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put our trust? Do we put our trust in a God who is only Almighty?
The one with lot of powers to instantly heal us or do we put our
faith and trust in a God who is hanging on the cross, helpless
and being vulnerable. Paul in his first letter to Corinthians 1:23,
emphasises on peaching the crucified Christ, a stumbling block
to jews and foolishness to gentiles. The criminal on the cross
saw this magnanimity of the Christ crucified, this was utter
foolishness for his friend who rebuked Jesus, but for him it was
trusting in God’s grace and strength.

We also see that this Criminal who was hanging on the
cross did not seek for an immediate relief. He did not want to
escape the immediate suffering that he was going through. But
then he only longs to be remembered when Jesus comes in his
kingdom. He does not want to escape the suffering that is going
through. He does not want to escape the pain that he's going
through but then he only longs to be remembered by Jesus when
he is coming in his kingdom. He tells Jesus to re-member him in
his kingdom to give him that space.
On the lookout for instant healings and relief, we want
to do away with pain and suffering in our own life situations.
However this person on the cross teaches us to endure suffering
in hope. He embraces suffering with boldness and in that
experience wants to encounter the grace and mercy of the
Divine.
His plea of re-membering him when Jesus comes in his
kingdom contains depths of inclusive vision. His longingness to
be re-membered also resonates his experiences of rejection and
exclusion which he faced during his life with stigma of being
a social deviant. How does the church look at those whom the
society has labelled as deviants or even stigmatised based on
their belief, gender orientations, caste and creed. When they
truly long to be re-membered in the reign of God, do we create
enough room and space for their inclusion and integration?

Jesus, even at the point of his death, was able to give
hope to a criminal. Who was facing a exclusion and stigma in

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Lenten Meditations Re - Imaging People