Lent: 4/8/09
April 8, 2009
Wednesday of Holy Week
Luke 23:39-43
“Paradise”
He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ – Luke 23:43
Paradise is such an odd word. Originally, it referred to a royal garden. The Hanging Gardens of Ancient Babylon are a likely origin of our word, “paradise”. For us paradise has taken on so much more meaning. We have taken one odd word and placed it into conversation with another “Heaven”, (which itself has a rather long and complicated story) such that the original meaning is almost completely obscured.
As we stand at a save distance watching these events of Holy Week we do not see a vision of heaven. What we see is more a glimpse into the bowels of Hell. Here is our Messiah hanging in disgrace on the instrument of suffering and death between two troublemakers in the final moments of a short and rather unproductive career. Here is the end of our dreams for a new Israel. Here is the end of our hopes for a kingdom of peace without end. Here is only suffering and loss and pain and death.
Yet Jesus in the midst of all of this misery, whispers of being in Paradise. How can this be? We all know what Paradise is and this isn’t even in the same area code. We know that Paradise is to be found where everything is perfect and right. We know that the Paradise that we seek is not to be found in this world in this life. We know that Paradise is somewhere else. Paradise is not here not now.
Not that we haven’t looked. We have gone from place to place looking for Paradise. We have hopped from church to church looking for that perfect place. We have tried different careers and some of us have even tried starting second or third families, but never have we found the ever-elusive Paradise we seek. In truth everything on the other side of the hill is pretty much the same as here. Wherever we go there are always problems and trouble and difficulty! Nope, no Paradise here!
Maybe Jesus is being poetic? Maybe he was just speaking words of hope into a hopeless situation. Maybe he was just trying to tell a lovely bedtime story to a scared and hurting child to help him settle down and finally go to sleep in peace? Maybe the idea of Paradise is enough to help us suffer the hell of this moment with a bit of dignity. Maybe, I really don’t think so.
At the heart of the matter is our failure to grasp what Paradise is or where it might be found. I do not think that Jesus was promoting an “Apple Pie in the Sky in the Sweet Bye and Bye” understanding of Paradise. I think in all our searching and dreaming and waiting we have missed the Paradise that continually surrounds us. Paradise may not be so very far away. Paradise might surround us this very moment.
What would happen if instead of looking for Paradise somewhere else we just started pulling up the weeds that surround us? What if we stopped waiting for the next thing to come down the line and started working in our own backyards. You know, a flower planted here and there. Maybe we need just a little water for this plant and the other? That old rose bush might just need a little pruning. It wouldn’t take long for a patch of weeds to become a garden fit for a king, would it? Now obviously I am being poetic, but I think you get where I am going with this…
Maybe this is what the incarnation is all about? Maybe God’s overwhelming desire is just to be with us wherever we are? It could be that wherever and whenever we are together in peace with God and each other is Paradise! Maybe even in the terror of that moment on the cross there was a beauty that many spend a lifetime in search of finding in vain.
This day let us seek the Paradise that surrounds us. Not as an elusive dream, but as a present reality. Not as something to be waited on, but something to be realized and created right here and now.
Let us pray…
How great is your love for us,
That you Almighty and Eternal God
Would suffer taking on the form of a human being?
How great is your love for us,
That you Creator of All Things
Would suffer taking on the mortality of a human being?
How great is your love for us,
That you Alpha and Omega
Would suffer keeping company with such fragile and violent human beings?
How great is your love for us,
That you King of kings
Would suffer the worst that we could imagine to inflict upon you?
How great is your love for us,
That you Lord of lords
Would suffer obedience unto death, even a death on a cross?
How great is your love for us,
That you Redeemer and Sustainer
would suffer the horror and torment of Galgotha?
How great is your love for us,
That you would suffer all things to be with us
and even after we show all our wickedness
you would still here the cries of your children
and even in the pain of that moment
you call that place Paradise?
How great is your love for us, indeed. Amen.