The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is God's Messiah, the Chosen One."  The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself." There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.  One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong."  Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."  Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:35-40)   The king who saves?  What a joke.  Jesus hung there on display for all the world to see: labeled as a king.  A king with no kingdom.  No power.  No authority.  It was a mocking statement in itself.  Pilate may have thought it humorous to nail up the figurative king of the Jews and stick the religious leaders with their own words.  They may have coerced him into crucifying the innocent Jesus by stirring up the crowd, but Pilate would get the last laugh as they found themselves humiliated, again.  Their people made into a mockery: here hangs the Jewish king.  A king who can't save anyone, not even himself. And yet, humiliated or not, the rulers would not be humbled.  Instead, they put on strength by throwing their own angry insults at this messiah king.  They admit that he had saved others, but they use it not as an article of belief, but as a barb.  "Save yourself, messiah!"  His saving of others had, in fact, been the very barb that had so unsettled their power.  Now they stood condemned by their own words: conspirators against the Lord's salvation.  They should've known better. The soldiers and criminals perhaps less so, though.  They didn't have theological degrees.  The Roman soldiers didn't even know what a messiah was.  They just use the term "king."  Ignorant brutes who jumped on for a good time.  Then there was the first criminal. He had not become humbled by his own crucifixion, but cynical: putting on strength as the religious leaders had to cover his guilt.  Defiant, he shouts out with the rest: "don't just save yourself, but us too!"  But one person wasn't laughing.  One person still feared God.  He's the only person that doesn't ask to be saved.  And yet, he's the only person who was.  He did not make a mockery of salvation or the kingdom of God, but humbly sought both.  The criminal on the cross is another paradigm of discipleship in Luke's account, along with Simon of Cyrene and the women.  This criminal recognizes his sinfulness which had won him punishment by death.  He, like Jesus, had taken up his cross and was dying to himself and his sin.  And it is here, in humility that he seeks—not to be saved—but merely to be remembered by this Messiah and coming King.  This little prayer in faith though, wins him more than he could've asked or imagined.  "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."             It is not in putting on strength, but in giving it up that we find the humility to ask for what it is that we most need from God: saving.  

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