What did the Thief See?
Imagination in the hour of one's death
A Thief hangs on a cross.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been. His life is no longer measured by the movement of the sun, but by the endless weight of deciding if another breath is worth the pain of lifting his cruciform body with his nail-pierced feet so his lungs can decompress enough to draw in a little more air.
He saw his brother in the distance looking at him. It was probably just for the shameful spectacle but he likes to think his brother was actually checking on him. Not that there was anything to be done.
His mother will be too ashamed to see him here. He won’t see her again.
So he is alone. Labored breaths and waiting.
Another victim of the state is raised on a cross next to him. He looks familiar—maybe he saw him once from the back of a crowd when everyone ate their fill of bread and fish. He didn’t steal anything that evening.
“This is the King of the Jews” is hung over the man’s head. A lot of people hated this man. The Thief doesn’t know his story but he can tell by the way they expressed their hate across the man’s body. It seems odd to think he himself got off easy, even as he awaits his own death.
There were murmurs of an opposition leader entering the city. This one seemed like somebody — the Jews even risked throwing a parade for him with palm branches and singing. Right in front of the Romans. Nobody stands up to the Romans and this is just another example of why.
“The King” has a lot of visitors. Most of them spectators, mockers. But there are a few women and a few friends who hang close. They will stay until the end. If the guards let them.
The guards take the King’s clothes and are dividing them up. They try to get him to drink some vinegar.
Just let the man die.
It’s not long before the “Important People” show up and start yelling. “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!”
Who is this guy?
The Important People continue to mock.
“Some of these idiots even thought he was the Messiah.”
“I heard a naked guy who slept in a graveyard next to pigs call him the Son of God once.”
The Christ of God? The Jews’ Messiah? The Chosen one? The King of the Jews?
But, to the Thief, the King is just another man, dying the same death as him, measuring his final hours in gasping breaths. This is not how Messiahs die. This is not how Kings die. This is not how Gods die.
Time passes. And through profound pain the Thief listens and watches. Strange darkness settles over the land.
Before long another thief annoyed with the endless stream of onlookers in his final shameful hours cries out, “Are you not the Christ, save yourself and us!”
Yet something has changed, because the first Thief finds he cannot stay silent. “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”
Then, perhaps the Thief’s last words: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
King Jesus responds, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
He saw no sermons, no miracles, no resurrection.
He witnessed no battles, no conquests, no parade .
What did the Thief see in Jesus, who was both hailed as Messiah but could no longer move his body, except for the small amount his pierced hands and feet allowed? What did he see in this King of the Jews who chose to no longer display his power in miracles, but instead to slowly bleed and asphyxiate. What did the Thief see in this man, who seems to have willingly chosen to wait and suffer and forgive, even until his dying breath?
What hope. What power. What imagination.