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[silence] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church, People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman titled, "What to do when there is nothing else to do?"

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As soon as the voice on this side of the tape stops, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Any public or commercial use, in full or in part,

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requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged. If you would like a catalog listing additional tapes available, write to People Moving Power at the address on this cassette.

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[music] [music] [music] Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word,

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as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Saint Luke, the twenty-third chapter, beginning at the verse which is numbered 39. One of the criminals who were hanged rallied at him saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us."

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But the other rebuked him saying, "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."

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And he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power." And he said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. Let us pray.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Three crosses on a hill, three men spiked against the sky. One of them the only begotten Son of God, two of them thieves. Yet there was a difference between these two.

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For one of these thieves died cursing Christ and all men, and the other died affirming Christ, and thus gained glory. Did you ever stop to think about the fact that at the moment when the repentant thief turned to the Lord and said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

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At that moment, he was the only person in all the world who truly believed in Jesus as the only begotten Son of God. All of the other disciples had run, even John and Mary and the women who were gathered at the bottom of the cross. They were unbelieving because they were utterly astonished later when Jesus came in the kingly power of the resurrection.

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They never expected it to happen. But this thief affirms, "When you come in your kingly power, remember me." There was no doubt in his mind that Jesus would be coming. And at the moment when he uttered that expression of faith,

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he was the only person in all the world to so believe. John Calvin, the great systematizer of our Presbyterian faith, wrote of these words by this thief, "How clear was the vision of his eyes, which could thus see in death life, in ruin majesty, in shame glory, in defeat victory, in slavery royalty."

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And Calvin continues, "I question if ever since the world began, there has been so bright an example of faith." Now Calvin was not one to give compliments easily. Yet he suggests here that from the very dawn of creation,

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there was no utterance of greater faith than these words by this thief. And how they must have come singing into the ears of Jesus, as he hanged there dying, with all the world collapsing about him, and all the weight of a world's sin descending upon him,

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and all the darkness of separation from all that was good gathering close about him, at such a time, to see faith born in one. How much that must have meant to him. I wonder if as he was dying, he sent out the dove of some kind of prayer,

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hoping that there in the storm, that dove would bring back the green twig of a new found faith. Did he pray that someone there that day might see and seeing might believe? I don't know. But I do know that he must have thought to himself,

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how good it would be if I could go home to my father with some trophy in testimony of what I've done, some victory won in terms of some person who would come with me hand in hand, owning me as Lord and my father as his father. And I wonder, I wonder if Jesus himself,

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in the midst of the thrilling kindness of hearing this affirmation of faith, was not astonished to find the miracle happening at his very side. Was ever faith born in a stranger cradle than a dying thief? And Jesus went off to glory, taking that thief by the hand.

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Martin Luther said that the words of the thief were for Christ a comfort like that supplied to him by the angel in the Garden of Gethsemane. God would not allow his Son to be destitute of subjects. And now his Son's church survived in one man.

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And that one man, a thief. A man who knew perhaps only this, what to do when there was nothing else to do. People have tried to romanticize the dying thieves.

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They have suggested that they were first century Robin Hoods who took regularly from the rich and gave to the poor. Or that they were insurrectionists, that they were individuals who were seeking to overthrow Roman power

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and to rid their homeland of this enslaving force which came from the outside. People have tried to make the thieves appear to be more than they were. But the language of the New Testament, especially in the Greek, makes it very clear that they were nothing other than back alley hoodlums.

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They were alley assassins. They were the kind of individuals who would just as soon steal a purse from an old woman as a fat wallet from some careless businessman. They were first century crooks.

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They were the mafiosa of their time. And they were nothing other than that. And they were receiving by the standards of that day their just desserts. Justice was balancing it books.

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It always does, you know. It doesn't balance its books at the end of the week or at the end of every month or even at the end of every year. But there does come a time when justice balances its books.

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And right now, those books were being balanced against these thieves. And in the midst of the pain of their punishment, they cursed everything and everyone about them. It is not often noticed, but this repentant thief,

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he at first cursed Jesus just as the other thief did. And he joined with the other thief in cursing those who had put them there. I don't think it's too hard to understand why they were cursing and railing with violence in those circumstances.

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If you have ever observed someone in the midst of great physical pain, or if you yourself have ever found yourself in that kind of situation, you may have discovered what a lot of people have discovered, that it's very easy to lash out in violent response

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and in some sense through that very violence lessen the pain that you were enduring. Have you ever come across an animal in a trap, tortured and dying? The animal will snap at everyone who approaches, whether they approach to help or not, no matter what words are on their lips.

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Well, these thieves were like dying animals. So they cursed all about them until one of them, this repentant one, one of them slipped off into more sober and serious thoughts. I don't exactly know why he did this.

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Perhaps it was the eminence of his own death. Death has, for many of us, the capacity to make us think more soberly. They say, you know, that as you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes. Is that what he saw suddenly in those minutes?

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Death is the great leveler. It takes away all of those things on which we have had a tendency to rely during life and brings us down to the same place where all others stand before God and before man, and that's a time for sobriety.

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And maybe that was what was playing in the life of this dying thief. You remember the character Falstaff in Shakespeare's plays? He was a roué, a promiscuous individual, one who gave himself to arrogant misbehavior and who debauched just about everything he touched.

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There was little dignity or honor in the man, and he made no apology for it. Well, in Henry V, we read of Sir John Falstaff's death. The recitation is given by one pistil who was there when Falstaff died, and this is what pistil says.

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He parted even between twelve and one, just at the turning of the tide, and after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon the end of his finger, I knew there was but one way. His nose was as sharp as a pen, and he babbled of green fields.

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"How now, Sir John," quoth I, "what man be of good cheer?" And he cried out, "God, God, God." You see, even in one like Falstaff, at the moment of death, there is babbling of green fields, which is an allusion to the 23rd Psalm,

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"And God, God, God." Well, maybe this is what led to the serious thinking of this dying thief. In any case, he thought this way and recognized in the midst of his circumstances that there was no escape from them.

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He could not come down from the cross; the nails held him too tight. He could not change his plea, sentence had already been pronounced and was in the process of being executed. There was quite literally absolutely nothing he could do.

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And so in the midst of that, he at least acknowledged that there being nothing to do, he would affirm the truth about himself. Truth is always appropriate, and perhaps most singularly appropriate when everything else is useless.

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So he turns to the thief who was still cursing Christ and those others about, and he says, "Have you no fear of God? We are receiving the due reward for our deeds." But this one, nodding toward Jesus, "He has done nothing amiss."

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The significant part of that sentence is, "We are receiving the due reward of our deeds." He was here, you see, affirming his own guilt. He was telling the truth about himself. He was saying, "We are exactly, by the standards of this time, where we ought to be.

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We can't deny that. Let's at least announce the truth about ourselves. Let's make a clean breast of it. We're guilty." There's a beautiful passage in Dante's Divine Comedy in which the poet is being shown about heaven by some who were saved at the last minute.

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And one that they meet there is named Buonconti. And Buonconti was a particularly sensuous and evil man during life. And Dante expresses great surprise at finding him in heaven. And Buonconti then proceeds to tell the story of his own death,

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of how he was wounded on the battlefield and crept away from the battlefield, leaving a grisly trail behind him from a gaping wound in his throat. And as he was dying, the minions of hell gathered about him, ready to claim his soul because of the evil life which had been his.

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But angels from heaven came and protected him. And they entered into a great debate, the minions of evil and the angels of good, over who would have his soul. And all the evidence was on the side of evil.

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And so as he died, the evil forces came in to grasp him. But just then, one of the angels pointed to his eyes, now closed in death. And hanging from one of the lashes, there was a single tear. A tear of sorrow, a tear of penitence, a tear saying, "Guilty and ashamed."

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And with a ringing shout, the angels swarmed in, picked him up, and carried him off to glory. I don't know whether that thief on the cross cried any tears or not, but I do know that his expression, "We are receiving the due reward for our deeds," was a word that was a tear.

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For here he was saying, "With no hope of gain, it will not change the circumstances. No word he'd utter now would get him down from that cross. No word would change the situation in which he found himself." That was not the reason he said it.

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Just because there was nothing else to do, nothing else to be done, and because it was true, he announced it. "I'm guilty." Well, there's a great story from the life of John D. Rockefeller. When he was very old, his chauffeur used to take him for rides on summer afternoons,

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and they used to stop and pick up some little children at the school and take them to their homes. And once they had dropped off all the children except the little girl, and when they came to her house, she didn't want to get out. And the old man said, "Well, where would you like to go?"

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She said, "I want to go with you. Where are you going?" The old man thought for a moment, and then he said, "I am going to heaven." And she looked at him and giggled and said, "Oh, no, you're not. You don't have enough gas to get there." And at that time, John D. Rockefeller was the president and chairman of the board

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of the Associated Standard Oil Companies and controlled more gasoline and oil than any other man who has ever lived. But he didn't have enough gas to get there. And it's a beautiful moment in anybody's life when, recognizing that there's nothing they can do for themselves,

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they say, "I'm guilty. I'm guilty." I think it's interesting to notice also that the thief did not turn for any assistance to the crowd gathered there about the foot of the cross. Now, there was all kinds of power assembled there.

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There were the temple authorities with their ecclesiastical power. There were the church authorities, busy rationalizing what was being done. There were the politicians who understood themselves to be the people's choice and so were zealously carrying out their duty.

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There were the people themselves with their blank faces and their empty heads dancing up and down like marionettes, the strings being pulled by people with hidden hands. And there were the soldiers, the symbols of military might rattling the dice in their metal helmets. All the power of the earth, political, ecclesiastical, majority power, military power, economic strength,

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it was all there, and yet the thief never for one moment thought of asking any of them for any help. And I think I know why. When you're on some bloody branch, when you're on your cross, would you think of going to any of them for real help?

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When your soul is agonizing within you, do you go to your alderman or mayor? Do you seek counsel of the Department of Police? Do you really then reach out to the military establishment? Do you expect some business to be of assistance to you?

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Oh, there is social concern in all of these, and if you were to come, they would give you some kind of band-aid. But when you need a lot more than that, is that where you'd think of going for help? Isn't it true that in most instances, they would only look at you and say, "Look, you are where you are because of yourself.

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Now if you lived like we did, then those kind of things wouldn't happen to you." Wouldn't that be the response? "If you're up a tree, fella, you climb there. But if you were innocent as we are..."

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That's the world's great cry, you know, "Innocent." After all, who was guilty in Vietnam? Not the United States. We're innocent. Not North Vietnam. If you ask the North Vietnamese, they'll tell you they're innocent.

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Go to any nation you want to on the face of the earth and ask, "Who was guilty in Vietnam?" And they will all take a side, and you will find that they are never on the side that is guilty. And since everyone says everybody else is guilty, and everyone says of themselves that they are innocent, there is no such thing as innocence, and there is no such thing as guilt.

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So why not say we're all innocent? The people in the ghetto say that the ghetto is your fault. And you who do not live in the ghetto say that the ghetto is their fault. You're innocent. So if you're innocent and they're innocent, then everybody's innocent, aren't they?

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And when that squabble arises at home, it arises, doesn't it, because the other person never gives you time to express your point of view. Their mind is closed. There is about them, you see, that hostility which you cannot penetrate,

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the difficulty, the fault is not yours, it belongs to them. You are, aren't you, innocent. Or perhaps we're more sophisticated and call science to the rescue. Okay, I do make mistakes, but it's because of my ancestors and my glands,

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which is the same thing as saying I'm innocent. You know, it puzzles me why the world still seeks so zealously to proclaim its innocence when the world has already killed God. The world understands there to be no God,

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and since it is God who holds up the standards of right and wrong, and God and God alone who in the end calls a person to a time of judgment, and if there is no God, as the world says there is no God, then why does the world still seek to make itself look innocent?

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Why bother to enter into a whole lot of frantic activity to justify yourself if there is no one whom in eternity you're going to have to justify yourself before? Tell me, why, if God is dead, is there such a thing as hypocrisy? If hypocrisy is what the wise man said it is, the tribute which vice pays to virtue,

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and if there is no such thing as right or wrong because God is no more, then why do we ever bother to appear to be what we aren't? Why not just assert ourselves innocent and enjoy Eden where we live? As you heard me write, I said Eden.

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If all the world is innocent, then this must be Eden. Eden was the place of innocence, wasn't it? The world must be perfect. There is no hurt, no crying, no sorrow here.

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There couldn't be, could there? That long, low sob that we hear rising round the world, that cries out the word "lie" when the world says "innocent," we don't really hear anything like that here in Eden, do we?

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And the one thief upon the cross, he blamed the crowd. And the crowd blamed the Sadducees. And the Sadducees blamed the Pharisees. And the Pharisees blamed Herod.

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And Herod blamed Pilate. And together they all blamed Rome. And the parents blamed their children. And the children blamed their parents.

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And business blames labor. And Seychelles blames Safeway. And Russia blames America. And America blames Russia.

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And the blacks blame the whites. And the whites blame the blacks. And the rich say it's the fault of the poor. And the poor say it's the fault of the rich.

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And the wise blame the foolish. And the foolish blame those who are even more foolish than themselves, or else they blame the wise. And the Presbyterians blame the Catholics.

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And the Catholics blame the Jehovah's Witnesses. And the Republicans blame the Democrats. And the Democrats blame the Republicans. And the liberals blame the fundamentalists.

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And the fundamentalists blame the neo-orthodox. And the church people blame the people who aren't in the church. And the people who are outside the church, they blame. And into the midst of all of this comes Jesus Christ and He says,

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"Enough! I will take the blame!" And He bows His head beneath the weight of a whole world's blame. And the Lord lays on Him the iniquity of us all. And somehow, that dying thief understood that.

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He understood that He was ready to take the blame. So He did the only thing you can do when there's nothing else to do. He just gave it all to Jesus. Everything.

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You ask me what led Him to do it? Oh, I can't tell you. I have discovered that when individuals make dramatic conversions such as that, that seem to be the result of just one thing, one sermon, one deed, one act, one spectacle,

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usually it's actually a whole series of things which have happened before and then this last thing is just that which tips the scale. There's an accumulated witness which is built up across the years and this is the thing, you see, which causes everything to fall into place.

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So maybe there were many things that were playing on this thief's mind. Maybe he remembered prayers his mother had uttered at his knee years before. Maybe it was some sermon he heard Jesus preach two years earlier when he was busy picking pockets in the crowd.

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Maybe he admired the courage of how this man next to him was managing to die. Maybe he saw that sign above Jesus' head and somehow those words stabbed home to his heart as being absolutely true. Maybe it was the patience of Christ that led him to do what he did.

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If you were to press me, if you were to say, "All right, it could be many things, but if you had to choose one, what one would it be?" I think I would say it would be Jesus' prayer, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

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For the ten words of that prayer, when thought about, are enough to melt a heart that's hard as flint. He was close enough to Jesus to know just how he hurt, close enough to see the red rain from that crown.

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And then he heard that prayer. Robert Browning in The Ring and the Book is describing the city of Naples in a thunderstorm, a lightning storm. And he writes, "The night's black was burst through by a blaze."

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And in that moment of lightning he could see the thick-spired city of Naples and the sea looking white as a ghost beyond. And then commenting on that, he says, "So truth may be flashed out in one blow." Well, maybe in that sentence, "Father, forgive them."

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This thief came to understand. He was ready to pick up all the blade. And so with nothing else to do, this thief gave it to him. He cried out, "Jesus, did you know that that's the only time in all of Scripture

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where it is noted that someone addresses Jesus by his first name? Jesus?" If you look in your King James Bible, you will discover that the verse reads, "Lord, remember me."

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But I've checked all the ancient manuscripts, and they all say Jesus. Just that some scholar back there when they were putting the King James together thought it was somehow irreverent for a thief to address Jesus by his first name, so he changed it to Lord.

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I mean, after all, who was he to call Jesus by his first name? He wasn't raised in a Christian home. He had not been baptized, let alone immersed. He had never been at the Lord's table.

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Why, he'd never even gone through a church membership class. He was a hopeless character. There's a commandment, you know, which says, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord by God in vain."

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So by what right, then, could this one say, "Jesus?" I'll tell you by what right. That name Jesus was given to the Son of God by the angel who announced his coming, and that angel said, "And you shall call his name Jesus,

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for he shall save his people from their sins." That's when you may call him Jesus. That's when you get on a first-name basis with him, when you come to him as Savior. And that's the way the thief was coming.

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He knew he was hopeless, but Jesus identified with paralytics to say that the helpless might come, and Jesus identified with prostitutes to say that the debauched might come, and Jesus identified with Pharisees to show, I suppose, that anybody could come,

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and Jesus identified with a leper to show that the loathsome could come, and Jesus identified with a thief to show that the hopeless could come, and Jesus identified with a child to show how all of us are to come. And the thief came.

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"Jesus, remember me." You notice he didn't come asking for any reward. He wanted a relationship. He didn't come asking to be relieved of all of his troubles. He understood the troubles to be the logical result of the kind of life he had lived.

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"I am receiving my due reward. I am guilty." He announced that. He doesn't come to be relieved of troubles. He just comes to be loved in the midst of his troubles. And he doesn't ask for any talk about mansions in the kingdom of heaven.

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His soul is concerned with more important things than real estate. You see, he's in a place where there's nothing else to do. So he confesses, and then he gives everything over. And Christ turns to him and says,

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"This day thou shalt be with me in paradise, and that man is the only man who ever lived who heard the incarnate Lord say those words." The only one to whom Jesus ever promised paradise was a thief. Everybody else there at the cross ended up with leftovers.

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The thieves, they got the robe, leftover. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, they got the body, leftover. The disciples, they might have gotten the crown of thorns, leftover. The poor, they got the wine, which Jesus didn't drink, leftover.

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And the spuns from which he did take a sip, well, it was left sloshing up against the bottom of his cross. Only one person went away with something that wasn't leftover, and that one was the thief. He went off hand in hand with the Son of God. He gained glory.

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Are you sensitive enough to understand what I am saying when I say that the last thing the thief ever stole was heaven? So some wise man says, "Well, I'll play it just like the thief. I'll live life as I will, and then, when I'm in extremis,

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just shortly before the midnight of my life, I'll turn to him and I'll cry out, 'Jesus.'" That's a very foolish plan. You see, most people who plan to cry out at midnight die at 1130. And not all those who come to such a time are in the place or circumstance

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or in the mood of heart and mind where they can command love and repentance and confession to come alive within themselves like they might command some servant of theirs. Most men die like the other thief died. Yes, it is true.

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The Bible records upon its pages one man who in the very last minutes of his life was saved. That is recorded so that none might ever be without hope. But remember, the Bible records only one such instance in all these pages that none might ever presume.

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So kindness meets kindness on Calvary. "Lord, remember me this day, thou shalt be with me." Lean forward in your seat and listen, because what happened at the very end was so quiet you almost cannot hear it.

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The taunting and the threats are over now. For the carpenter is dead, his chest holds his fallen head. The thieves are still alive. Living on the back streets, they were tougher.

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They could hold on longer. Now look at the thief who repented. See how his face is looking at the face of Jesus. See the total dependence and trust.

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Well, the Romans are coming now. They're going to end it all. You know how they do that, don't you? They take those big sledgehammers, well, I won't go into the deep, but here they come,

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and he's looking at Jesus. He doesn't see them. Oh, how hideously those Romans strike. And it's the end for him now, too.

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But listen. Lean forward and listen. What is it he's saying? His lips move.

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What is it he says? "With him." "With him." Oh, God, our Father, there's nothing we can do for ourselves.

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We don't have the gas to get to heaven. So we confess our guilt. And with our guilt, we just turn everything we are over to you. Receive us for thy Son's sake.

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And let us be with him. For we pray in his name. Amen.