(The video comes into focus about 15 seconds in).

Sermon preached at Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church and School for Good Friday's Tenebrae service by Pr. Benjamin Tomczak.

"Standing next to Christ, or, as Dismas was, hanging next to Christ, leaves us with nothing. I can’t stand, or hang, next to Jesus. Yet Jesus hangs next to me. Instead of me. And this Word from God, this great, 'I love you,' does not, as Isaiah says, return to God empty. This Word grabbed Dismas and changed him forever. He confessed his fault, his miserable fault, and hurled all his hope at Jesus and begged for mercy, begged for forgiveness, begged for grace, begged for a lowly place, to be a doorkeeper, in a kingdom he knew Jesus to be the king of. And Jesus said 'Yes.' The cross is God’s great 'Yes', God’s 'Amen.'"