"Jesus, remember me!"

[AI translation] In the Good Friday service, it is often the case that the sermon is based on one of the seven words Jesus spoke on the cross. The main verse that we are going to read relates to one of these sayings of Jesus on the cross, but I want to focus not so much on the word of Jesus, but on the Latorah, this short, sigh-like prayer, "Lord, remember me when you come in your kingdom." In fact, let me change even that a little, as it is in the original Greek text. Because the oldest manuscripts don't say, "Lord, remember me," but this: "JESUS, remember me..." So the full text reads, "And he said (that is, one of the Lators), 'Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.'" In this prayer of the unfortunate, dying man is reflected all that Good Friday was about: it contains the whole redemptive significance of Jesus' death on Calvary! Let us see!Let's see, this man is in terrible misery! We don't know who he was before: a Jew, a hero of freedom in the resistance movement, or a simple villain? He himself, at any rate, pronounces the most severe sentence upon himself that a man can pronounce upon himself: 'We are under sentence, we shall receive the just punishment for our deeds!' When a man can say, in the most terrible misery, "I deserved it", he has no more illusions about himself. Oh, what a long and bitter road it is to come to this! He knows what is on his soul, how much filth is on his hands... Perhaps blood! In any case, Luke the evangelist mentions him as an evildoer. Now he has taken his just punishment: he will be executed! He's already hanging on the cross, on the gallows. By his bleeding hands, he is nailed to the roughly hewn beam, his whole body writhing in the splitting pain. His head thrashes to and fro in a terrible fit of fever. It's horrible, dying for hours. It's almost the end. But is it really the end? Behold, he says he is suffering the just punishment of his deeds. But is he really suffering it? Or does he have a presentiment that after the horror of the crucifixion comes the real horror: the horror of hell! Through his present painful misery he may even see into eternal misery: damnation!
But please, don't look down on this villain too much... If you or I should really have to bear the punishment we deserve, do you think we would be better off?! We would have less on our souls?! We might have sinned less against God and man?! Oh, I have seen many a man come to the end, when he was almost there before the throne of the eternal Judge! I know now that there is no difference there between the malefactor and the man of honour. There is only one: a guilty man! A man under judgment! A man deserving God's damnation! Let us not look down too much on that evildoer: we are there, you and I, with him in judgment! Would that we could cry out with him, Jesus, remember me!
Yes, that lator cried out like that then! "Jesus!" he said. And Jesus had nothing better to do than him. Jesus was just as much in pain, suffering, trouble, misery as he was. Jesus was on the gallows, stretched out, dying! Isn't it strange: one crucified man crying out to another crucified man! The helpless leaning on the other helpless! The dying man ties his fate to the other dying man! Here, then, is really what Paul once spoke of when he said: I want to know nothing but Jesus, the crucified one! (cf. 1 Cor 2,2) Now here is really just that: some wonderful faith in Jesus, the crucified one! Here, all the fuss, all the superstructure, all the ornamentation that theology, church or tradition has ever put on God, said, is all gone! There is now no ecclesiasticism, no denominational pomposity, no dogmatic nit-picking, here is only this: 'JESUS!' JESUS, and truly crucified! And the dying reprobate seeks refuge in that man in his last hour, on whom all Jerusalem laughs or stumbles in that hour. "JESUS!" he cries, and seeks life from him who is plunged in death! And he is right! He could call no other name, he could call no other here, he could dial no other number in vain! He is right: Jesus, crucified, represents God to us in his most sublime humility, in his most immediate nearness! Jesus, crucified, represents God to us in his greatest love and in his deepest love for us. It is true: God Himself in Jesus bowed down to that murderer plunged into death, hell, judgment. For Jesus is under exactly the same judgment, crucified in exactly the same way, so that he might be with him in this greatest tribulation!
A mother once said, when she did not want to leave her sick child's bedside for a single moment: "If he calls, I want to be there!" That is what God wanted, that if the murderer called, God wanted to be there for him! That's why Jesus is hanging right there with him on another cross! In Jesus, God was callable to him. Yes, it is always like that: just call Jesus and God will come! Just shout like this murderer: "Jesus!" and God will answer! God doesn't have a secret number like many earthly greats, God's number is this: Jesus! You can always find it under "JESUS"! Jesus is the saving hand of God extended to you! This is what the murderer seized upon when he cried out, "Jesus!" This man didn't know much about this Jesus who was writhing beside him, but he knew, instinctively felt, that he could cling to Him, and he clung to Him. "Jesus!" he shouted over to the other cross!
But what else could he have said in that dreadful final hour?! What could he have said? Was it that he was not always such a wretched man? That there was something good in him when he was younger? Or could he have pleaded that he had enough money to pay his debts? What could anything have helped here: friends, friends, human power, wealth, physical strength...?! Here, at the end of life's journey - at the end of any life's journey - there is really nothing left but JESUS! Yes: JESUS! What do you think you will be able to say when you too come to the end? The end of everything! And one day, for you too - and for me too, of course - there will come a moment when the earth will sink beneath us, and everything we have clung to in our lives will be gone. And then, in our final need, we too will reach out - but to where? Towards what or after whom? Who would you cling to if not Jesus?! Yes: Jesus! To JESUS alone!
I can't help but admire the faith of this lator. Look, he cries out, "Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom!" Literally translated, "in your kingdom". In the whole Good Friday crowd, he was the only one who could see Jesus clearly. The other miserable man hanging next to him on the other cross. He really saw something in Jesus! He saw something behind him, he saw Jesus' kingdom, his kingship. He did not see Jesus as 'going away', but as 'coming'. Everybody else: his enemies, his friends, everybody saw Jesus as going, as already defeated, done away with, brought down by men. He'll go on writhing one or two more times, but then it's over - he's gone forever! Only this one miserable man saw Jesus as one who does not go, but comes! "Remember me when you come in your kingdom!" Isn't that wonderful? He saw this dying, nailed up, hanging Jesus as coming! As one who in the fullness of his royal reign will only truly come after this! He saw His Kingdom coming! This man looks at the crucified Jesus and sees the heavens opened! For indeed, there on Calvary, Jesus comes to us with His full redemptive embrace as the gracious King of the Kingdom of God. There heaven opens upon earth, there eternity pours into this world, there the Father awaits the prodigal sons with open arms!
How humble is the plea of this man, "Remember me!" I believe that when one is in desperate need, well-crafted theological concepts, round sentences, beautifully ringing words, shrink into one deep, anguished sigh: "Jesus, have mercy on me!" I once heard of a great theologian who was very careful to maintain dogmatic purity, to articulate biblical doctrine clearly. But when he was about to die, his last words were this Salvation Army hymn, "I will surely bow my head in Jesus' lap." Well then, "Remember me!" Others will remember him too, I'm sure. Perhaps his children will remember him with shame, the father with the dirty name... Perhaps his mother, who gave birth to him, perhaps his wife, who loved him in spite of everything: they will remember him with tears of pain. But what is it all worth?! His whole ruined life, everything he has done, weighs like a heavy stone on his soul! Every moment brings him closer to eternity, to the judgment to come... Oh, whose remembrance can give me salvation in this! And then he looks at Jesus! Yes, yes, that is the only hope, that Jesus, when He comes in His glory, in His kingdom, will then be remembered. People usually, when they rise to high dignity after humiliation, usually forget those they were with in the abyss. But Jesus will come gloriously in His kingdom precisely to remember the miserable ones who have already belonged to Him here, who have hoped in Him! In this, too, this evildoer was right: it is enough to say, "Remember me when you come in your kingdom!"
And Jesus justified this confidence in him when he said to him, "Today you will be with me in paradise!" Naked, naked, alone with Jesus! And that was enough! He was not disappointed! And so it is with all of us. So it is that nothing counts for salvation, no merit, no virtue, no goodness of our own. No matter what I have suffered, endured, struggled through: all that matters is the Lord Jesus Himself. His grace, His merit, His redeeming death! That is all that matters! That is why you and I must count on Him, on salvation! And that's why we are allowed to walk the earth now, to work, to serve, to suffer, to love, to forgive - to live as those who have the great promise of grace to be with Christ in Paradise!
"Today," Jesus says to the Lazarus. So even when our own will be standing around our deathbeds with red tears in their eyes, when they will be performing the last ministry of love on us. "Today" - so there is no long, dark road on which souls leaving here must wander until, after many hardships or after multiple incarnations, they finally reach happiness, peace, but immediately, that way, moving out of here means moving in! At least for those who look at Jesus, the crucified One, as not going but coming: coming in His Kingdom, mightily, graciously and gloriously!
COMING! Let us all say, then, with that brother of ours who is a Lazarus: JESUS, remember me also when you come in your kingdom!
Amen!
Date: Good Friday, April 20, 1962