The Divine Christology of ‘Remember Me’ (Luke 23:42) in Light of Lament

Abstract

Luke’s crucifixion scene includes a brief and unique exchange between the crucified Jesus and an unidentified crucified individual often referred to as the ‘penitent thief’. The dialogue between the two only spans two verses (Luke 23:42-43). Among the words they exchange, interpreters sometimes neglect the thief’s request – ‘remember me’ (μνήσθητί μου) – and its Christological implications. This article explores those implications given the request’s intertextual and intratextual features as well as its reception history. Based on these features, the overarching argument is that the cry ‘remember me’ functions as a dying lament shaped by similar laments in Israel’s Scriptures. The ‘remember me’ of this ‘lamenting thief’ is a request for divine forgiveness, mercy, and vindication. Such cries are normally directed to Israel’s God alone within the cultural heritage of Second Temple Judaism. In this way, Luke not only includes Jesus within the divine identity of Israel’s God, but, in the climactic scene of his biography, he brings him into the deepest contours of that relationship, namely the cry for deliverance in the face of death and judgement.