But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things. Luke’s generosity as a story-teller again surfaces. Not just for the crowds of spectators this time, but also for Jesus’ disciples. In most of the gospel accounts,...

And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. Luke, on the whole, takes a more generous view of the witnesses of the Passion than the other Evangelists. There is little indication in the other gospels, for...

When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was innocent.” We gather now around the climax of Luke’s narrative. And as is typical of this moment in grand stories, each sentence, each detail, has meaning. So also here. For immediately after...

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. One of the persistent questions we ask when we approach the Passion story is “why?” Why did Jesus have to endure the pain, the suffering, the abuse,...

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Heaven and earth itself give witness to the turn of the ages and climax of history that takes place at our Lord’s death....

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are...