Commentary on Luke 22:14—23:56

Any short essay on one of the Passion narratives will of necessity discuss only a small portion of what could be said. The themes noted here have been chosen because they appear in the Passion and connect to Luke’s particular way of telling the gospel of Jesus Christ. Central to the story is the way that Jesus announces the kingdom of God throughout Galilee and enacts it along the way to Jerusalem. The Passion in Luke demonstrates Jesus’ continued fidelity to that work and to the Spirit who commissioned him for it. 

The kingdom of God and the cross

Throughout the Gospel, Jesus has proclaimed the kingdom and sent others to do the same. He has said that his works testify to the coming of the kingdom (Luke 11:20). He has welcomed children and claimed that the kingdom belongs to such as these (Luke 18:16). As his suffering and death are unfolding, Jesus speaks again of the nearness of the kingdom and its fulfillment. He does this as he shares bread and wine with the apostles (22:16, 18). Further, he confers on those alongside him “a kingdom,” saying that he is conferring on them what his Father conferred upon him (22:28–30). 

The Passion of Jesus does not defer the dream of the kingdom of God, but rather brings it closer. The kingdom is brought so close that when one of the thieves asks Jesus to remember him “when you come into your kingdom,” Jesus replies, “Today, you will be with me in paradise” (23:42–43). The exchange with the thief on the cross is itself emblematic of Luke’s way of telling the story of Jesus’ death as a story in which Jesus is in control. 

In this Gospel, Jesus, ever the great physician, heals the man whose ear is cut off by the hasty drawing of a sword in Gethsemane (22:51). He looks at Peter as the cock crows and both men are reminded of Peter’s boast (22:61). In Luke, Jesus never cries from the cross in abandonment. Instead, he prays for the forgiveness of those killing him; he promises the thief continued fellowship; and at the very end, he commends his spirit to the Father. The indignity and agony of the cross do nothing to drive a wedge between the Father and the Son, nor do they separate the Son from his mission to seek and to save the lost (19:10).

Misplaced mockery

It is from Luke’s Gospel only that we know the parable of the tower-builder (14:28–30), in which Jesus warns those who would follow him to count the cost. If someone begins a construction project and then is unable to finish, those who see his half-built structure will ridicule him, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish” (14:30).

In Luke’s Passion narrative, Jesus is ridiculed in much the same way that it was predicted the impulsive tower-builder would be. Those holding Jesus when he is in the custody of the chief priests ridicule him (22:63). Herod’s soldiers mock him (23:11). So also, those under Pilate’s command who carry out the crucifixion mock Jesus (23:36). Even one of the criminals crucified alongside him derides him (blasphēmeō in Greek; 23:39). 

To those on the outside of the connection Jesus has to the Father, it looks as if this Son of God didn’t do his math right. It looks like the construction project of the kingdom ran over budget. Like the tower-builder of the parable, Jesus was forced to stop partway through. 

Yet Jesus’ own Passion prediction at Luke 9:22, along with the cool, calm demeanor that he exudes throughout the Passion story, leads readers of the Gospel to draw a different conclusion. It is not that Jesus miscalculated the cost of faithfulness to the One whose kingdom he proclaimed. It is that he decided to pay that cost. (The only hint the Passion story gives that such a decision, on Jesus’ part, was difficult is his time of prayer in Gethsemane; see Luke 22:42.) 

Innocence and guilt

Three minor characters in the Passion story are characterized as guilty, and their guilt is contrasted with the innocence of Jesus. 

• The first is Peter, who, outside the high priest’s house, is guilty of lying about whether he knows Jesus (Luke 22:54–62). Peter’s lie protects him. It also confirms the prediction that Jesus made just hours before, that Peter would not be able to find the courage of his convictions when courage was needed. 
• The next guilty figure in the story is Barabbas. Luke tells readers twice that Barabbas had been imprisoned for insurrection and murder. Still, Pilate releases him and sentences to death Jesus, whom Pilate has said neither he nor Herod could find guilty (23:14–15). 
• Next, the second thief on a cross alongside Jesus discusses innocence and guilt. The thief goes as far as to say that he and his companion are “getting what we deserve for our deeds,” as contrasted with Jesus, who has “done nothing wrong” (23:41). 

Finally, after Jesus dies (and just in case someone somewhere had not been able to follow the story up to this point?), a centurion on the scene says, “Certainly this man was innocent” (23:47). 

The early church would come to make the innocent suffering and death of Christ an article of faith related to the fitness of Jesus to offer atonement for sin. Within the Passion story itself, however, the repeated reminders of the innocence of Jesus draw the eye not so much to atonement but to the contrast between the corruption that surrounds Jesus and Jesus’ own integrity to the end. Surrounded by betrayal, denial, mockery, and cruelty, Jesus remains faithful to God and to the kingdom of God. 

In his telling of the Passion, Luke draws our eye to Jesus’ fidelity and then to the fidelity of another. Joseph of Arimathea is brave where Peter had been cowardly; he is “good and righteous” where the council and the leaders of Rome had been corrupt. In faithfulness to the kingdom for which he has waited (and whose coming has surely been obscured by the cross on Good Friday as much as revealed through it!), Joseph does what he can. The stage has emptied out, as it were. Religious officials, world leaders, and military officers are gone. In their place is one fellow, beginning the burial process—oh, and some women who notice where he is laying the body.