that means “criminal” or “malefactor”.
Into this dark atmosphere, however, a light shines. One of the criminals mocks him too, but the other does not. After telling the first to be quiet, he turns to Jesus and makes a request: “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” We should think about what this means: this man had such faith that he recognized in a suffering, powerless man, experiencing intense humiliation, a king.
On Good Friday, as Jesus hangs on the cross, seemingly powerless, he makes the extraordinary response that, on that very day, the good thief would be with him in paradise. The word “paradise” comes from the Persian word for a walled garden and should immediately make us think of Eden. Our destiny then, is not heaven but earth, where we will find that lost garden again and true happiness.
Of course, God’s time is not ours for he lives in the perpetual “today” of eternity, but, through Jesus, eternity is already breaking into our own lives. As Timothy Radcliffe says, every time we love and forgive then we have put a foot into eternity, which is God’s life. God is love, and the persons of the Trinity take delight in each other. The 14th century Dominican Meister Eckhart said “The Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs at the Father and the laughter brings forth pleasure and the pleasure brings forth joy and the joy brings forth love.” The gospel tells us that we are all invited to share in that happiness. Of course, in our current life we cannot experience it completely for sorrow remains. Still, even now, we have a taste of God’s joy, although we also feel his sorrow at all the suffering in this world. At least in this life, we cannot have one without the other. But we can be sure that paradise awaits us.
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