READINGS

Luke 23:39-43
Luke 4:23
Luke 4:13
Luke 22:43-44 (matched with Gen 3:19)
Looking and scoffing: Psalm 22:7, Cf Psalm 2:4-6
Chosen: Isaiah 28:16
Gentiles mocking: Zechariah 12:3, Habakkuk 1:10
Vinegar: Psalm 69:21
Blaspheme: 2 Kings 19:22
Curse of tree: Deuteronomy 21:22
Nothing wrong: Job 27:6
Paradeisos: Ezekiel 28:13, 31:8; Genesis 2:8

HOMILY

It's on this occasion that we get our last chunk of St Luke's Gospel ending our run-through with Luke.

Since it's the Feast of Christ the King, we come upon some of the very few places where Luke, actually, uses the word King in relation to Jesus.

It's interesting that Luke doesn't go in, unlike John and other Gospel writers, for bringing out how Jesus was a king, for the only place he actually talks about Jesus as king are in these passages:

When Pilate asks Jesus after the authorities have said "this one says he is Christ, a king". Then Pilate says: "are you the king of the Jews?" And Jesus says: "you have said it".

The only other times we get a reference to Jesus as king is the soldiers who are also Romans mocking him and offer him sour wine and say: "if you're the king of Jews, save yourself".

And finally the plaque over his head saying: "this is the king of the Jews."

I'd like to point out that, in St Luke's Gospel, strictly all references to Jesus as king of the Jews are mockery; lies, false accusations or mockery.

Even the title - this is the king of the Jews - is translated to most of our Bibles because the word order is "the king of the Jews, this one", which is more mockery than it is a solemn proclamation.

It comes across as a solemn proclamation in the other Gospels, but here it's part of Gentile mockery of Jesus, and therefore also Gentile mockery of God's Holy People.

That's how this is set up in Luke's Gospel.

Now what I'd like to do in order to show what actually Luke is bringing out, even with this mockery, is actually far richer than any of our normal understanding of kingship: how Jesus is the principle of all the structure and power of the world, but in a far more gentle and subtle way than we're used to, with simply straightforward references.

Just as a reminder: before this has happened, Jesus is fulfilled being the real human, the real Adam.

He's been in the Garden of Gethsemane, and sweat has rolled down his face and his body, acquiring a reddish hue, as if they were coagulated clumps of blood (because the ground was reddish).

Sweat mixed with red earth that looked as if the blood; and the words red earth and Adam are linked together in Hebrew.

Here he is fulfilling the promised Adam from Genesis that, by the sweat of your blood, the right side of your brows should be when you're living until your dust flows down to the Earth (Genesis 3:16).

So the first Adam is being brought to life.

Here this is the true human, the one who does follow the will of the Father, rather than the first Adam who has followed his own will.

Then shortly after this, within the next couple of sentences, we get the sensation of creation running down: the sun goes out, the veil of the Temple is ripped, in a way that we go outside the created order into before creation.

Then Jesus breathes out his spirit.

That which had been hovering over creation before creation is now going to rest until it comes back in to fill the new creation.

So light going out, creation of us retreating outside creation, and then the Spirit coming back in - all of that is what's going to be brought out in the next few verses in St Like.

So there's been a massive build-up to this point.

Almost every one of the words in today's Gospel is part of an indication that something hugely powerful is really going on.

and the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him.

I'm not sure that the 'but' is right there, since it could merely be 'and': and the leaders scoffed at him. It's is not necessary to make them apart.

Why is this important? Because the mixture of watching and scoffing comes in Psalm 22, which we know from our Holy Week services:

all who see me, mock me, they hurl insults, they shake their heads.

All who see me and mock me - literally are the two verbs here - the same verse: watch and scoff.

Psalm 22 is being fulfilled here, the one which we know is "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

and the leaders scoffed him saying: he saved others, let him save himself, if he is the Messiah of God.

This takes us straight back to Nazareth and Jesus's first day of his ministry in the synagogue, where after he's finished speaking out and he says to them "no doubt you will say to me, doctor, save yourself" and so here exactly, as predicted, they're saying: save you first, doctor, save yourself.

So his own prophecy is being fulfilled there and we'll see very soon another prophecy from very early on in the Bible being fulfilled.

It's interesting that Luke uses both of those: the Messiah of God (the anointed one, the Davidic figure brought out in our first reading this Sunday) and the chosen one.

The chosen one was Israel rather than a particular figure.

Saul is sometimes referred to as the chosen one - the beginnings of the kingship of Israel.

However, the chosen one is a reference to Isaiah 28, where God is setting a foundation in Zion by placing a chosen stone, a precious one in his eyes.

It's the distinction between precious and shame.

The one that is chosen is the one that people think "yes, this is something being done for us"; and the other one is a shame, so they're saying it right, but they're saying it so as to shame him.

Everything in today's Gospel is around this fundamental dichotomy.

the soldiers also mocked him coming up and offering him sour wine.

Please remember that, while from our point of view this is a collection of individuals who were reading in the history and the story, the point of the soldiers is that these are Romans, these are Gentiles.

The Gentiles are mocking Jesus and they're therefore thereby fulfilling Zechariah 12:2-3:

I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. 

Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. 

On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. 

All who try to move it will injure themselves.

In the Greek version, it's 'I will make a mockery', so the foreigners should be doing the mocking.

It is very much in part of Zechariah, and also in Habakkuk 1 chapter 10:

at Kings they scoff and of rulers they make sport, they laugh at every fortress and keep up earth to take it.

So the Gentiles again are scoffing at the king. It's them who apparently realize that this is a king, even if ironically.

Furthermore:

they then behave properly as it were by offering him sour wine.

They come up and offer him vinegar, which, of course, is referenced in Psalm 68:

they gave me poison for food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Let's remember that again the fulfilling of the Psalm is quite plausible in those circumstances on the grounds that one of the things that people genuinely did do at public executions was to give people an anaesthetic, a drug mixed in wine for them to drink so to make it less painful.

It was an element of humanity in public executions that, given what is going to be a terrible show, you diminish the pain somewhat by offering some sort of anaesthetic in wine.

However, here the important thing is it's fulfilling the Psalm.

and they say to him: if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

So here they are enacting, rather as the leaders had enacted, the fourth temptation.

Remember when Jesus had been at the very beginning of his ministry, before his ministry, tempted in the wilderness, Satan asked a whole lot of questions: if you are this, do that.

So here's the fourth one: if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

Whereas at the beginning of the Gospel, the remark had been: the devil then went away and left him until an opportune time, well - here's the opportune time, when the accusation is coming both from Jewish leaders and from Gentiles.

There was also an inscription over him 'the king of the Jews', this one."

A mocking piece of solemnity.

Then we have next to him the criminals.

one of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying: are you not the Messiah?

Again the word here is 'blaspheming him' and saying "are you not the Messiah", which is a reference to 2 Kings 19:22:

whom did you mock and revile and against whom did you raise your voice, and lift your eyes on high against the Holy One of Israel?

The whole notion of this person, who was already lifted up on high blaspheming, mocking - the word is the same.

This is the criminal blaspheming him saying: are you not the Messiah?

So calling him, actually recognizing the name, but again in a mocking way: save yourself and us.

What do we have here? We have the thief, or as it is described here - the evildoer, who's clearly been caught up in the mockery of the crowd, in the mockery of his leaders.

He was showing himself still to be part of that, even though he's suffering the consequences of, if you like, group violence, he is still on the side of the people who are engaging in the lynch mob: save yourself and others.

but the other rebuked him saying: do not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation.

Of course, the same sentence of condemnation refers to Deuteronomy 21:22, that the one who is hanged upon a wood shall be cursed by God.

So they're both under the same condemnation, they're all under this condemnation of being cursed by God.

do not fear God since you aren't the same sentence of condemnation, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds but this man has done nothing wrong.

This appears to be again a reference to Job; where, in the midst of all his suffering says: "I know I have done nothing wrong."

Whereas here it's not Jesus saying it, but this thief with him who is going to receive, because of that his complete forgiveness and his recognition of the innocence of the One who is being cast out.

Then he says:

Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom. 

And Jesus replies: truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise.

I haven't picked up the importance of the word 'paradise' until I looked up all the other times that the word paradise appears in the Septuagint.

Mostly, it's meaning is of an orchard.

Jesus is clearly making a reference to the tree as the tree of life, which is in Paradise, in the garden: the orchard in Genesis and in Ezekiel.

And then there is the curse of the tree.

So the whole question is:

Are you part of the lynch mob? in which case there is a curse going on here. Or do you recognize that this is the Tree of Life?

There are two trees or, rather, there are two people interpreting the tree in an entirely different way.

The one who recognizes that this one is entirely innocent, that the one who is being falsely accused is the source of life, that one has perceived that what looked like a place of shame is in fact the precious place that has been put down as a new foundation.

In other words, all these references bring out the duality of what is going on here.

On the one hand, something positive coming into being, so that Jesus really is the principle of all the powers of the world, he really is going to be able to feed the people, he really is going to be the new temple - those temptations, which he'd overcome.

He is actually opening up the tree of life making it possible to come into the garden, the orchard, the beginning of new creation.

That's how Luke shows both how our forgiveness works and, at the same time, how what is going on is vastly more powerful than an individual scene, but a place where all the kings and princes of this world gather together, look at the King, the Anointed and don't know what they see.

It's Psalm 2 that is being reenacted here beautifully at the centre of Luke's passion.