The Face of the Penitent Thief

Under different circumstances I may have enjoyed the view. The darkening sky silhouetted the rocky plateau upon which the city rests and the hills beyond dipped in and out of the skyline in tranquil fashion. Though I am barely able to lift my chin, when my eyes are posted straight ahead I can make out the city walls and the small figurines passing to and fro through the gate. How peaceful they seem, how serene for a moment such as this…

Gasp. Any momentary thoughts are suddenly startled by yet another heavy and painful inhale. I can feel my chest heave desperately with only a suffocating amount of air filling my lungs in response. Sweat drains down my forehead in small streams, and I am amazed that there is any water left in my body to evaporate. But then again…I am not even certain if my body exists any longer. I cannot feel a thing of what I swear to be my own arms on either side of me. Neither one moves on my command and each has been so thoroughly overcome by pain that my whole body has turned numb in a sort of stimulitic revolt to sensory overload. All that remains is a tremendous weight, like a heavy darkness has overcome my very self—intensifying with each futile attempt at a breath. Gasp. Perhaps, I think to myself, perhaps I am no longer even here. Perhaps all that is left of me is my subconscious mind swirling above my once body, watching this horrific scene from overhead.

A nearly inaudible moan to my left draws me out of my thoughts and back to the agonizing reality around me. My drooping neck, in almost reflexive motion, turns slowly towards the sound’s source. It is not my immediate neighbor, who resides unresponsively in a seemingly silent, beaten defeat; but rather the fellow to his distant left, my own comrade, Léstés, who makes this noise. He, like I, is strung up in a pathetically risqué and mangled fashion with his arms stretched out in full penitence and his head hanging limply towards the ground. How pitiful he appears now. How unlike his prominent, boastful self just a week before, when we had rejoiced in the riches and thrill of our lives of robbery and insurrection.

Gasp. Oh the pain of every breath!

My ears are filled with the jeering of the crowds below. Perhaps it is the slipping away of my consciousness, but the humiliation of this scene in which Léstés and I, and our silent neighbor reside has seemed to rush away by this point in the evening, chased off by the suffocating pain that is all consuming. I no longer care that these mobs stand before us now, shouting obscene insults up towards our dismembered bodies. Their voices are now merely the lingering processional tune of death’s encroaching grasp.

Yet my silent neighbor they seem to taunt the most. Poking and prodding him like cattle. Mocking his every painful breath. “Save yourself!” they sneer. I watch as a trail of blood cascades down from his hand nearest mine, where a nail had been pierced through and into the wooden beam on which he has been displayed. I can feel his pain. His agonizing breaths. His blistered lips. His throbbing hands and feet where the nails penetrated. The constant weight of his head upon his neck. And his breaking heart…Gasp.

But I know that he is no ordinary man.

As only a whisper amongst the crowd’s jeering below I hear Léstés, far to my left, clear his throat. Faintly the words pass through his cracked lips, sharp, like a dart, targeted at my silent neighbor. “Aren’t you the Christ?” Léstés hisses. And though I cannot see his face, I can picture his sinister expression. The very face he had made time and again while taunting those we stole from. The very face he made before binding them up and gathering their things. The very face he made before he slit their throats…the very face I made before joining him in each of these practices…

My silent neighbor does not respond. Does not turn his head. Does not make a sound.

Léstés then turns his neck towards him in a single, fluid, painful motion. “Then save yourself…and us!” he nearly screams.

I can see Léstés’ face now. Twisted and contorted with the impinging arms of death reaching out towards him. His eyebrows furrowed inwards. His jaw set straight. His eyes themselves like daggers, piercing into my silent neighbor with the painful torture he wished he could use his hands to inflict upon him if only they were not bound to his wooden beam. “Save us!!” he hissed again.

But suddenly I knew Léstés was wrong to say this. I knew he shouldn’t have said “Save us”. There was no us in this situation. Only He. He the silent neighbor. He, who even I—a robber and insurrectionist—had heard the stories about. He who, the rumors told, was a healer and giver of life. He who had not murdered or stolen or lived a life of shame and regret as Léstés and I had. No…there was no us, only He.

My cracked lips parted, and though I felt as though the words could not come, they trembled through my lips. “Don’t you fear God??” I called to Léstés. “We are getting what we deserve. We are punished justly. We have stolen and lied and tortured and murdered. We deserve this agony.” Gasp. “But He…this man has done nothing wrong…he does not deserve our punishment…”

My silent neighbor still said nothing, but I spoke now towards him, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom…remember me.”

I could feel Léstés’ burning eyes now tearing holes through my body. His anger traveled in waves, atop the heated crowd below, and pierced through me.

But then my silent neighbor slowly lifted His head and turned to look at me. His eyes seemed to look deep into mine and clear down to my heart. And in His eyes was something I had not seen in many, many years. In His eyes there was love.

“I tell you the truth,” He said, “today you will be with me in paradise.”

And I believed him. Today I will be with him in paradise!!

Gasp. My chest heaved again; my lungs groping for air as they had a thousand times today…but this time there was no heaviness. This time I did not feel the weight of my body tugging downwards, pulling me to the ground. The tremendous burden of my body which I had felt before was lifted. And suddenly I knew I was floating…floating on the love of Christ.

The light softens and my agonizing view begins to fade…no more death or mourning or crying or pain…for the old order of things has passed away.

The last image in my view as the world around me fades in a young woman standing off in the distance, secluded just to the left of the jeering crowd below my cross. She stands out because she is not dressed in a robe as is typical of my day, but is wearing a strange light-blue contraption, tightly knit around her legs with only the top-half of a robe covering her torso and arms. Her hair is shamefully not covered by a veil and she wears no sandals on her feet…but already my view is fading now and I can see her no more. All I see and feel is one thing…Christ’s loving embrace. And this is the most beautiful gift I have ever received.

 

 

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I stand here, clothed in my blue jeans and t-shirt, in utter disbelief and anger. “How could He have allowed this?!?” I demand out loud to no one in particular.

The scene before me is shockingly brutal; far more disfiguring than I had ever imagined from the context of Scripture, or even clips of The Passion of the Christ. I am caught up in the anger of the crowd around me as they shout at and mock my Savior. The amount of blood yet streaming down from each of the three crosses and the smell of foul body odor, waste, and fluids fills the air, sending me to a nearby bush twice already to vomit. A pit sits deep in my stomach as I look on. I can sense the pain of each gasping breath that is taken from on high, and the reality of hundreds of past Good Friday messages hits me square in the face like gale force winds. This is Golgotha. This is Christ’s death. This is the reality of it all…

And I am so incredibly angry! Angry at the Roman soldiers who stand near the cross, mocking Jesus with offered wine vinegar. I am angered by those on-lookers who stand sneering at my Savior. I am angered by those who placed the thorny crown upon his head. I am angered at this whole reality about me. How could they do this to my Savior?

And then there is the thief to Christ’s left, whose words I can hear hissed above the rest of the throng’s jeering. I am most angry at him! At his audacity to ask Christ to be his means of getting down off of that cross. How dare he ask Christ to save them all. What was he? Just a robber! An insurrectionist! Guilty of thievery and lying and murder! I look at him and his pathetic friend to Jesus’s right and all I can think is that they are the ones who deserve this punishment. They had it coming for them! …Not Jesus.

But then how could Jesus have allowed this? How could He have turned to the robber on his right and actually said to him “Today you will be with me in paradise.” He didn’t deserve it! This man had lived his entire life in very spite of Christ’s teachings. Obviously he had heard of Christ before and yet here he wasted his life doing everything Christ taught against. Surely a man like this does not deserve heaven!?!

I look on this scene with disgust, particularly at the two criminals on either side of Jesus. And I softly shake my head in disbelief at Christ’s choice to save this man.

As I watch though, I am startled to suddenly see that the face of the penitent thief is changing. Not just once, but again and again like a movie screen playing clips. In startled response I point up towards the thief hanging from his cross and cry out. But not a head in the surrounding crowd turns to look towards me, and I realize (with relative relief) that the others there cannot see or hear me.

I am now mesmerized by the revolving faces. As I look more closely I realize that many of these are ones that I recognize. One is of a girl I knew in high school who was known to sleep around, another of a local meth addict who often frequented the ER where I worked, and yet another less familiar face, of a famous murderer who’s mugshot I had seen on TV.

With each revolving face, my chin dropped further in disbelief; as though my mouth were trying to open wide enough that I could swallow my own pride which was now lying in a heap on the ground by my feet.

As quickly as it had changed initially, the thief’s face suddenly returned back to its natural composition. But before it did, one last face appeared.

Mine.

My face on that of the penitent thief.

And all I could whisper was, “How could you have allowed this Lord? How could you have allowed a sinner like me to receive your gracious gift of forgiveness through your death on the cross?

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” – Romans 3:23

And this is the lesson that lies here at the foot of the cross. I have become so numbed to the Easter story—to Christ’s story—that I have come to feel obligated to my salvation. I am a Christian. Of course I deserve His salvation! Right? Sure, I sin, but I’m not like those other faces I saw…those other faces who certainly don’t deserve salvation…right?

But the truth is that we all deserve death. A death far more painful than that of the robbers on the cross. And yet the single human kind throughout all of eternity who did not deserve this death is the one who took on the most painful death of all. And He did it on our behalf. So that though neither you nor I nor anyone else to come deserves God’s tremendous gift of grace, He gives it freely to those who believe so that we may be wrapped up in the love of Christ.

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” – Revelations 22:17

I cannot wait to dance in eternity by the side of the penitent thief, praising our great God among the raised arms of other forgiven sinners like us! And when I ask, “How could God has allowed this for sinners like us?” He will say, “Because I love you, dear children.”

 

 

 

Easter 2018

God is so tremendously good!

 

 

*Note 1: This tale is based on the Crucifixion story found in Luke 23.

*Note 2: The name Léstés comes from the transliteration of the Greek word λῃστής meaning “robber” or “bandit,” as found in Scripture.