Our Easter hope

Moderator, Dr Sam Mawhinney, offers a seasonal reflection that affirms our confidence and hope in the Easter story.

The story of our Western culture has moved quickly and significantly towards issues of identity, race, sexuality, gender and age. These identity groups formed movements that have sought to deal with the oppression they experienced from their oppressors. The telling of their stories has been a powerful medium in this movement, so says Ben Chang in the introduction of his very good book on identity politics, Christ and the Cultural Wars.

The power of story has been witnessed recently in the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, a story of the injustice faced by postmasters and postmistresses, as the faulty Horizon IT system said they had stolen the Post Office’s money. Their stories of how lies, shame and injustice destroyed their lives and those of their families, followed by the incredible relief and freedom experienced by those same people when they were declared not guilty, resonated emotionally and powerfully for all of us who watched in the UK and Ireland.

The Easter story resonates with our culture because it also deals with the issues of guilt, shame, injustice and oppression. The person of Jesus, his identity, innocence and redemptive and reconciling death on the cross is our powerful story that we can have great confidence to believe and tell. The cross is our central symbol, and we need to keep it firmly in view.

Dr Luke has carefully researched the story of Jesus and recounts the facts of the death and resurrection of Jesus in chapters 22–23. I want to focus on the picture of the three crosses and the deaths of the three ‘criminals’ on those crosses as we explore where our hope lies. Luke 23:26–49 outlines the crux of the story – of rejection, redemption and repentance.

The middle cross offers us redemption.

Redemption

On the middle cross, Jesus hangs, and his identity is key. The Jewish council members, the Roman authorities represented by Pilate, the Jewish King Herod, and the people wanted to know who he was; they made up their minds about him without listening and considering the evidence.

Like a murder-mystery there are clues – as the story of Jesus’ life unfolds, we see more clearly his identity. As he is crucified, he prays for his enemies (23:34) and in doing so he keeps the law of God perfectly. As he dies, his clothes are divided among his executioners by casting lots (23:34), which fulfilled Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah (Psalm 22:18). Crucially, Luke tells us five times in his story that Jesus was innocent – Pilate (23:4), Herod (23:15) and the criminal (23:41) all knew he had done nothing wrong. He was innocent and his trial and death were unjust. As Jesus died, there was a deep, supernatural darkness for three hours, from midday until three o’clock (the darkness pictorially represents God’s anger/wrath and his judgment on sin). Lastly, as he dies, about a mile away in the Temple, the large curtain that separated the Most Holy Place, where God resided, from the Jewish priests and the people, was supernaturally torn in two from the top to the bottom, which opened the way into God’s presence.

The cross is our central symbol, and we need to keep it firmly in view.

The evidence was all there – Jesus was the Messiah, God’s anointed King, the great High Priest, the Son of God. He died as an innocent man, as a sacrifice of atonement for sins, as the context of Passover and his own words (22:19–20), made clear. This was the central message of the apostles to the church: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the richness of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7).

The crosses on either side illustrate how we respond to the question of Jesus and his identity as the King, Priest and Son of God; one rejects him and the other repents as they view Jesus and the redemption he offers.

Rejection

To one side of Jesus, a man hung who had committed a crime deemed worthy of capital punishment. His final words show very clearly his rejection of Jesus. He didn’t believe who Jesus had said he was and he was mocking of his ability to save. He represents everyone else mentioned in the story who also rejected Jesus. In what was a definitive moment, the crowd shout as one: “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” Luke gives us the crime sheet for Barabbas: murderer, rebel and rioter. The people reject Jesus decisively.

Repentance

On the other side of Jesus, another criminal hangs for his crimes against an individual or society. However, his response is completely different to the other criminal. Instead of rejection, there is recognition and repentance.

His response is utterly remarkable. Jesus is naked, dying and there is no indication of who he is, but the man discerns, by the grace of God, who Jesus is and what the proper response should be.

He shows appropriate respect, indeed a proper fear of God (23:40), and he believes that Jesus is the King and has a Kingdom (23:42). This is not visible at this moment in time, quite the contrary, so it comes by faith – a gift of God. He also acknowledges that Jesus is innocent, “This man has done nothing wrong” (23:41), which is a further outworking of his understanding that Jesus is divine and sinless. He admits his own sin – he does not declare his own innocence – he admits that he is deserving of the punishment of death, and in his words to Jesus he further acknowledges that Jesus alone is his hope. It is a simple but poignant moment, as he looks at Jesus and proclaims his name, “Jesus” (23:42) and requests that he would, “remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” His words are personal, humble, dependant and fully recognising the kingship, divinity and power of Jesus to save.

The theme of my moderatorial year is ‘Confident in Christ’ and we come to the declaration of Jesus – words of truth and hope – with confidence. “Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’” Following our death, there is hope of resurrection, hope of a place (heaven which will be paradise), without the reality of sin, guilt, shame, injustice and oppression.

Jesus did not say to the man that there was no hope for him, nor that he was too bad or that he was too late. Because he saw who Jesus was, and believed in him, his faith enabled him to accept the gift offered of forgiveness for sins and reconciliation with God in Christ and acceptance into heaven and eternal life.

The story of Jesus – his identity, his innocence in the face of injustice and his self-sacrificial death – is a beautiful story of being justified from our guilt, forgiven for our wrong thoughts and actions, of being reconciled to God by his mediation and of our being loved and bought by his blood, that we might be with Jesus in heaven for ever. Our story is true and worth telling; it is our only hope. And what a hope it is, of having Jesus look at us and say: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”