Jesus comforts the believing thief.

Mark 15.27, 32, Matthew 27.38, 44, Luke 23.32-33, 39-43.

Jesus was crucified at about “the third hour [after sunrise],” Mk 15.25 and died at the ninth. Mk 15.34-37 Sunrise on 3 April 33, in that latitude (and before daylight-saving time was implemented), is at 5:24 AM. But “third hour” and “ninth hour” are hardly exact times; figure roughly from 8:30 AM to 2:30 PM he was on that cross. Six hours, slowly suffocating.

His cross was in between that of two evildoers Lk 23.33 or thieves. Mk 15.27 Christians like to imagine these guys were worse, like insurrectionists, or highwaymen who murdered their victims. ’Cause karma: If you’re getting crucified, it’d better be for murder or something just as awful. One of these guys implied they were getting their just desserts, Lk 23.41 so shouldn’t that make ’em murderers? Death by crucifixion sounds like way too extreme a penalty for mere thieves.

But we have to remember we’re dealing with Romans here. For them, everything merited death. They didn’t care the penalty didn’t fit the crime: They just wanted thievery to stop. So, one strike and you’re out. Thieves knew this was the risks of the job. But like all criminals, they figured they were smarter than the authorities, and they, unlike their dumber colleagues, would get away with it. These guys didn’t: The Romans caught ’em and crucified ’em. And that’s the way the game is played.

We don’t have their names. But you gotta call ’em something, so Christian tradition calls these guys Gestas and Dismas. Meh; whatever. Since Dismas was the guy who turned to Jesus and got into paradise, he’s now St. Dismas. (And 25 March is even St. Dismas’s Day. How ’bout that.) Whatever his actual name is, that idea isn’t wrong: He’s in the kingdom now.

Two of the gospels make it sound like they neither thief had any love for Jesus. They joined right in with all the non-crucified folks mocking Jesus.

Mark 15.27 KWL

They crucified two thieves with Jesus: One on the right, one at his left.

 

Matthew 27.38 KWL

38 Then two thieves were crucified with Jesus, one at right and one at left.

 

Luke 23.32-33 KWL

32 They brought two others with Jesus, evildoers to be done away with.

33 When they came to the place called Skull, there they crucified Jesus and the evildoers,

who were at right and at left.

 

Mark 15.32 KWL

“Messiah, king of Israel, has to come down from the cross now, so we can see and believe him.”

And those crucified with Jesus insulted him.

 

Matthew 27.44 KWL

Likewise the thieves crucified with Jesus insulted him.

But at some point during those six hours, Dismas had a change of heart, and when Gesmas was sniping at Jesus, Dismas decided to stand up for him.

Luke 23.39-43 KWL

39 One of the hanging evildoers was slandering Jesus, saying,

“Aren’t you Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

40 In rebuking reply, the other said, “Have you no respect for God? We’re under his judgment!

41 And we rightly so, for we got the consequence for what we practiced.

But this man did nothing wrong.”

42 He said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

43 Jesus said, “Amen! I promise you’ll be with me in paradise today.”

Paradise? What about heaven?

Popular culture insists when we die, we go to heaven. Popular Christianity tends to do likewise. And it’s sorta true… but it skips an awful lot of stuff which happens inbetween now and heaven.

See, heaven isn’t the place of the dead, but the living. There are no dead people in heaven. Jesus is there—but as you recall, he’s not dead. He got resurrected. The Father is there; angels of various species are there; plus people whom God decided to take to heaven early. Like Elijah. And, according to some traditions, Jesus’s mom.

When we die, we go to the afterlife. Which gets called by various things in the bible. Usually ἅδης/ádis, “hades,” or as the KJV confusingly and inaccurately puts it, “hell.” It’s what the Apostles’ Creed means when it states Jesus “descended into hell”: He went to the afterlife. Not the burning pool of fire and sulfur; that doesn’t exist yet. Hades isn’t necessarily a place of torment. For those who reject God, yes it’s gonna suck. For those who trust God, it’s gonna be peace and comfort as we await our resurrection. It’s going to be, to use Jesus’s word, παραδείσῳ/paradeíso, “paradise.”

But paradise is gonna be temporary. ’Cause once Jesus returns, he’s raising all us Christians from the dead. 1Th 4.16 And at the very End, he’s raising everyone else from the dead. Rv 20.12 Those who reject God are going into the fire, Rv 20.15 and those who don’t will live forever with God in New Heaven. Rv 21.1-4 That’s when we go to heaven. Not right away. But eventually.

People don’t always wanna hear that. They much prefer the pop culture idea: “We’re going to heaven! To be with Jesus forever!” And maybe even become angels, like the pagans believe; and watch over our loved ones, and listen to them whenever they talk at our graves. Unless they’re boring and ramble on and on and on, ’cause I’ve been to the cemetery and heard people talk to dead spouses; if they’re listening to that day in and day out, they’re clearly not in any good part of the afterlife. Egad.

Most of us figure when people are in mourning, now is not the time to correct their theology. Problem is, they never correct it any other time, and let ’em keep on believing heaven is the afterlife. And that we never leave this afterlife.

Well. The Pharisees taught there is an afterlife, and paradise within it. They even located it in the “third heaven,” 2Co 12.2 seven heavens below the place where God dwells (and five below the stars in the seventh heaven), so technically it’s not the heaven, God’s heaven. But it’s not on earth either.

This is the paradise Jesus spoke of. He and Dismas would die that day: Jesus from running out of strength due to his flogging and blood loss and sleep deprivation, and Dismas from the Romans breaking his legs Jn 19.32 so it’d be impossible to pull himself up to breathe, and he’d suffocate quicker, and be dead before sundown. But they’d be in the afterlife together—in the good part of the afterlife, in paradise.

I know; plenty of Christians have explained paradise away as a “spiritual paradise,” as Thomas Aquinas put it: He meant heaven, right? ’Cause everybody knows when people die they go to heaven. And thus we embrace our favorite beliefs instead of what Jesus likely meant. As usual.

Was this the answer the thief wanted?

Realistically, I doubt Dismas ever heard Jesus’s statements to his students that he was gonna die yet rise on the third day. So if he knew anything at all about the resurrection—that Jesus would die that day, but rise once Sabbath was over and take possession of his kingdom—this info had to have come directly from the Holy Spirit. There’s no possible way Dismas could’ve deduced it.

But if the Spirit had told Dismas no such thing, what could we reasonably expect him to think? Two possibilities.

• He imagined Jesus was gonna get rescued (miraculously or not), survive crucifixion, and see his kingdom come.
• He was delirious from pain, and didn’t know what Jesus’s condition was—but deep down believed Jesus is Messiah, so it was only a matter of time before he took possession of his kingdom.

Either way we’ve got faith there. Wrong or wack, but still faith.

But Jesus’s response referred to paradise, not the kingdom. The afterlife, not the present, nor even the age to come. Death, not life. He and Dismas were gonna die; he to come back in a few days, and Dismas to come back once Jesus takes his kingdom. Either way, it’s not a timeline Dismas expected. Heck, even Jesus’s students had it wrong, and he’d told them how many times he was gonna die and come back?

So Dismas may not have expected to hear this response from Jesus. But I believe Jesus meant it as comfort, and I expect it was comforting. Dismas had every reason to assume he’d never make it to a good afterlife. More likely something hotter, something which stank more than crucifixion. But instead, thanks to God’s grace, he was gonna be with Jesus, and receive comfort instead of torment. So there’s that.

It probably bugged Jesus that he couldn’t offer Dismas anything more at that time. Usually Jesus didn’t just offer kind words and nothing more, like some pathetic chaplain who doesn’t really believe in miracles (and frankly, won’t always mean it when they offer stale platitudes): Jesus cured the suffering. But at the time, the healer couldn’t heal. Just like his enemies taunted.

The women who watched Jesus die.

Mark 15.40-41, Matthew 27.55-56, Luke 23.49, John 19.25.

Various Christians like to point out, “There were actually two groups of people following Jesus: There were the disciples, and there were the women.” Though y’notice they seldom bring up the women till we get to one of the stories in the gospels about the women.

With some due respect to these Christians, there were not two groups following Jesus; there was one. His students. The people who supported him, served him, and listened to his teachings. The Twelve were a special group of students whom Jesus singled out, and of course there were plenty of students who didn’t stick around after Jesus taught something too hardcore for them. But everyone who followed him, he considered a student. That includes the women.

Yes, history describes Pharisee rabbis as only instructing young men—and I remind you in Jesus’s culture you were “a man” at age 13, which is why I keep referring to his students as kids. That was their expectation, anyway: If men were gonna live under the Law, they needed to be trained, while still young, how Pharisees interpret the finer points of the Law. But let’s be blunt: The rabbis taught ’em all the Pharisee loopholes. This way they could appear religious, but not have to struggle all that hard when it comes to the things which really tempt people. It’s what Jesus called straining out the gnats, but swallowing camels. Mt 23.24 Basically lessons in hypocrisy. And as we know, Jesus taught no such thing; he totally expected his students to be authentic God-followers. Still does.

But rabbis didn’t just get teenage students. Friday nights, when they held Sabbath synagogue, people of any age showed up. And sometimes throughout the week, these same people might show up and listen to a lesson. And bring questions.

Synagogues segregated women in the back, and in open-air classes like Jesus taught, they’d still customarily sit in the back or on the sidelines. Ostensibly they were waiting for their brothers or spouses or kids, or were only there to tend to the rabbi’s needs. In reality they were also getting an education. They weren’t permitted to ask questions, and in so doing spoil the cultural illusion. They weren’t allowed to sit up front with the boys, like Mary of Bethany totally did, Lk 10.39 and be overt students. But Jesus was totally fine with Mary’s behavior. Lk 10.42 And most rabbis approved of the women listening in. (After all, mothers were expected to raise good Pharisee kids, and how’re you gonna do that if you don’t know what Pharisees teach?)

So the women were Jesus’s students too. Same as the boys. So they weren’t among the Twelve; why should this stop anyone from likewise sharing Jesus with the world? Or stop Jesus from sending ’em on their own missions?

Okay. This said, I oughta point out the women who were at Jesus’s cross, the women who watched him die, were not necessarily students. One certainly was: Mary the Magdalene. But the others who were listed by name, were actually Jesus’s family members: His mother and aunts.

Mark 15.40-41 KWL

40 There were women watching from far away,

among them Mary the Magdalene, Mary mother of little James and Joses, and Salomé.

41 When in the Galilee, these women followed Jesus and served him.

Many other women had traveled with Jesus to Jerusalem.

 

Matthew 27.55-26 KWL

55 There were many women there, watching from far away,

who followed Jesus from the Galilee, who served him.

56 Among them was Mary the Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Joses,

and Salomé mother of Zebedee’s children.

 

Luke 23.49 KWL

Everyone who knew Jesus were standing far away, watching this,

including the women who followed him from the Galilee.

 

John 19.25 KWL

Standing by Jesus’s cross were his mother, his mother’s sister Salomé,

Mary wife of Clopas, and Mary the Magdalene.

So according to John, Jesus’s mother was there. And according to all the gospels, so was Mary, the wife of Joseph’s brother Clopas, the mother of his apostle James “the less”; and Salomé (some ancients called her “Mary Salomé,” maybe mixing the aunts together), Jesus’s mother’s sister, the wife of Zebedee and mother of his apostles James and John.

Yep, family. Now you see why they stuck around.

Watching from afar.

Since various Christians don’t recognize the family connections, they make various other assumptions as to why the women stuck around but the men didn’t. And maybe—maybe—there’s some legitimacy to some of them. But probably they’re just reading their own cultural assumptions into things.

Fr’instance cracks about their level of commitment. Because the boys all fled, or pretended not to even know him, but the women stuck around. So people like to make statements about the women’s loyalty, devotion, boldness, fearlessness… traits we do honestly see more often among female Christians than male Christians. But this casual observation misses and ignores several things in the gospels. First of all Jesus wanted the kids to get away, Jn 18.8 and not be arrested and crucified with him. Second, some of the boys did stick around to see what happened, like Simon Peter, John, and Judas Iscariot; and possibly others. And third, the women’s loyalty wasn’t based on what they believed; they were family. They didn’t have to believe in Jesus (though they did); they’d be there for him regardless, because that’s what family does. Should do, anyway.

I’ve heard people claim the men had to go into hiding lest the Romans suspect them of being fellow revolutionaries; but the women could be out in the open because the Romans would never suspect them. It’s a profoundly naïve statement. Have none of them read about Yaél?

Judges 4.17-22 KWL

17 Siserá fled by foot to the tent of Yaél, Khevér the Qeyni’s woman.

(There was peace between king Yavín of Khachór, and Khevér the Qeyni’s house.)

18 Yaél went out to meet Siserá, and told him, “Master, come in; don’t fear.”

He went inside her tent. She covered him with a rug.

19 Siserá told Yaél, “Please give me a little water to drink; I’m thirsty.”

She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him again.

20 Siserá told Yaél, “Stand at the tent door.

If a man happens to come and ask you—to say, ‘Is there a man here?’ you say no.”

21 Then Yaél, Khevér’s woman, took a tentpeg, and put a hammer in her hand.

She came to Siserá quietly, and pounded the peg through his temple into the ground.

He was sleeping soundly, and weary. He died.

22 Look, as Barák pursued Siserá, Yaél came out to meet him,

and told him, “Come. I’ll show you the man you’re seeking.”

He came into her tent, and look: Siserá lay dead, the peg in his temple.

If you’ve never read the apocrypha, it’s understandable if you’ve never heard of Judith, who likewise killed an enemy general. Women make some of the fiercest insurgents. The Romans had plenty such women in their own history, and would’ve been stupid to disregard them. That’s why the women wisely kept their distance. Frankly those people who think the women were beneath noticing, are letting their own sexism distort their interpretation.

The women wisely stayed back, not just ’cause of the Romans, but because they likely knew themselves: They‘d want to intervene, interfere, and get killed for their efforts. All they could really do was stand back and watch the horrifying spectacle.

It had to be hard for Jesus to know they were watching. He knew the end of the story—and really so should they, ’cause he foretold it more than once. But like his other students, the women likely didn’t believe it. And either way, watching Jesus die had to be awful. Christians who watch Jesus movies are fully aware how the story ends, but watching movie-Jesus die still makes us weep. ’Cause that’s someone we love getting beaten to death. So how much worse was it for the women who knew Jesus best?

Churches who wanna “restore” Christianity.

RESTORATIONIST rɛs.tə'reɪ.ʃən.ɪst adjective. Wants to return Christianity to what they consider the beliefs and practices of the earliest Christians.

[Restorationism rɛs.tə'reɪ.ʃən.ɪz.əm noun.]

Humans really like to reboot things. Not just Spider-Man movies; there are lots of things we figure have broken, got too complicated, or run down; so maybe it’d be best if we take ’em back to the drawing board and start over. Maybe we can improve upon the original. Or maybe the original was best, so let’s go back to that.

And Christians keep trying to do it with Christianity. We look at all the traditions our culture has layered upon the church and think, “Well that’s not what the ancient Christians taught… and maybe we should never have taught that to begin with.” We wanna get back to basics. Reset the religion to its factory settings, like a phone—where it worked just fine until we started adding all these “useful” apps which just gummed things up.

So every so often, Christians will start a church and claim they’re running it the way Jesus’s first apostles did. They’ve “rediscovered” something which other Christians have left by the wayside. Like certain vital doctrines, or supernatural gifts, or leadership models other than the whole supervisor/elder Christians/congregation setup taught in 1 Timothy. (The fivefold ministry idea has become recently popular; whereas four centuries ago Protestants had decided to try democracy, i.e. congregationalism.) Or they claim they got whole new revelations from God which change everything: The Latter-day Saints claim angels pointed their prophet to extra books of the bible; the Watchtower decided to give Arianism another try; the Pentecostals (originally; few think this way anymore) figured the Holy Spirit turned the miracles back on for the very last dispensation; the Adventists (originally; again, few think this way anymore) figured they had correctly calculated what day Jesus was returning.

And of course there’s backlash: Plenty of Protestants, and people of other new Christian groups, individually decide their churches were wrong to chuck all their valuable traditions, so they quit their churches and join liturgical congregations like the Lutherans, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, or Orthodox.

It’s all about rebooting their religion: What did Jesus originally teach, and how did the apostles originally worship? ’Cause whatever that was, they wanna do that.

Whenever they ask me about it, I point ’em to the Didache. ’Cause it is what the ancient Christians taught! But I remind them the Didache isn’t bible. Even though some ancient Christians totally wanted to include it in the New Testament, ultimately they didn’t. Because how we worship God is optional. We have freedom in Christ to follow our consciences, and decide for ourselves what’s gonna further our relationship with Jesus… and what isn’t. And if old practices help, great!—do them. And if old practices don’t—’cause sometimes they don’t—don’t do them; to you they’re gonna be dead religion, and we’re striving for living religion.

Those who wanna “restore” Christianity to the beliefs and practices of the earliest Christians, likewise are striving for living religion. Which is great. But are they going about it the right way? There’s the real question. It’s not about re-adopting old practices; nor is it about adopting new practices which they’re pretty sure the Holy Spirit gave ’em to fix Christianity. It should always be about following Jesus more closely, and producing good fruit.

Synoptic gospels: The three gospels which sync up.

SYNOPTICS sə'nɑp.tɪks plural noun. The synoptic gospels.

SYNOPTIC GOSPELS sə'nɑp.tɪk 'ɡɑs.pəls plural noun. The gospels which show a great deal of similarity in stories, wording, structure, order, viewpoint, and purpose. Namely Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

You’ll notice in my articles on Jesus’s teachings I often line up the different gospels in columns. ’Cause they’re telling the same story, but in slightly different ways. But even so, they sync up rather well. The phenomenon is pretty well described by the Greek word σύνοψις/synopsis, “see with [one another],” so three of the gospels get called synoptic.

John is an obvious exception. I can sync it up from time to time, but nowhere near as well. Its author was clearly telling his own stories.

There’s a rather obvious explanation for why the synoptics line up: Mark was written first. The authors of Matthew and Luke simply quoted Mark as they put together their own gospels. Sometimes they quoted Mark word-for-word; sometimes not. The author of Luke admitted other such sources existed—

Luke 1.1-4 KWL

1 Since many people have decided to arrange a narrative about the acts we accomplished,

2 just as they were given to us by the first eyewitnesses who served the Word,

3 it occurred to me to help write out everything accurately from the beginning to you, honorable Theófilus,

4 so you might know with certainty about the word you were taught.

—and it turns out he availed himself of those sources. Mark included.

But—no surprise—there are Christians who have a big problem with the idea the gospels’ authors quoted one another. Including some scholars.

Some are bugged by the idea of anybody quoting anybody. What they’d much rather believe is that each of the gospels’ authors wrote independently of one another… and all their stories happen to match. Miraculously. Which would definitely convince them the gospels are reliable… but nobody else. Y’see, talk to any police detective and they’ll tell you: When every witness’s story lines up too perfectly, they colluded. No question.

A more reasonable problem, which bugs a lot of Christians, is the idea of Matthew quoting Mark. Because the apostle Matthew was one of the Twelve, who personally followed Jesus and learned from him directly. Whereas the apostle Mark was a student of Paul, and later Peter… and therefore didn’t learn about Jesus firsthand like Matthew; he learned about Jesus secondhand from Peter, and thirdhand from Barnabas and Paul. All this stuff was confirmed by the Holy Spirit, but still: Why on earth would Matthew quote Mark? What could Mark possibly know that Matthew didn’t?

So these Christians’ theory goes like yea: ’Twasn’t Mark, but Matthew, who wrote his gospel first. (Maybe even in Aramaic, the language of Jesus and Matthew’s homeland, instead of Greek.) Then Mark later published an abridged Greek version of Matthew. And Luke later quoted Mark… or Matthew; whichever.

Meh; it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility. But we’ve no proof there’s an Aramaic original of Matthew, and we don’t know why Mark would want to write a shorter gospel instead of including every Matthew story.

But the more important thing to remember is the names we attached to the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John—were attached there by tradition. We don‘t actually know who wrote ’em. They’re anonymous. The apostles and prophets put their names on their books and letters, but the authors of the gospels felt Jesus is way more important than them, so they left their names off. Deliberately; the author of John called himself “the student Jesus loved,” and the only John in his gospel is John the baptist.

We think we know who wrote the gospels, and it’s entirely possible we got the right guys. There’s some hints in Luke/Acts that Luke’s the author, and many more hints in John that John bar Zebedee wrote it. But Mark actually has no such hints. Nor Matthew. Matthew might not have written Matthew. Or it was some other guy named Matthew who wrote it, who’s not the same Matthew in the Twelve.

Power through prayer.

Humans covet power. So I fully expect by titling this article “Power through prayer,” I’m gonna get a few readers who think, “I’d like some power, and this fella claims I can get it through prayer; let’s see whether there’s anything I can use.” (More accurately, “Let’s see whether he tells me something I care to do.” If it takes too much effort, or takes us too far out of our comfort zones, people prefer alternative routes. True of medicine, politics, Christianity, and of course our prayers.)

Generally there are three types of Christians who wanna know about gaining power through prayer.

1. “PRAYER WARRIORS.” These’d be the folks who think prayer is how we do spiritual warfare. Not resisting temptation, like the scriptures describe; they believe spiritual warfare consists of praying against all the evil in the world. They want everything they pray against to be vanquished.
2. SIGN-SEEKERS. These Christians wanna see miracles. They wanna do miracles. They want the Holy Spirit to empower them to do every mighty act they can think of: Sick people get instantly cured, axheads float, sundials go backwards, fillings turn to gold, fire falls from the sky. Anything which demonstrates God’s really among us and endorses them.
3. POWER SEEKERS. These people want temporal power. They wanna be in charge of a church, ministry, or nonprofit. Or they want to be financially successful—have a nice house, own a nice car, pay off their mortgage, take all the vacations missions trips they always wanted to…. Or they want political power. Whatever gives them the ability to direct their lives the way they wish.

So all these folks wanna be “strong in the Lord, and the power of his might,” Ep 6.10 KJV whether they’re thinking of God’s armor or not. They want their prayers regularly answered with yes. Their wishes are… well, not God’s commands, for they’d never put it that way. But essentially yeah: They want God to do as they ask.

The problem? These people covet power. Not God. God’s a means to an end, not the Beginning and the End. Learning how to have power through prayer, basically means learning to manipulate God, and have our way with the Almighty. It’s the exact opposite of how our relationship with God is meant to work.

And those who seek powerful prayers, have to watch out lest we share this motivation. Because it’s absolutely the wrong motivation. We follow him. Never the other way round.