Seven Last Words: “Paradise Today”

A Sermon based on Luke 23: 35-43

The Second Last Word from the Cross

Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.

The Second Sunday in Lent,  February 28, 2010

If you could be anywhere but here, where would it be?

Now I ask this question very cautiously, because realize where you are at the moment and I remember very well that I spent at least half of my childhood and a portion of my adolescence not wanting to be at church.   How easy this answer might come, especially while you are trying to listen to my sermon.  How nice might it be to be somewhere else---lying on a sunny beach, taking a trip to one of your favorite destinations, or even spending quality time with family.    

But I find it rather interesting that this feeling of wanting to be somewhere else comes to a lot of us.   Even when we live (or at least used to live) in one of the richest nations in the world, and while most of us have far more than we need and we probably like where we live (at least when we take note of where the rest of the world lives), doesn’t it make you at least a little curious to reflect upon how much time we spend thinking about being somewhere else.    It can be much more exotic and exciting to think about going someplace special than making the place where we are more special.   And even for us as Christians, it has been much easier to talk about and even support missions “over there,” than it is participate in a mission in our backyard.  

I’ve not done any specific study on the matter, but what I have observed is when people become somewhat affluent and successful, instead of becoming more content with where, who, or what they have, people tend to do the opposite.   When we get or have the home we’ve always dreamed of, it is then that feel the need to have a second home and be somewhere else---our get-away as we might call it.    Or when we finally have the job we’ve worked so hard to achieve, it is then that we set our sights on something more fulfilling or we can’t wait until retirement.   Even if we make a decent living, especially in this economy, and we have enough money to pay our bills and buy our groceries to raise our children, and even though we still have more than most people in the world, there remains a nagging almost inescapable feeling, even among the wealthy on Wall-street as well as those of us who live more modestly on main street, that we seldom have as much as we’d like to have.  Is this just greed or could it be something else?

Some theologians and even not a few psychologists might say that the reason for our discontent, our unanswerable longings or our constant feelings of incompleteness could lie in our hidden need to find the “paradise” that we have lost somewhere along the way.   Maybe this “paradise” was something we held onto only as a dream, or got a glimpse of for only a moment, or maybe it is that primitive and primordial longing to restore the paradise that was once a kind of “Garden of Eden” for us in our lives.  Whatever it was, we humans would love to go there, or find our way back there.   But I still wonder if it would satisfy us as much as we think it would.  The Scripture itself implies that, at least this earthly paradise we long for can never be regained, at least not on our own terms.   In the primeval story, God placed a spiritual creature, the cherubim, with a flaming sword to guard the entrance to the garden that keeps people away from the tree of life in paradise of God on their own terms (Genesis 3.24).   

So, if we are looking for paradise, how do we regain it on God’s terms?   That’s part of what I think this second word from the cross is about.    What we know about the biblical image of paradise is that only three times does the word “paradise” appear in the Bible.  Perhaps it’s partly because this is a “foreign” word borrowed from the ancient Persians.   Only late, scholars say, and also very carefully, cautiously and sparingly (due to the danger of “fantastic ideas” says J. Jeremias in TDNT, p. 778) did the word come to describe the abode of God and the heavenly bliss of the redeemed.   Once, paradise was only an enclosed garden or “the hanging gardens”, which were royal amusement parks for the Persian kings of ancient Babylon.   Here in our text Jesus uses “paradise” to describe something much more.   Maybe he is hinting at the way we all kind find the kind of “paradise” we need the most.

SEEING PARADISE DIFFERENTLY

What catches my attention first is exactly “where” paradise is spoken.   As far as we know, Jesus never used the word, until here, hanging on the cross.   Does that strike you to be ironic as it strikes me?  On this cross, Jesus is anywhere but paradise and his “hanging” is no garden amusement for him.  He and this dying thief seem to be as far away from the bliss of God as anyone could possibly be.  

In her own meditation upon this second word from the cross, Fleming Rutledge reminds us  that “crucifixion was for the scum of the earth.”  People who came from wealthy, privileged backgrounds, especially the white-collar criminal variety, would have never been crucified.  Then Rutledge goes on to say something I hadn’t quite thought of before.   She says, “Jesus did exactly the opposite of what you and I would do.   We would want to get away from the dregs of human society.”  “But”, she concludes, “Jesus voluntarily became a part of the dregs himself.  Neither did he spend much of his time among the best people or at the best places (The Seven Last Words from the Cross, by Fleming Rutledge, Eerdmans, 2005, p. 15).  

I recall meeting a German woman in Shelby once when I was pastor there.  She later became a member of our church.  When I ask her whether or not she missed her old home,  she told me that she could not go back to Germany because Germany wasn’t “German” any more.   Instead of national Germans, according to her, the country had been overrun with all kinds of foreigners, like Poles, Greeks, Turks, and many other foreigners and refugees who didn’t belong there in her Fatherland.  They made it so different from the “paradise” of her childhood.

We’ve all had these feelings haven’t we?   It is amazing how quickly people come up with their  own version of what paradise might mean, where paradise might be, or who we could or should not be with, which would supposedly bring “paradise” into our lives.   If only this would happen, or if only this wouldn’t, then we’d have our own “paradise.”  We’ve all got our own versions, don’t we?  I recall during the Civil Rights Struggle of the late 60’s, how I overheard people saying “those kinds of people don’t belong in our schools”.   I was too young to understand the politics of the moment, but I do remember the year they finally integrated “white” Harmony School with “black” Houstonville School.   What I remember is that some of those “kinds of people who didn’t belong there”, as it was said, became some of best friends I’ve ever had in my childhood. 

  

We all have our own definitions of paradise, which is normally a paradise we must have on our own terms.   I can remember thinking to myself, if I could only be like this or that person, if I could only accomplish that, or if I could only be loved by that person, it would be paradise.   I wonder, however, if you got to marry that person or you got to fulfill your dream, let me hesitantly ask how it turned out.  Good, maybe, great?  I hope so, but paradise?   That’s surely an over statement even in the best of situations.   

Maybe your life, if it is like mine, can sometimes ironically get closer to paradise when things “don’t” turn out as I had hoped.   When I have gone after “paradise” on my own terms, what I’ve achieved often ends up something altogether different.  My dreams of paradise on my terms, often appear as the proverbial “grass which is greener on the other side”, but it seldom remains as green as once seen.  This kind of irony, which happens often in life, is about as ironic as finding paradise on the cross.  

SURRENDERING TO PARADISE ON GOD’S TERMS

To be able to see paradise from the cross must see imagine something much different than our own versions on our own terms.    To see what Jesus saw, we might need to “burn” all the grass that we think is greener, letting go of our versions of paradise, and look more closely and intentionally at what Jesus was doing when he spoke this “promise.”  Whatever Jesus meant, even to speak of paradise in this moment, implies Jesus saw or knew something we seldom consider as the way to fulfill our deepest longings. 

Instead of coming into this world to succeed, Jesus came, as God’s “suffering servant” to fail, and I might add, to fail beautifully (as writer Fredrick Buechner once called it, a “magnificent defeat).”   Jesus came, as the prophet Isaiah hinted, not to be “numbered” among the elite, among the billionaires, among the good, the civic leaders, or the politically correct, as most people might dream about, but Jesus came to be “numbered among the transgressors” which means “numbered” among the dregs, the criminals, and the “bad elements” of society (to quote Fleming Rutledge again).   That doesn’t much sound like the way to paradise as we’d envision it, does it?   How could we hear such a word coming from the Jesus for ourselves?  How could we hear Jesus say to us “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” and hear these words on God’s terms and not just on our own?

To learn more about God’s invitation to paradise, look not only at what Jesus was doing, but also look closer at these two thieves dying close to Jesus.   All four gospels tell us about these malefactors because they represent the choice we all have to make in this life:  the choice of either living and dying on our own terms or freely, fully and finally giving ourselves to life and death on God’s terms.  

When this one thief asked for Jesus to “remember him”, he wasn’t simply asking for heaven, but he was asking to be a part of God’s kingdom which is to be on earth, as it is in heaven.   Because we normally only read our own versions of paradise into this story, we might overlook this.   We might even want to only read our own versions of getting into “heaven” into this story so we can keep up our stealing from God what he wants us to live and die for in this world and keep holding on to our own versions of having paradise on earth and on our own terms and then hoping that God will let us keep our own life was the cake, give us heaven as icing, and let us keep eating it too. 

But choosing to live life our own way, or only going after paradise on our own terms, is exactly what it means to be a thief of this gift of life which God has given to us.   So my main question to us today is this:  Which “thief” might we be?  Are you the “thief” who looks at Jesus and only wants this Messiah who “save others” to “save you” (vs. 39) from all your pain and trouble, or you are like this other thief, who, when he saw Jesus for who he really was, finally realized there God has other plans for our lives and signs up for the kingdom on earth, whenever Jesus is ready to establish it, on earth as it is in heaven.   Most interestingly, among these thieves, the one who asked for salvation directly did not gain it.  It is the only did not ask for salvation, but asked to be remembered for a job in the coming, earthly kingdom who gained the hope of paradise on God’s terms in the world to come.   Do you see the real difference among thieves?  

That really is the main problem, isn’t it?   We often miss God’s promise of “paradise” because, like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we have come to take for granted that we know best what paradise should or shouldn’t be.  As a result, we go through life, obsessed or even possessed by our own versions, but still lonely and longing, outside the guarded gate and in a real way, we keep living like thieves, trying to “steal” our own way to paradise on our terms.  In her book, A People’s History of Christianity, historian Diana Bulter Bass tell one particular story about Christians who want to “steal” their way to heaven on their own terms, but miss the paradise God which only God can give on his terms, both today, as well as tomorrow.   She tells about a pastor in Memphis, Tennessee named John  (p. 140).  John was the pastor of an affluent congregation which had developed the finances and opportunity to open a “kitchen” to feed the poor in their city.   The church had grown during John’s tenure, even added over $500,000 dollars a year to its pledges and budgets.  John was a pastor of impeccable character and no scandal or impropriety mars his ministry, yet his termination was forced.  

When John proposed that his church organize offering free hot meals once a week in the church for the homeless and working poor, neighbors and some church members protested, insisting that the program attracted both criminals an unsavory characters.   But the pastor remained resolute; and the majority of the church was willing to number itself among the transgressors and learn a new vision of paradise, until one day, the congregation split over the issue of feeding the poor and forced John to resign.  John was forced to resign because he had a very different view of paradise than did the religious elite in his church, who had the final say.  Sound familiar?   Doesn’t Pastor John’s cross remind you of someone else?

Yes, of course, the promise of heaven is part of the promise of paradise but it is still a promise on God’s terms and not on ours.   And God’s version of paradise also includes “on earth as it is in heaven”, not “in heaven after we lose our paradise on earth.”  But I realize all too well, that not many people are going to seek “paradise” by suffering to do God’s will on this earth.   We still prefer our own versions.

PARADISE CAN BE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

At sometime or other, we will find ourselves asking God to help us or to save us, because the truth is, paradise can seem lost, far away, and hardly possible to find or hold on to in this world.   Some of us will only ask for God’s help on our terms and still remain thieves of God’s goodness and grace.   We will miss our opportunity to find what only God can give.   I see it all the time, when people come to church only to get what they can get out of it, but never once think about what good they can give to someone else.  

But some of us, at least a “few” of us, said Jesus, will find a way to paradise that breaks into this world here and now.    And Paradise can come to us in some unexpected and surprising ways of grace.  When we move from simply asking how can I get into heaven for tomorrow, and start asking how we might get heaven into us today, we might begin to realize what was happening to the thief even before he got to heaven. 

A week or so ago, I saw something that greatly moved me.   In Atlanta Georgia a family of four who lived in a 2 million dollar home, recently sold their dream home, which was their place for paradise, and surprisingly found a another kind of paradise they had hardly imagined before. 

One day, a 15 year old daughter, named Hannah Selwen, convinced her 13 year old brother Joseph, to go with her to ask their parents to sell their dream home and give the proceeds to help the poor in the Hunger Project.    When the mother heard the proposal, suggesting the family really didn’t need the nearly two million dollar house where they lived, and could donate at half the proceeds to the poor who don’t have what they take for granted,  and could live just as comfortably in a cheaper house, the mom almost fainted.    And even after their entrepreneur Dad was also hesitant, due to the economy and it being a buyer’s market, both of them finally caved, realizing that they indeed had the best “paradise” they could ever have asked for----they had children who were living out the values they had taught them, being socially responsible, self-sacrificing leaders in the community.       Now their children, instead of being in trouble, spend their time  traveling in the world of the poor, overseeing 2 feed mills the profit from the house had established.   Need I to suggest, that by giving up their own version of paradise, this family found another paradise, which came on God’s terms, not on their own?

Please don’t misunderstand me to be saying that people find God’s paradise by just being socially responsible in this world, rather than giving our hearts to God, but I’ll tell you this there are two great commandments, not just one and in order to love God with all our heart, you must also love your neighbor in some obvious, responsible ways.  Just as you can’t find paradise on God’s terms by good works of social responsibility alone, but also won’t find paradise without doing the good works you are able to do either.   “Faith without works is dead, being alone.” 

Not only is paradise on God’s terms which can break through into our world today as we sacrifice ourselves for love, this paradise also comes, not by going after what we want, giving ourselves to what needs to be done.  If there was ever a modern day example of someone who put both faith and works together to find paradise on God’s terms in this world, it’s the fictitious but wishful character in John Grisham’s most under-read book, “The Testament.”   The Testament begins with a very rich man signing his will.  He has six spoiled and money hungry children and several ex-wives.  The man employs three psychiatrists to judge he is of sound mind and the whole procedure is taped.  Immediately after the taping Troy Phelan presents his lawyers with a will he has written himself, which supersedes the previous will, he signs it and jumps through a window.

His estate, all thirteen billion dollars is left to an illegitimate daughter who is now a missionary in South America.  Nate O'Riley, a litigator, is released from rehab, not for the first time, and dispatched by Phelan's law firm to find Rachel Lane and get her signature so she can inherit the billions.  To his dismay, Nate overcomes Amazon crocodiles and headhunters to find her, but when she finds her working as a medical nurse among the poorest tribe in the most remote place, she refuses the money and everything it brings with it.   Rachel Lane already has her paradise, and interestingly after meeting her, Nate finds that after struggling with his own demons, that, after meeting a girl like Rachel Lane, he will never be the same either.  Paradise will never again look he thought it did. 

So, at the close of this message, let me ask you what kind of paradise you are seeking.   Are you seeking paradise on your own terms, or are you seeking what only God can give you on his terms.   Only one of the two thieves found the right door to paradise, and it is a door that opens on earth as much as it does in heaven.   In fact, when Jesus promises this thief “Today, you will be with me in paradise,” I’m firmly convinced that this paradise is much less a specific “place” we are going to, than it is discovering who we will be with.   Even in heaven, it is heaven, not because of where it is, as much as that God is “in the midst” and the “lamb is the light.”

Pastor Will Willimon makes this point when he tells of a elderly woman who was near the end of her life, her already long life.  Now in her late eighties, her body was growing weaker as she gradually succumbed to congestive heart failure.  Then, pastor Willimon asked her, “What are your feelings now?  Are you afraid?  Regretful?  What do you feel?

And she answered, “No, not afraid.”

“You have lived a long and good life,” the pastor said.  “That must be a great consolation.”

“Some.  My main comfort,” she replied, is that soon I will get to be with Jesus.

That was her great comfort, as she came to the end.  She would be with Jesus.  Of course it was a great comfort to her because, in a deep sense, she was already with Jesus.  She had lived each day of her long life, for as long as she could remember, with Jesus.  For this woman, being with Jesus was not a future hope.  It was a present reality.  To be sure, one day before, she hoped to be with her Lord in fullness that she did not have now.  But what she had now enabled her to look in confidence toward what would come.   There is a real sense, that she did not have to wait to get to paradise, but she was in paradise with Jesus already  (From Will Willimon’s book, Thank God It’s Friday,  Abingdon, 2006, p. 17).   


We believe that tomorrow we will be with Jesus.  But this hope of being "with Jesus" is closer than we might think.  "Today" does not always have to wait on "tomorrow".   Paradise can breakthrough when we work, watch, and pray toward God's kingdom today.  Amen.


© 2010 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.