"Into Thy Hands," Jesus' Plea for Vindication

“Into Thy Hands”, Jesus’ Plea for Vindication
Rev. Stephen Taylor Good Friday, 2008

What are usually considered the last words of Jesus from the cross are also words usually misunderstood. Our church used the seven utterances from the cross for services in the Lenten journey. The last one comes from Luke 23:44: “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.” The usual interpretation of these words depict them as a final resignation before dying.

Jesus is at the point of death. He then “lets go” and expresses his trust in God to care for his “spirit”, by quoting from Psalm 31:5. The psalmist in Psalm 31 is overwhelmed with trouble, calls on God to be his safe place, and to make it right. “In you, O God I seek refuge, let me never be put to shame, in your righteousness deliver me…into your hand I commit my spirit.”

Such an interpretation, however nice it is, misses the point being made in the gospel. These are not words of resignation. They are an appeal for justification. Like the psalmist in distress, Jesus is appealing to the highest authority to vindicate him – to correct the wrongful judgment.

This alternate interpretation of Jesus’ words is supported by Luke’s usage of Psalm 31, the concept of death from a Jewish perspective, and Luke’s emphasis on salvation history. A vindication view of Jesus’ death and resurrection hleps us to see the entire “Jesus event” as God’s work of salvation instead of just focusing on the cross.

Luke’s placement of the quote from Psalm 31 as the Jesus’ last words cross sets the stage for his understanding of the resurrection. God overturns the verdict of this world that condemned Jesus - at worse as a blasphemer and at least as an insignificant revolutionary. For Luke, the redemptive work of Christ was not just his death on the cross, but his whole life: his incarnation, his teachings, his miracles, and his passion.

Luke concludes his gospel with two resurrection appearances. In the road to Emmaus appearance, he “interpreted to them all the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27) and is revealed to them in the eucharistic breaking of the bread. When Jesus appears to his disciples, he tells them that all his words and everything written about him (in the law, the prophets and the psalms) must be fulfilled and that they are to be witnesses of these things. (Luke 24:44-49). For Luke, the resurrection demonstrates that God hears and honors Jesus’ appeal and thus sets him as an authority higher than all the authorities of the world. In that authority and power the church is created, whose story Luke will continue in the Acts of the Apostles.

Luke’s “vindication” theory of atonement (compensation for a wrong) offers a necessary balance to the substitutionary theory of atonement so prevalent in our society. Substitutionary atonement basically asserts that God’s righteousness demands a penalty be paid for our sinfulness. Jesus, the sinless one, became our substitute, receiving the penalty and punishment for our sins. He “paid the price” for us by his suffering and death on the cross and we become heirs of that redemption by placing our faith in him.

The substitutionary theory of salvation has good Biblical grounding.(1) And it is “reasonable.” In other words, it makes sense to people. But it also leaves us with a couple of problems. One, it creates an image of God as an impartial and distant judge whose justice must be appeased. This view of God, to say the least, is limited, and makes it difficult to incorporate biblical images that show God as relational, nurturing, familial, and loving. Secondly, it tends to focus simply on Jesus’ death on the cross as what was/is important. Thus Christians have found it easy to ignore the life and teachings of Jesus, while claiming salvation through the cross.

The substitution theory needs the balance of Luke’s vindication theory, which shows God not as a distant, exacting enforcer of abstract truth and righteousness, but as an active, engaged defender of righteous and truth for God’s people. This relational aspect of God’s redemption becomes clearer with an understanding Jewish beliefs regarding death.

A couple of months ago I was at the vast Jewish cemetery on the Mt. of Olives and watched from a distance as a group of Orthodox Jews said the Kaddish (a ritual prayer) at a grave. They were there for the Shloshim (the 30 day ceremony) and will return at the close of the year for a final ceremony, the Yarzheit, when the deceased is considered to be finally, fully dead.

The Orthodox funeral practices reflect the belief that death is not just the cessation of life, but the beginning of dying. During the year of mourning the deceased undergoes the cancellation of their sins as their flesh decomposes. “One’s evil deeds were thought to be embedded in the flesh and to dissolve along with it.”(2) Jewish thought at the time of Jesus was that the painful disintegration of the flesh left the bones (which contain the personality) as a framework for a new body on the day of resurrection.

But at Christ’s death, God interceded. God overturned the judgment of the world and through the resurrection, prevented the dying process from taking place. An expiation of sin in the dying was not needed, as God vindicated Jesus. “Taken in its cultural context, the claim of resurrection for Jesus asserts that his death was wrong and has been overturned by a higher judge. This cultural interpretation contrasts sharply with a theological one: that Jesus’ death was right and necessary and required by God ‘to take away the sins of the world.’”.(3)

From this perspective, our salvation was not in the suffering of Jesus prior to his death. That suffering, at the hands of cruel men, was evil and wrong. Our salvation is in placing our lives in Christ, heeding his words and following in his footsteps, being born anew from the kingdom of this age into the kingdom of God.

“Into thy hands I commit my spirit,” Jesus’ last words on the cross, are a call for vindication. He has been wrongly condemned to death and uses the words of the psalmist, who in a similar situation appealed to God for justice. In the resurrection, God intervenes, overturning the power of this world and asserting the righteousness of Christ.

We can almost hear in the resurrection the message of God at the Transfiguration (Luke 9:35) “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him.” For if we listen to and follow him, placing our lives in him, he who vindicated Jesus in the resurrection will also raise us up with him in the last day. Into your hands, Lord, we commit our spirits. Hear our plea, amen.

Endnotes.
1. For example; Song of the Suffering Servant, Isaiah 53: “he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” or 1 Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
2. Malina, Bruce J, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L., 2003, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, Second Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Pg. 347.
3. Ibid. pg. 348.