Last Sunday after Pentecost (29C)
November 24, 2019

Merciful and generous God, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Today is the Feast of the Reign of Christ (a liturgical observance not yet 100 years old) that has been placed on the last Sunday in the church year – the completion of our lectionary cycle of Bible readings. Although we don’t read our Gospel portions in order, today is the last time we will hear from the Gospel of Luke except for Christmas-time nativity stories until Advent of 2022.

I’m guessing that maybe some of you heard the Luke reading just now and wondered what a story like that is doing on a Sunday near the end of November? Why is a crucifixion story being read this far away from Holy Week? Maybe some of you knew this was coming and are pondering the utter implausibility of three people hanging on crosses having such an in-depth conversation while undergoing the most torturous, brutal form of capital punishment the Roman army could devise. (You’re on to something.) This is chief among many clues that this is a lesson to be taken seriously but not literally — seriously because I think it has some things to say to us. I believe that this story contains truth for us, whether we are confused or confident in our religious practices, whether we are devoted or indifferent, whether we are mourning or celebrating today, whether we are fearful or hopeful about the future, whether we are here for the first time or the last time or somewhere in the vast middle of our spiritual journey at Emmanuel Church.

This Gospel lesson is here because while we are observing the all-embracing authority of God’s Christ – that is, Love’s redeeming urge, and we sing songs of gratefulness, of thanksgiving and praise, we can always use a reminder, in my opinion, that our king of kings and lord of lords was executed as a criminal with other criminals. He was friends with criminals while he lived, and then he died with them too. The word that Luke uses for criminal is literally “evil doer.” What kind of king would be executed as an evil-doer? Well as it turns out, OUR kind of king, our highest authority as Christians, would be executed as an evil-doer.

Another word for Christ is Messiah – the one hoped for, anointed (appointed and marked with oil) to save and redeem God’s people who are lost and not valued, especially and because of the power mongers of this world. The Gospel of Luke tells us about the mocking of Jesus that went on from the soldiers, from the crowd and even from another guy being crucified alongside of Jesus – that really takes some nerve doesn’t it? The mocking challenge to Jesus is that if he’s really a king, he should really demonstrate some power to save, starting with himself. That’s how a “real” king would behave. The relentless mocking is a reprise of the devil’s temptations in the wilderness, according to Luke. This moment of agony turned out to be the opportune time that the devil was waiting for.
But, according to our Gospel of Luke, Jesus was on earth to show people how God behaves, not so much how a real king behaves. One of the important things that Jesus taught us was that God, as it turns out, doesn’t save us by getting us out of humiliating and painful situations. God doesn’t save us from chaos or disaster and God doesn’t save us from dying excruciating deaths. This was surprising in Jesus time – and it’s still kind of surprising today.

What God does is forgive and forgive and forgive, knowing that we are never far from both calculated and random acts of violence and devastation, as perpetrators or victims or bystanders. What strikes me most about this scene is that three times Jesus is challenged to save himself, and he does not. What he does is save the person next to him. If we are going to follow Jesus, that is what we might do too – both remember that we are not called to save ourselves but to save one another, to deliver one another to hope and blessing, to welcome one another into the paradise of God, the garden for the souls of the righteous, remembering that we all need a little forgiveness and some of us need a lot of forgiveness. Being offered forgiveness is like being offered paradise.

I want to say some things about paradise. I imagine that the word conjures up images of a beautiful place where the righteous live for all eternity. Many people tell me that they don’t believe in that, and I have to say there’s not much evidence that Biblical writers believed in it either. Those images have far more to do with the imaginations of Dante and Milton, and medieval and renaissance paintings than they do with the Bible.[1] The word paradise is only used three times in the Christian testament, and all three references describe different things. The first mention is the one in our Gospel lesson from Luke, in which Jesus tells the criminal who asked to be remembered by Jesus, that today they will be together in paradise. We presume that this means after they die, but the text doesn’t say that. The second mention of paradise is in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians [2 Cor 12:4] in which he recalls knowing someone who, 14 years before, had temporarily been “caught up to the third heaven.” And finally, in the beginning of the Revelation to John the Divine [2:7], there is a vision in which “those who conquer” will be given permission to eat from the tree of life in paradise. In other words, they will gain immortality. But they won’t stay in paradise, they will go on to worship at the throne of God at the Temple. Attempts to harmonize these three different ideas from three different authors or schools of thought, seem overwrought and overly simplistic.

The word paradise is used just three times in the First Testament, where there is scant evidence that the word has anything to do with hope for the future, and it’s certainly not about life after death. In the Song of Solomon [4:13] it means an orchard; in Ecclesiastes [2:5] it is parks with all kinds of fruit trees; and Nehemiah [2:8] it means forest. Is paradise a pleasant orchard or a park or a garden? An oasis way-station? Is it the ultimate reward for right-relationship with one another and the Holy One? A place? A state of being? A stage or aspect of heaven? Is paradise on earth or somewhere else? Is paradise a metaphor for fruitfulness and luxury? A symbol for blessings? Although ideas about afterlife caught on in the last century or so BCE, especially among Pharisees and Essenes (but not among Sadducees), there’s no harmony in ancient Judaism or contemporary Judaism, ancient Christianity or contemporary Christianity, about what paradise means, or where it is, or how it works. In the Qur’an, heaven is a garden and there are not seven, but eight levels, the highest of which is called Firdaus (paradise). Our Book of Common Prayer catechism doesn’t mention paradise, but says this about heaven and its opposite: “By heaven, we mean eternal life in our enjoyment of God; by hell we mean eternal death in our rejection of God.” What is God? Love. What is eternal? Timeless – without beginning or ending, and most importantly, it includes now.

What’s clear to me is that to glimpse what paradise might mean, we need to move out of the literal and the sentimental, and into the mystical and true. In Luke, paradise is a description of salvation for one willing to act as an advocate and companion of Jesus. Luke’s crucifixion narrative is a Gospel story that reminds us that condemnation, violence, and even death, do not have the last word in the realm of the Holy One, which is the realm of Love. It’s Love and only Love that has the last word. Love and love and more love. What Jesus came to demonstrate is that Love is the Highest Authority, that Love is the first word and the last word. Love is the boss of bosses and the ruler of rulers. That’s how Jesus saves us – by showing us that God loves us no matter what. And when we can soften our hearts enough to realize it, to have compassion for ourselves and for others, God welcomes us right into God’s glory – God’s glory — that’s another way of saying paradise. It was the criminal on the other side of Jesus, who demonstrated compassion for Jesus in this story. Even in his own agony, rather than joining in the hard-hearted taunting, he managed to quiet the other criminal with words that demonstrated his capacity to love and be loved – even if it was only a glimmer and at the very end of his life. Turns out, all Love needs is a glimmer – a small crack in our hearts to work its way in. According to Jesus, there isn’t anyone in the world that God doesn’t want to feel God’s love – and Love can’t wait!

Listen to this poem by 13th century Persian poet, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, called A Garden Beyond Paradise:

Everything you see has its roots
in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal–
growing, branching out,
giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?–
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
Do not grieve,
drink your fill!
Don’t think it will ever run dry–
This is the endless Ocean!

From the moment you came into this world,
a ladder was placed in front of you
that you might transcend it.

From earth, you became plant,
from plant you became animal.
Afterwards you became a human being,
endowed with knowledge, intellect and faith.

Behold the body, born of dust–
how perfect it has become!

Why should you fear its end?
When were you ever made less by dying?

When you pass beyond this human form,
no doubt you will become an angel
and soar through the heavens!

But don’t stop there.
Even heavenly bodies grow old.

Pass again from the heavenly realm
and plunge into the ocean of Consciousness.
Let the drop of water that is you
become a hundred mighty seas.

But do not think that the drop alone
becomes the Ocean–
the Ocean, too, becomes the drop![2]

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