9-20-26_The Ones Who Went Along, and the One Who Stopped

Psalm 119:25-32, Hebrews 12:15-17, Luke 23:35-41/ Pr. John Kim, LLC

I learned to drive in Korea twenty-five years ago now. Back then, Korean driving culture worked like this: if you were even a few seconds slow pulling away, the horn behind you went off immediately. No reason needed. Drive too slowly, and you became a joke. Something to be criticized. That was just normal. Then I came to America, and it was the exact opposite. People here almost never honk. Even in construction, even when someone’s slow to pull away, everyone just waits. Quietly. At first I couldn’t understand this culture. In Korea, it would already be chaos. Funny thing, though — over the last ten years or so, I’ve noticed more people honking here too. Maybe more Koreans have immigrated. Who knows.

I want to tell you one more part of this horn story. In a bit. By the end, you’ll see what it has to do with today’s Scripture.

Today we continue where we left off last week — the thieves on the cross. Last week was the one who repented. Today is the other one — the one who mocked.

Look again at Luke 23. This criminal didn’t start the mockery. It was already underway. The leaders sneered first: “He saved others; let him save himself.” The soldiers mocked too, offering sour wine: “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

This criminal was hanging right in the middle of that wave of mockery. And he joined it. “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us.” What he said wasn’t new. He simply repeated what was already coming from every direction.

Here’s what we need to see. His sin wasn’t creative evil. He just went along with the mockery. The easiest path. No thought required. No decision required.

Why is going along so easy? Because there’s no responsibility in it. “Everyone else is saying it.” The leaders mocked. The soldiers mocked. What difference does one more voice make?

But in that same place, in that same wave of mockery, another criminal hung beside him. He didn’t go along. Instead, he pushed back against the flow of the mockery: “Don’t you fear God, since you’re under the same sentence?”

Think about it. Who taught this man the right path, in that moment? No one. No priest, no rabbi, no teacher was there to instruct him. He was a lifelong criminal, dying. He’d never studied theology. And yet, in that very moment — with no one there to teach him — he stopped. On his own. Against the tide of that mockery.

This matters. We tend to think: if you’re taught properly, you’ll live properly. Grow up in a good home, get good instruction, and you’ll make the right choices. But look at these two men. Same execution ground. Same agony. Same mockery ringing in their ears. And one went along, and one stopped.

The difference wasn’t instruction. The difference was thinking at all. One man simply drifted — swept along by the current, giving in to that easy instinct to blame, to mock, to pile on. The other man stopped, and thought.

We can live that same way too. Drifting along with whatever culture hands us. Running on unhealthy habits of thought we never stop to examine. Never checking ourselves. But our character doesn’t have to stay that way. It can grow. It’s meant to grow.

And that growth doesn’t happen through the words we say. It happens through the decisions we make.

We usually think of a confession of faith as words. “I believe in Christ.” But this story of two thieves shows us something else.

One thief’s confession of faith was the decision, in that moment, not to go along with the wave of mockery. Going along would have been easier. Everyone else was doing it. No one would have blamed him. But in that moment, he stopped, and chose a different path.

Our lives are the same. Our confession of faith isn’t completed by what we say on Sunday morning. It becomes a living confession in the moment-by-moment decisions of our lives.

Something legal. Something everyone does. Something that looks like no problem at all. And then — pausing one more time to ask: “Is this really what God wants?” That pause. That question. That decision. That is the confession of faith.

Let me finish that horn story. About fifteen years ago, I was in South Carolina. A car was backing out of a parking spot. I did what I’d learned in America — I waited quietly. I didn’t honk. I wanted to look like a gentleman.

The car hit me. The police asked, “Did you honk?” I said no. The result: I was found partially at fault.

That day I learned something. “Always endure” isn’t the answer. Neither is “always react.”

There are moments like this in our own lives too. We get angry. We feel wronged. We have something to say. And in that moment, what we need isn’t to blow up along with everyone else, and it isn’t to suppress everything and stay silent either.

What we need is to pause. To set our own emotions down, for a moment, before God, and ask: “Is this true? Is this right? What does God want, right now, in this moment?”

And if the answer is clear, we take that path — even if everyone else disagrees. We don’t go along with the mockery. But there are also moments we truly cannot stay silent, when we have to speak. And when we do, it isn’t to vent our own feelings — it’s for God’s glory and mercy.

Look at Jesus. He wasn’t a man without emotion. He loved a feast — loved eating and drinking with people so much that he was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. He got angry. He overturned tables. He rebuked hypocrisy with sharp, cutting words. Jesus was, if anything, a man of deep emotion.

And yet all of that emotion was expressed freely, always within God’s will. That’s what’s so remarkable. It was the same on the cross. When the mockery came, he didn’t react, swept along by it. He wasn’t suppressing emotion — he was holding onto what God wanted, in that moment. And in that, he sought forgiveness for the very people nailing him to that cross.

We are not Jesus. But if we live in the Spirit, we too can be that free.

Look at that criminal. He didn’t know theology. He’d never heard a sermon. And yet he changed. No — more precisely, he fell for him. He was captivated — by that unshakeable, free, truthful character, right there in the middle of mockery and agony. Drawn in by that, he recognized a King.

That’s exactly what we as Christians need. Not the appeal of a clever argument, but the appeal of character itself. A free, truthful life that makes people look and think, there’s something different about that person. That’s what changes someone. That’s what makes someone fall in love.

Friends, let’s build our church into a place like that — together. Let’s start by looking to Jesus, growing in that attractive character, that holy character, by the flow and power of the Holy Spirit.

As that character grows in us, may our church grow richer for it, and may many come to find their way to God through it. And may the path we’re walking together be the path God calls good.