By Richard Clifford, S.J
According to most biblical scholars, the account of the passion and death of Jesus constitutes the earliest strata of ordered traditions concerning Jesus. It was surely the most severe test of Jesus’s followers in interpreting his death. How could someone whom they believed to be God’s son suffer so humiliating a death, which seemed to nullify his claims and their commitment to him? So they searched the Scriptures — what Christians call the Old Testament — for clues to the meaning of this horrifying event. The result of their searching the Scriptures was St. Paul’s conclusion, “ Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” That conclusion underlies all four gospel narratives of the death of the Messiah; it is especially evident in Luke’s account (Year C, read this year). All the gospels acknowledge that the suffering and death of the Messiah “had to happen” according to the plan of God foretold in the Scriptures (Luke 24:25-27, 32, 44-46).
Christians have heard the Passion accounts so often that they easily amalgamate them into one generic account. Yet each gospel has a particular perspective on the Messiah’s Passion and Death that should be respected. Each account brings a distinctive and rewarding narrative. There are several distinctive features of Luke’s account.
Luke makes clear the meaning of the bread and the cup is to benefit us. The bread over which Jesus gives thanks “is my body which will be given for you” (22:19) and the cup is “poured out for you” (22:20. His body will be broken in death so that others may find life and freedom. His blood will be poured out in death so that others may enter the new covenant of life promised by the prophet Jeremiah (31:31-33). Luke also gives us a memorable picture of Jesus and Peter after Peter denies him for the third time, “and the Lord turned and looked at Peter; and Peter remembered the word of the Lord.” As the scholar Brendan Byrne remarks, “if there is remonstrance in this look of Jesus, there is also healing – certainly not judgment or condemnation.” (The Hospitality of God, p. 193).
Unique to Luke is the statement that he was crucified between two criminals, “according to the Scriptures,” i.e., the Fourth Servant Song, Isa 53:12, “he surrendered himself to death, / was counted among the transgressors, / Bore the sins of many, / and interceded for the transgressors.” Echoing that Isaian prophecy, one criminal recognizes that Jesus is not like himself and the other criminal. His recognition of the kingship of the dying Jesus is remarkable because it was so contrary to the usual expectation of the messianic king as grand and triumphant. To the criminal’s surprising prayer that Jesus remember him when he comes into his kingdom, he hears Jesus’s majestic reply, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Nothing expresses better the kingship of Jesus.
Richard Clifford, S.J. former President of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and Founding Dean of the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry