"Save Yourself!"

Luke 23

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!”

This is the scene as Christ and two others are hanging from crosses, crucified.  "If you are the king, then save yourself."  If...Then.  It seems that we never stop throwing these conditional statements at Christ.  All of us, believers and non believers lay out commands or arguments for why we believe or don't believe, trust or fail to trust, rejoice or sorrow.  "If God is good, then I would be happy.  If God was real, then I would see him."  This is a very human thing to do. 

The assumptions we make in these conditional statements are always that we know better.  We are in essence declaring, "If God would do what I say, then everything would be good."  This of course is ridiculous, but we rarely see it that way.  Even if we put it in secular terms, "If I only got my way, then I would be happy."  We think this is true.  We fight with the world to get our way, but we only have to picture some spoiled child in our lives to illustrate that "getting our way" does not mean happiness and certainly it does not produce a perseverance of character.  But it's more than character at stake here, it's salvation.

We act as if our salvation or our relationship with Christ were a constant bargain or negotiation.  Eternal Patience is the only way to conceive of a God that doesn't just wipe us all out.  Mercy is what it is called.  In this scene from John 18, for me one of the most dramatic in the Bible, Pilate engages with Christ.  He asks about Christ's true nature, and receives the truth.  And in a masterful maneuver that humans have used since Adam and Eve encountered the Serpent, Pilate deflects and discounts Christ with the statement, "What is Truth?"

33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

38 “What is truth?” retorted Pilate.

We are always asking the wrong questions.  What if we had asked, "What if he really is who he says he is?  If you are the Christ, Then what does that mean for me?"  In the story from Luke when soldiers ask why Jesus doesn't save himself, even though they are mocking, this seems like a very reasonable question.  But time and time again, through out world history and the history of my own heart, the failure to understand who Jesus is and why he came leaves us seemingly without answers.  

"He is not the Messiah, because he did not save himself."  What an extraordinary misunderstanding of the situation.

In the controversial movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, the story explores "What if" Christ stepped down from the Cross.  Though fundamental Christians rejected this movie/book, sometimes without actually seeing it, it is a story and a question that played a significant role in nudging me towards real faith.  The heresy in the movie is that Christ is portrayed a little too human, a little too doubting and a little too weak.  It is unsettling to see the what if Christ gave way to temptation.  The temptation in this story is the not only stepping down from the Cross, but stepping into a fully human life with sex and marriage and children.  Satan had offered to Jesus that Jesus wasn't the Messiah and that God wanted him to live and be happy.  Years after Defoe's Christ steps down from the Cross and has experienced a "normal' life, he encounters the Apostles going on with the message of Christ, even though Jesus rejected being the Messiah.  In the movie Paul says, even if the message is not the truth, it is a message that the world needs to hear.  

This fictional Paul is not wrong.  But he is not all the way right.  The world needs the message of Jesus Christ.  But that message is based on nothing if he did not die on the cross and rise from the dead.  We don't need religion to help us be better and do better.  We need Christ himself to save us.  Salvation is what is at stake when we consider Christ on the Cross.  We are always asking God to display himself for our own comfort.  Like the soldiers we ask Christ to save himself in order to prove that he is the Son of God.  We seek proof without any idea of the consequences.  Our own comfort in knowing and seeing Christ in the flesh would mean removing the work of the Cross.  Jesus said no to revealing the fullness of his power in order that the world might be saved.  If Jesus had rejected the cross, it wouldn't have been to live a normal life, it would have been to put the world under judgment.  That, my friends, would have meant the end, because without his sacrifice, none of us would be saved.  What deed could anyone do to justify eternity with God?  Jesus said yes to the Cross, for the Joy set before him, our redemption.  And all of this is meaningless if he did not rise from the dead, cleansing the world and ourselves of sin.  With sin accounted for in Christ's perfect life and death, we now have the right to claim Christ, be redeemed and live forever in the presence of God.

We must be careful what we ask of God.  Those who misunderstand Jesus say "Prove yourself!"  They are, and we are, the soldiers shouting "Save yourself!"  If he had, we would not be and salvation would be lost.  But the fact that we are here and able to ask these questions, both misguided and true, points to his Mercy and his Mercy points to his Love.  And Love is the only way to conceive of this Jesus.

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.[d]”

43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”