Remember Me?

The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” [Luke 23:36-37].

Earlier today, I performed an Internet search on the popular web site that sells virtually everything. The site is named for the long, winding river in Brazil, the site whose name I won’t mention due to the power of its trademark. Searching only within books, I typed “self-help” in the text box and was not surprised when the site indicated there were more than 60,000 titles from which I might choose. The range was broad:

• The Hidden Doors to Success: Achieve More, Faster
• Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present

Not a few concentrated on spirituality and/or church growth:

• Church Growth Flywheel: 5 Practical Systems to Drive Growth at Your Church
• The Essential Guide to the Prophetic: How to Hear the Voice of God
• Lead Like It Matters: 7 Leadership Principles for a Church That Lasts

Our society is addicted to self-help. Why enlist the aid of others? Why give up control? Society teaches, “Just grab your bootstraps and pull.” The attitude was around in colonial times. “God helps those who help themselves” [Poor Richard’s Almanack (1736), by Benjamin Franklin].

About 20 years ago, the Barna Research Group (Ventura, CA) conducted a survey. Those surveyed were given 14 statements and asked to indicate their relative level of agreement or disagreement with each. Some 77 percent of those surveyed said they agreed or strongly agreed with the following statement:

The Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves.

Not a few who were surveyed thought the statement was one of the Ten Commandments. Of course, as far as I’ve ever been able to discern, Holy Scripture teaches no such thing. It’s just that the self-help attitude matches so well our human mindsets.

Self-help, of course, isn’t just an American phenomenon. It was alive and well in 1st century Palestine. In the New Testament reading assigned for this upcoming Sunday, Luke 23:33-43 [Reign of Christ Sunday, RCL, Year C], which describes the last moments of Jesus’ life, as he hung from a cross, He is asked three times to save himself.

Just after Jesus had prayed that those around Him would be forgiven, for “they do not know what they are doing” [Luke 23:34], just after some had cast lots to divide his clothing, Luke tells us that the leaders of the temple scoffed at Jesus, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah” [23:35].

The soldiers offered him sour wine, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself” [23:36].

And finally, after He had been nailed to the tree, one of the criminals who was also hanging on Golgotha, kept deriding Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us” [23:39].

Jesus, of course, had heard this sort of “save yourself” thing before. During His 40 days of testing in the wilderness, the devil had said to Him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread” [Luke 4:3}. But in the wilderness, Jesus was not “in to” saving Himself. All throughout His life, and particularly at the time of His death, He was interested in saving others. And so, He did. He fed others by the thousands. He healed the crippled, the blind, the demon possessed. He calmed stormy waters. He raised Lazarus. He washed feet. He ate with sinners. He watched as the authorities, and those who hated Him, nailed His hands and feet to a cross.

This Sunday is the last Sunday in the church year. In some denominational settings, it’s called “Christ the King Sunday.” Others speak of this Sunday as the “Reign of Christ.” Soon, our minds will turn to Advent, but not yet. This Sunday, we’re invited to kneel before our Sovereign. Scripture teaches that He thought of Himself as our Friend, but life within the cosmos would soon depend upon His status as our Lord and Savior. He is our King.

To be sure, Jesus Christ breaks all the molds of kingship. No powerful, ever-lasting king would give up His life as a condemned criminal, lifted up not upon a throne, but upon a cross. Kings wear jeweled crowns, not those that are formed from strands of thorns. Kings lead armies; they aren’t dispatched by lowly sentinels. Kings are usually surrounded by royal courts; this One had two criminals, one to His left, the other to His right. Kings wear royal garments; they don’t have their single cloak taken from them and gambled away. Kings exert their powers through their spoken word. The devil was right; Jesus Christ could call down angels, but this king chose not to do so.

That Jesus would end His life not according to society’s rules, but according to His own, should not come as a surprise. After all, what kind of king is born in a stable? What kind of king has no property—no place to lay his head? What kind of king, when asked to discuss the duty owed to Caesar, i.e., if it was theologically acceptable to pay taxes to such a tyrant, had to ask for a coin to make His point—He had no coin of His own?

What kind of king suggests that if we want to save our lives—that is if we want to engage in theological self-help—then we must do the counter-intuitive; we must lose our lives. What kind of king admonishes us to give up not only our coat, but our shirt to someone else in need? What kind of king requires that when we are struck on the cheek, we are to turn the other cheek? What kind of king would upset the apple cart by insisting that the last be paid first, and the first paid last? What kind of king would announce that He came to serve, not to be served? What sort of king would proclaim that He had a new commandment—that we love one another as He loves us?

The answer of course is that such a king would be like nothing this world has ever seen. This stark divergence between the type of king one might expect—indeed, the type of king some of us want—and the type of king that one gets in Jesus Christ, it begs the vital question of the Day: “What is our reaction to this King who refuses to follow the world’s rules, this king who insists on a kingdom that follows His?”

In a word, we must worship Him.

The story of Jesus’ life is that He isn’t into self-help. At the end, facing a cruel and painful death, He refused to save Himself because He came instead to save us. And yet, even here, the salvation is according to His rules, not our own. For the same Jesus who did not avoid suffering comes not so much to prevent our suffering, but rather to engage in our suffering with us. After all, he is called Emmanuel—God with us.

Our Lord did not shun humanity; He joined into it. He takes on our sin—though He knows no sin of His own—experiences the tremendous loss that is caused by such sin, and then, just as He did to those who had assembled ‘round his cross, He offers us forgiveness.

Have you ever been in a situation that was so messed up that nothing you could do would fix it? Have you ever experienced the loss of relationship with someone that was so deep that it felt as if a hot knife had been plunged into your heart? Have you felt the pain that is unimaginable because it has been caused by the death of one who is dear? In each of these moments—and in countless other moments of loss, doom, or sadness that only you can name in your heart—you’ve sensed the depth of this Truth: All too often, we cannot stitch the tear, repair the break, mend the wound. There is no level of self-help that will help.

It is in those moments that we can come to the realization that Jesus Christ is still with us. We can give thanks to a God who will never abandon us, for His promise—through the Holy Spirit—is to remain with us, even after He has died for us.

Filled with utter despair, the condemned man on Jesus’ flank cried out to our Lord, “Jesus, remember me …” [Luke 23:42].

He always does!

Thanks be to God.