Sunday, November 21, 2004
(11:20 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Stockholm Syndrome
Today's gospel reading is Luke 23:35-43:The rulers sneered at Jesus and said,What struck me today, as I was attempting to explain the scripture readings to people who want, for whatever reason, to join the Catholic Church, was the parallelism between the rulers (those who put people to death), the soldiers (those who execute the sentence), and--the criminal. At this moment of his death, a slow, excruciating death, the criminal sees fit to imitate the behavior of those who are putting him to death by mocking someone who is apparently of even lower social standing, someone who has not only been nailed to a cross, but has had a taunting sign placed above his head. The "bad" criminal is fully invested in the system of power, even as it crushes him.
"He saved others, let him save himself
if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God."
Even the soldiers jeered at him.
As they approached to offer him wine they called out,
"If you are King of the Jews, save yourself."
Above him there was an inscription that read,
"This is the King of the Jews."
Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying,
"Are you not the Christ?
Save yourself and us."
The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply,
"Have you no fear of God,
for you are subject to the same condemnation?
And indeed, we have been condemned justly,
for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes,
but this man has done nothing criminal."
Then he said,
"Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
He replied to him,
"Amen, I say to you,
today you will be with me in Paradise."
The "good" criminal, however, does not represent a diametrical opposition. He still believes that whatever he did deserves death, even if Jesus' crime does not. In point of fact, Jesus and those criminals were all condemned by the same legal code, under which Jesus' acts of sedition were worthy of death. The "good" criminal is by no means fully aligned with the radical critique of law and violence initiated with Jesus and further developed by Paul, but he shows a sliver of hope in the fact that he vocalizes the possibility that in this one case, justice may have been subverted. That minimal distance between the subject and the system is the place where freedom begins to take place -- and thus the "good" criminal will be with Jesus in paradise, because he is already participating in the coming Kingdom of freedom. The words of Christ are not a reward to the person who sucks up to him, but a statement of fact, a revelation.
