Luke 23:33-43
Proper 29 / Year C
I’ve mentioned
before the very first sermon I preached as a seminarian fell of Christ the King
Sunday. That year’s reading had Jesus
riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. This
year we read of Jesus on the Cross. The
third year in the Lectionary cycle has Jesus being interrogated by Pilate. None of these readings seem to reflect well
on Christ as King. If I was picking the
lesson, I might choose Jesus ascending into heaven or perhaps giving the Sermon
on the Mountain or calming a storm-ravaged sea.
That Sunday thirty-seven years ago I was so befuddled as I drove to
church I had no idea what I was going to say in my sermon.
Not much has
changed for me over the years. I expect
to come to Christ the King Sunday and encounter something victorious like the
Hallelujah chorus: “King of kings! Lord of lords!” but find instead
something more like a whimper and a sniffle.
Having lived the story of Christ over the course of an entire liturgical
year, this hardly seems like a fitting conclusion.
Still, the image of
Jesus dying on the cross tells us something important about our King. As he hangs on the cross battered and bloody,
in agony, with his own flesh in taters, he has absorbed the very worst humanity
can do to him. And how does he
respond? Is he bitter? Vindictive?
Broken? No. He remains true to his Godly character by
showing mercy to another crucified human being and assuring him a place in
paradise.
Earlier this week
in Morning Prayer we read this from the 105th Psalm:
God
has always been mindful of his covenant,
the promise he made for a thousand generations.
It speaks of God’s
eternal changelessness; what theologians call immutability. Nothing we can say or do will alter God’s
love for us and God’s faithfulness to us.
These are not things we earn, but realities we embrace. They are every bit as unbreakable as the
physical laws of the universe. It is
this quality which we see Jesus display in today’s reading. He remains true to his nature and steadfast
in his mission, even as he is being crucified.
The Collect of the
Day tells us much about the intent of Christ the King Sunday. It tells us God’s purpose in Christ is to
restore all things through Christ. We need
restoration because the world is divided and enslaved by sin. We are freed by Christ and united to one
another under his most gracious rule. We
see all of this being played out in the brief conversation Jesus has with the
penitent thief.
“Jesus, remember me
when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus’
response, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The word here translated as paradise is the same word the Greek
translation of the Old Testament uses for the Garden of Eden. It provides a colorful image of restoration. Jesus, being crucified at Golgotha, is about
as far removed as possible from the idyllic setting of the God’s first garden. But through his life, death, and resurrection
he charts for us a path to paradise, a return to the garden.
Perhaps the most
common way we use the word restoration is to describe work done on a run-down
house or car. It can be painstaking, but
for those who undertake such a project it is also a labor of love. And when the work is finished we say the
house or car has been restored to its former glory.
And isn’t this what
we celebrate about Christ’s reign in this world. It is painstaking, as we see in today’s
reading. It is a labor of love. And it is about restoring the glory we had
before sin marred our lives and our world.
For the penitent man dying on the a cross the work is finished. For us, it is on-going. One of the reasons we walk through the church
year is so we might better know God in Christ and more faithfully follow in the
way Christ has shown us. Today, the
walks comes to an end. Next Sunday it
begins anew.
