Wednesday Lenten Series

March 7, 2007

The Rev. Thomas William Blake, Rector, Grace Episcopal Church

Today you will be with me in Paradise

Luke 23: 39-43

Tonight we hear the second set of Jesus’ last words from the cross. This is a very significant point in the passion narrative. This is the point at which we step back from our temptation to focus on Jesus exclusively as an individual, and again see Jesus as part of community. Think of it, if you will, as switching from a zoom to a wide angle lens. It is important for us to see the whole picture.

The image before us sends chills up and down my spine. Jesus is between two other human beings also being executed by the torturous method of crucifixion. As much as we would prefer to fast forward through this scene or to clean it up in our minds, or to think of it in some abstract sense, it is important for us to remember that execution and the taking of another person’s life is a real phenomenon.

It is still real in the world today, even very close to home, and that thought should worry us. We should be gravely concerned, especially in light of our first reading for tonight: “God created humankind in his image….God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” The taking of a human life is never morally good. Sometimes, rightly or wrongly, some Christians will justify it as being morally neutral in certain situations; but, if we take seriously the first chapter of Genesis, and if we take seriously Jesus’ crucifixion, we can never think of it as being morally good.

Envisioning this horrific scene of crucifixion through the wide angle lens, we are reminded that community is a given. There is community even when the temptation is to remain focused on one’s own agony and despair. Again, we cannot read the creation story without being reminded both that we are part of something larger and that we have a responsibility to something larger. As individuals, we are given gifts not for the sake of our selves, but for the good of the whole.

This transition from the zoom lens to the wide angle lens, from nurturing and caring for our individual gifts, including our bodies, toward making use of those gifts among our families, friends, and the larger community, is a transition we all make day in and day out. It probably seems intimately familiar to most of us at some level or another. Certainly it is quite in keeping with Jesus’ consistent example throughout the gospels.

Remember, for example, the very beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry. After being baptized in the Jordan, Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days. But remember also that he did not stay there. His retreat was a preparation for his teaching and healing and otherwise ministering among people, and very often as you will recall, among people shunned by society—for whatever reason—and stripped of their dignity as a result.

Remember how Jesus seems routinely to leave behind the crowds and sometimes even his inner circle of disciples to go off by himself: to pray, to retreat, to rest. But the concerns of the community sooner or later always preempt his retreat as an individual, and we see him again among the people, and especially restoring dignity to those persons otherwise reduced to the margins of society.

And then there is that wonderful story of the Transfiguration—a story that somehow fittingly every year transitions us into Lent. Jesus, with Peter, James, and John, leaves behind the crowds and journeys to the top of a mountain. While there, they experience something mysterious, something transforming, and something clearly wonderful. They are tempted to stay up there, but, great as the temptation is, they return back down among the people, among you and me, to begin the difficult journey to the cross.

Most of the gospel passage we read today is not Jesus talking at all, but the two persons being executed along with him. Jesus utters a mere sentence, but a transformational one: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” In his book Listening at Golgotha, Peter Storey, a retired minister from South Africa who was instrumental within the movement to end apartheid, sees in this dialogue a threefold pattern that gets to the very heart of our human experience: rebellion, repentance, and redemption.

The first of the two persons being executed next to Jesus expresses words of rebellion. Turning toward Jesus, he says, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” His reaction to what is happening is to be sarcastic and direct his anger toward someone else. We have all stood in those shoes, no doubt. We distract ourselves from reality, pointing the finger at another and blaming, while all the while refusing to confront something not outside of us at all but within us, consuming us, eating us slowly away.

The second of the two persons being executed next to Jesus, though, has past that rebellious stage. He has moved into the stage of repentance. He responds to the rebellious guy by asking him a question. “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”

We have all stood here, too. This is the point at which we no longer try to distract ourselves from what is happening within, but we confront it, acknowledging our humanity, seeking to get to the root of what is broken. Only by doing so can we offer our brokenness up to God, seeking from God a restoration to health and wholeness. This man finishes his part of the dialogue by turning to Jesus and saying, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus, of course, is the third person. Jesus, like a wide-angle lens, redirects our focus enabling us to see the broader picture. We have moved beyond the rebellious stage and confronted our brokenness in the repentance stage. Now it is time to offer our brokenness up to God, asking for healing and a restoration to wholeness: not just within, but among the larger community. This transition can only come to us as a gift from God.

God grieves when we grieve. God feels our pain when we feel pain, or when something within is tearing us apart and just won’t go away. In response, God offers us the gift of redemption.

But redemption is not simply like having points on our record removed after being cleared of a traffic violation. Redemption is more than that. Redemption is about healing us as individuals not for that end alone, but in order to redirect our focus away from ourselves, and toward our place in the larger creation. As I noted before, such is the consistent example of Jesus throughout the gospels.

Last night I heard Judy Shepard speak at the University of Indianapolis. You may recall her son Matthew’s being brutally beaten in Laramie, Wyoming, and then left out in a field to die, all because he was gay. I listened as his mother described being awakened by a telephone call in the middle of the night and told what had happened to her son.

She and her husband left Saudi Arabia as soon as possible for Wyoming. The journey took twenty-five hours in all. After finally arriving there, she walked into Matthew’s hospital room where she could hardly recognize him. Once she saw the familiar spot on his forehead and gazed into his distinct blue eyes, though, she knew it was her son. As much as she wanted to convince herself otherwise, she realized that his death would probably be inevitable. Imagine the horrible burden, the painful cross, she had to bear.

Matthew’s brother at first refused to go into the hospital room because he did not want to remember Matthew that way. Finally, though, he went into the room and at once broke down, speechless, tears streaming from his eyes. The weight of his cross seemed unbearable, too. How could one human being ever, ever, do this to another human being? Every human being, every one of us, is created in the image of God.

I share this story with you because it greatly impacted me last night and throughout my preparation of this sermon. I also share it to make a point. Death, and especially brutal murders and executions, are agonizing horrific occurrences. We know that death is inevitable, but having that knowledge makes it no easier.

Yet even so—even though at the center of our faith is the cross, a tool of execution—we Christians still manage to profess good news. “How can that be?” ask people looking in. We profess good news because we have a God who has given us good news, even despite our brokenness and our place in a broken world. We believe in a God who insistently intervenes to turn brokenness into a new creation. We believe that our God loves us even though we, too, hang from the crosses of rebellion and repentance.

It is that third cross, though, the cross of redemption, that makes all the difference in the world. On it our Lord hangs, refusing—despite all temptation—to lose sight of the larger picture. He values us even as undeserving as we are. And like the loving Father welcoming home his prodigal son, he stretches out his arms in wide embrace, and assures us beyond a shadow of doubt, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.” Amen.