3 Days Of Redemption Stories With Arms Open WideНамуна

Never Too Far – The Thief on the Cross

He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. -ISAIAH 53:3–5

“What a waste of a good nail.”

These were the first words he heard as he regained consciousness. The two Roman guards sat on their haunches to inspect the seven-inch piece of iron they had just struggled to drive through his right heel. The nail was most certainly now too bent to be reused. It had passed through the block on the outside of his ankle, placed there to ensure it would not pull loose from his body, then expertly torn through his flesh. But it had stubbornly refused to become fully embedded into the olive tree from which he now hung.

His body shook violently with tremors from the pain and the muscle spasms that were already setting in from hanging in such an awkward position. The nails in his arms and ankles sent searing pain along his nerve paths. The rough wood of the tree dug into the lacerations on his back left by the defleshing of the flagellum. The sedile,* a wooden block seat, was especially efficient. It dug into his buttocks, both prolonging his life and increasing his agony. None of it compared to the torture of inhaling for breath, any breath, and the pain that accompanied the slightest effort.

At that moment, he could endure suffocation no longer and pushed against the nails in his ankles to lift himself high enough to draw another breath. He cried out in agony, and his body trembled more violently.

“Must have been a knot in the wood,” the second soldier said as he slapped his friend on the shoulder in consolation for a job less than perfectly done. The two men rose to their feet to turn their attention to the third and last condemned man of the day.

A stream of curses drew Jehohanan’s attention. He turned his gaze to his right to see Simeon a short distance away on his own cross. Simeon was filled with rage even now when his fury was most certainly spent in vain.

Jehohanan gasped for air and returned his attention to the brutal drama unfolding beneath him.

On the ground, the third Man still knelt slumped next to His cross-beam awaiting His turn with the hammer and nail. He already looked more dead than alive. His face was bruised and swollen. Someone had pulled out large patches of His beard exposing raw skin underneath. He had lost huge amounts of blood from the crown of inch-long thorns the soldiers had driven into His scalp when they mocked Him as Israel’s king. It all had a terrible irony to it. This was the man half of Judea thought was the “Messiah come at last” to set them free from Roman oppression. The guards had even put the title “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” on the name plaque on His cross. Now, He was suffering the humiliation and torment of Roman crucifixion.

Some king, Jehohanan thought. He didn’t even fight when they led Him to the posts for the scourging. He simply offered His back to them as meekly as a lamb. How dare He? How dare He just give up when He had the will of the people behind Him? No stirring speech. No valiant ending. Just surrender.

Jehohanan struggled upward for another breath and blinding pain washed over him. Then, somewhere from long ago, a passage his rabbi taught him as a boy drifted back to him. It was one of the Servant Songs of Isaiah.*

I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard.  -ISAIAH 50:6

If his education at the feet of his rabbi taught him the law of Moses and Servant Songs, it was at the campfire and dinner table where he learned his politics. He remembered the men sitting around the fire passionately discussing the census, Caesar’s brazen move to drag into slavery a people set apart to serve God alone.

Zealots rose among the people who were passionate for Israel’s freedom at any cost. As far as these men were concerned, there could be no compliance if Israel were to be free. If a neighbor wasn’t working with the Zealots, he was a conspirator with the enemy. If he lost his property or his life, so be it. There were moments when the line between patriotism and oppression was dangerously blurred. In those dark hours there were those among them who became malefactors, murderers, criminals, thieves.

Jehohanan glanced down at this One who meekly gave His body to the oppressor and remembered all the dark nights when he had returned home to his wife and child, his hands and blade stained with blood in his pursuit of his own life of crime. He would scrub his hands clean, but his heart would remain heavy with guilt as he sat before the dying firelight while his family slept. But the impulse to steal was strong; and no matter how many times he vowed to become an honest man, he returned to his thievery over and again.

The crowd of observers gasped as the soldiers stripped the third Man and moved to force Him to the crossbeam, but they found no resistance to their touch. He did not fight, scream for mercy, curse, or try to run. When the moment came for the first nail, it almost seemed as if the Man put His wrist in place to receive it.

Jehohanan tried to shift on the sedile to find a way to alleviate his suffering, but to no avail, while beside him the torturous process of raising the third Man’s cross began. Slowly, excruciatingly, the crossbeam rose until, at last, it was secured. Many men curse as nails, flesh, and gravity meet.

Most men cry out and beg for mercy, but not this Man. 

Though clearly in horrific pain, He didn’t utter a word.

Jehohanan lifted himself up for another gasp of breath, and then the torment of suffocation began once again. Tears began coursing down his cheeks as the rough wood of the cross raked across his raw back.

Somewhere through the haze of pain, more of Isaiah’s Servant Song drifted back through his mind as he considered the silent Man beside him.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.  -ISAIAH 53:7

Two crosses over, Simeon was cursing again, but now his attention was drawn away from the guards to the Man on the center cross as he heaped curses on Him in His suffering. Jesus’ eyes, however, were on the guards at His feet who were casting lots for the garment they had just stripped from Him. At last, He broke His silence.

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

Jehohanan needed another breath. He gritted his teeth, pushed against the nails in his ankles, and sent jolts of pain up his legs. He cried out in agony as he sank down again. Jesus turned to the sound of his cry, and His eyes were filled with a compassion that disarmed Jehohanan. Unbelievably, this Man who suffered in silence was offering him what kindness He could give, from His own cross.

Hours of blinding pain drifted by as muscle spasms shook Jehohanan’s body. His lungs ached for air, and his mouth grew dry. Beside him the Man spoke again, this time to a friend on the ground. He asked the friend to care for His mother after His death. As Jehohanan struggled against the nails for breath, he glanced at the Man in the middle again and then at the soldiers below. The Man’s composure in the midst of such unspeakable suffering seemed to strip the soldiers of their power to invoke terror in the crowd. Jehohanan couldn’t shake the thought that the soldiers were simply playing a part in something that was infinitely larger than they realized. In fact, the soldiers were not taking this Man’s life; He was giving it.

Did not the Servant Song reflect this Man who did “not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets” (Isaiah 42:2)? What if the Messiah was not in fact meant to establish His rule over sand and stone but in the kingdom of God Himself far above the heavens?

And if that were the case, Jehohanan thought as a sob escaped his cracked and swollen lips, then all was not lost.

His lungs burned for air again, and once again he pushed against the nails as wave after wave of excruciating pain washed over him. He gasped for breath and then sank back down against the torturous sedile, the cruel nails. Jehohanan dropped his chin to his chest. He blinked salty tears out of his eyes, and his naked body, bruised and bleeding, came into focus. The shame was more than he could bear.

Through his torment, the voice of his rabbi reciting the Servant Songs came back to him once again.

Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the word of his servant? Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the LORD and rely on their God.  -ISAIAH 50:10

His thoughts were broken by a fresh resurgence of Simeon’s curses directed toward the Man on the center cross. Simeon. Violent in life. Violent in death. Violent to the bitter end.

Jehohanan struggled to catch another precious breath and then turned to Simeon.

“Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:40–41).

Jehohanan looked at Jesus. His voice broke, and fresh tears ran down his face. Tears of brokenness. Tears of repentance. And, against all odds, tears of hope.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). It was a hope well placed. Jesus’ answer was immediate and full of promise—rescuing the one willing to be found to the very end. Never too late; never too far.

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Prayer

Lamb of God,

By Your power a cruel method of torture and execution was utterly transformed. What all believed to be a curse, You used as a means to be a blessing. What all believed to be a death sentence, You turned into life eternal. In Your hands certain defeat became ultimate victory. From horrific death You brought life to us all.

Thank You that I can never wander so far into sin that I can’t come home again. My hope endures as long as I am willing to be found. It is never, ever too late.

Amen.

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