The Thief

This week, I’m sharing poems in response to the last words of Jesus as he approached his death and headed towards victory on Resurrection Sunday.

I recently read the book The Wood Between the Worlds by

Brian Zahnd

, which I highly recommend. It is a beautiful, kaleidoscopic look at the meaning of the cross.

One of my favorite things that he says upfront is that you cannot think about the cross without also thinking about the resurrection. And you cannot talk about the resurrection without also talking about the cross. I found this to be quite refreshing and also challenging, which I’ve talked about already at length in an earlier post, so I won’t go on about it again here.

One of the things that Zahnd mentions in his book is how common and gruesome crucifixion was. People were crucified all of the time as a method of control and fear among the common men.

So the first few poems that I'm sharing this week have a focus on the anonymous man on the cross next to Jesus—at least I'm pretty sure he was anonymous—the thief that speaks to Jesus and asks him to remember him when Jesus enters his kingdom.

Because that really is us. We are the anonymous men and women who could be crucified at any point in our lives for any number of reasons. We can’t by our own volition break into paradise.

Christ on the Cross between the Two Thieves, before 1561, Jean Duvet

The Thief

"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." - Luke 23:43 

In this life, though I tried, 
I couldn’t break into paradise
or steal a ticket to sit at your table,
couldn’t beg or lie for bread and wine,
couldn’t even kill for you, no

even if I was some innocent—which
I wasn’t—sentenced to hang here 
there’s no sainthood I could have won, 
no needle I could crawl through, no 
code I could have cracked, no checklist 

finished or martyrdom complete enough
that would earn me access to your kingdom.
No matter how fast or hard or far I run
no one finishes the race, no one
keeps the faith. Only your body—this

wilting, bleeding, bruised reed, this
weeping, heaving hanging skeleton,
this incarnate Spirit naked and pinned
then collected, blanketed, and buried—
could become the unearthed key to unbolt

the boulder that blocked the gate to eternity.