The Thief Who Got a Promise

Pilate handed Jesus over to the soldiers, and they marched him out through the city gate. Two criminals went with him, sentenced to die the same way.

The place was a bare hill called the Skull. There the soldiers nailed Jesus to a cross and raised it up, with one criminal on his right and one on his left. A cross was how the Romans killed people they wanted the whole city to see. All three men knew they would be dead before night.

Jesus looked down at the men who had done it. "Father," he said, "forgive them. They don't know what they are doing."

The soldiers were sitting in the dirt, throwing dice for his clothes. (On a hill like that, the soldiers kept whatever the prisoners had been wearing. A robe was worth more to them than the man inside it.)

Over Jesus' head they fixed a sign: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Then the mocking began. The leaders of the people stood with their arms folded. "He saved other people," they sneered. "Let him save himself, if he is God's Chosen One!"

The soldiers joined in. One held up a cup of sour wine. "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!"

Even one of the criminals spat out the same words. "Aren't you the Messiah? Then save yourself, and us too!"

(Everyone on that hill seemed sure what a real king would do: look after himself first.)

The other criminal had been hanging there listening. He heard the jokes, the rattle of the dice, and the man in the middle praying for the people who were hurting him.

"Stop it," he said to the first man. "Don't you fear God? You're dying the same death he is. We deserve this. We are getting exactly what our crimes have earned. But this man has done nothing wrong."

Then he turned his face toward Jesus. He had no time left to put anything right. He could not pay back one coin of what he had stolen. His hands were fastened to the wood, so he could not even lift them up to pray. All he had left was a few words.

"Jesus," he said, "remember me when you come into your kingdom."

He believed the sign over Jesus' head. The man dying beside him really was a king, and his kingdom was still coming.

Jesus turned to him. "Truly I tell you," he said, "today you will be with me in paradise."

It was only about noon. Today, before that sun went down, with nothing earned and nothing paid back. (Paradise first meant a walled garden, the kind a king kept beside his palace. Long ago, the garden of Eden was called by the same word.) By evening he would be there with the King, just as Jesus had promised.

The thief asked only to be remembered, the least anyone could ask of a king. On a hill where everyone shouted at him to save himself, Jesus spent his breath saving someone else.

Plenty of others would come to Jesus the same way. Jailers and soldiers, runaway servants and people from every country would ask the same thing, and he would say yes to each one.

Every one of those yeses came from the King who hung on that hill with nails through his hands, listening for one more voice to say, "Remember me."