Prayer Practice: Jesus, Remember Me

as part of a Taize' worship service, based around Luke 23:39-43, on March 23, 2014

Do you have to be baptized in order to be saved?  Do you need to be baptized in order to go to heaven?  The answer is No.  I often use this passage as scriptural evidence.  Here we have a thief, dying beside Jesus, who asks, "Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom."  Jesus replies, "Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."  This is hardly the time or place for a baptism.

Baptism, like we have had today, is the usual way that the church acts out  God's desire to save all persons.  In the prayer of thanksgiving over the water, we rehearse how God has saved humankind all throughout our history, from Noah and the flood, to the Exodus of bringing the Hebrews out of bondage through the Red Sea, to the baptism of Jesus.  God's arms are wide open, welcoming all people.

So I have performed baptisms in the Neo-Natal ICU and in the nursing home...and at every point in between, for little babies to the elderly dying ones.

God's desire to save everyone is illustrated in another way in this passage.  Jesus saves a man, a convicted thief, just before his dying breath.  Jesus is among the outcasts, the forgotten, the downtrodden, the sinners.  When they, when we cry, "Jesus, remember me," he does remember us and promise us salvation.

The thief is helpless and hopeless.  He cries, "Jesus, remember me."  The answer is immediate, "Today, you will be with me in paradise."

What seems to be the most helpless and hopeless place in your life?  I would have you go there and offer it to Jesus.  "Jesus, remember me."  What seems to be the most helpless and hopeless place in our world today?  I would have you go there and offer it to Jesus.  "Jesus, remember me."

We join our voices with all those down through our Bible story who called upon the Lord in their desperation:  Joseph in jail in Egypt, Hannah who could not have children, Job who was righteous yet struck down, Jeremiah weeping over his people in Jerusalem.

Jesus overcomes the most hopeless situations.  When we cry, "Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom," Jesus responds, "Today, you will be with me in paradise."

That's the good news I have to share today.