“Paradise Within”

“Paradise Within”

Reign of Christ Sunday, November 20, 2022

Psalm 46    Colossians 1:11-20       Luke 23:33-43

First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho

Pastor Andy Kennaly

          “One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding” Jesus. Roman soldiers cast lots to divide his clothing, his seamless garment. They try to break the one who brings wholeness. Other people stood by, watching, as opposed to doing something. Leaders scoffed. Soldiers mocked. Those with power, those who use violence seem to rule the day.

There are many people behaving badly toward Jesus in his final hours of life, as he faces death on a cross. The inscription over him calls him the “King of the Jews,” even though Jesus never uses the term “king” in reference to himself. He didn’t want to be called a king.

State-sponsored violence uses him as an example of what happens to people found guilty of sedition. The anger of those who scoff is a secondary emotion and veils the more operative one: fear. They did not want Roman incursion. But, 40 years later the city was destroyed anyway. They thought by killing people like Jesus, they could maintain a quiet, unnoticed status quo and continue without any political trouble. Public crucifixion was about inflicting intentional intimidation for the purpose of power and control.

Many churches in traditional Christianity remind us that we, too, sometimes behave poorly, have moral failures, and need forgiveness. That Jesus prays for forgiveness for people who “do not know what they are doing” is held up as a comforting example of God’s grace given through the costly cross on the hill they call the skull. That emblem, the cross, serves as a reminder, it is hung on prominent walls in places of worship, we even add hammer marks or crowns of thorns because the suffering Servant, in the fullness of God, took our place, as “through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” Penal substitutionary atonement doctrine is very prominent, and, has done tremendous damage.

The other day I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich. The bees at Honey Frame Place were kind to me this year, enough to share a little bit of honey. After the bread had a base of peanut butter, the honey came slow and golden, poured out from the jar in ribbons of sweetness. Mmmmnnn.

The knife smoothed out and blended, the bread capped off an amazing, delicious snack. But before I ate it, I separated the pieces of bread. As I pulled up on the top piece, sticky threads of honey clung to the top and the bottom in various places along the sandwich. Some of these strands were thin, some were thick, but even though the pieces of bread were separated, their bond remained through points of contact provided by the sweetest part of the whole sandwich.

I put the two parts back together, but rather than gorging on big bites to fill my belly, I savored each moment as textures and subtle flavors revealed themselves. In the process, hunger was satisfied and wholesome nourishment was provided. On one hand, I ate a sandwich. On the other hand, I joined in manifold witness in praise and glory for all the blessings of creation that sing God’s grace and live through the power of Love.

That’s what this morning’s scripture readings do. Psalm 46, Luke 23, Colossians 1, written decades, even hundreds of years apart, the words used, and images conveyed, are linked, connected through structure of grammar and use of select verbs. Most of the time in English we miss, gloss over, or neglect key points because they’re worded with slight variance. We choose some other focus for a text and miss the subtle sweetness that opens new connections.

For example, the passage from Luke, most of the time we hear this as our golden ticket, the assurance of our escape plan to the sweet by-in-by when we fly away after this Earthly life is done. Those criminals become our role models, one of which not to emulate, but the other we are so glad he finally “gets it” and follows Jesus to the end, and beyond to heavenly glory and paradise forever with Jesus. We see Christ as the one who helps us escape ourselves and this world in favor of something better, up there, and eternal.

Especially that last sentence tends to get futurized. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” How many bluegrass songs tamp out a beat to sing our troubles away as we look to Jesus on a cloud. Heaven gets relocated beyond Earth, and Paradise is sent down a linear track far ahead of wherever we may be now. But we have that promise. Someday, paradise.

When he is crucified, Jesus prays that God forgive them, “for they do not know what they are doing.” The list shows they mock him, deride him, and all these mean things are in plain view as part of their experience. Jesus doesn’t say, forgive them because they are doing all these bad things to me, all these things in the list that Luke writes. He says, “they do not know what they are doing.” What are they doing that they don’t know they are doing?

Most people go through life unaware of what we are doing. Verbal threads that link these passages give us hints to what it is that we do. And what is it we do? We live. We exist. Our lives happen. We are present. We are creatures of the Earth. We are.

The language here echoes God’s great I AM. They don’t know what they are doing, but Jesus knows that he embodies Christ and reveals Christ through his life, and even death does not end this revelation. Divine Presence in which “all the fullness of God was please to dwell” is free from time’s restraints. Christ “is before all things, and in Christ all things hold together.” All things, “whether on Earth or in heaven.”

That peace is made “through the blood of his cross” has less to do with sacrifice and the murderous rampage of crazed politicians lost in their lust for power than it has to do with living life, however it gets played out even on a hill called the skull. The cross is not a magical tool to release us or protect us from evil things, but an emblem of love poured out. The cross is where Heaven and Earth connect, and in creation, Christ is revealed.

Celtic crosses can appear prominent, and yet are decorated not by a bleeding body but by the greenery of vines that intertwine unending circles of love and grace. A Celtic cross shows the unity of heaven and Earth, of the Divine revealed through creation, of Christ in all things and all things in Christ. Jesus knows exactly what he is doing as spirit and matter merge in his life and God’s love surrounds, infuses, and holds everything.

But again, Jesus asks God to forgive because the people don’t know what they are doing. What are they doing that they don’t know they’re doing? They are presencing. They are existing. They, like Jesus, are the image of the invisible God. And people are one part of the larger creation, all of which participates in this.

Jesus doesn’t come to free us from ourselves or the planet with an escape strategy. Jesus comes to remind us of who we are at the deepest level, who we are in our Essence, and offers awareness so that we may know what we are doing. And what are we doing? By our presence, God is presencing God’s presence in and through the world. We live in Christ, and in Christ, things exist, things happen; “all things in heaven and on Earth were created, things visible and invisible […] all things have been created through him and for him.” (Colossians).

This is what Jesus tells the criminal in that experience of transformation in that moment on that hill. “Truly thee I tell today, with me you will be in, in the Paradise.” Christ crucified recognizes and honors true identity “in Christ.” Most of those people do not know they are living expressions of Christ as they are presencing God through their life. Jesus shares God’s love with this criminal as Christ confirms that “with me you will be within. The paradise within. This criminal dying next to Jesus could claim his inherent dignity as a created being participating in life with all its dynamics even in and through death.

Thanks be to God for strands of grace revealed in their sweetness, for awareness of divine presence that transform everything, and for Christ’s ongoing creation that is blessed and sacred revealed in ordinary things. And may God be glorified, now, even as forever, Amen.