We end the liturgical year today with this image of Jesus on
the cross between two criminals. We can
hear the mocking voices ringing out, “Behold your king!” A crucified king was not what people were
expecting. In fact, it was no king at
all. The king they were hoping for was a
king who would destroy Israel’s enemies and bring healing and peace to God’s
people. They were looking for a
righteous king bringing retributive justice, so that everyone would finally get
what they deserve.
Are we so different today?
While we don’t relate to the language of kingship in our democratic
republic, we sure respond to the desire for a leader who will punish the bad
guys and reward the good guys. Many hope
for a leader, someone God-chosen, who is clear about the friend-enemy
distinction and acts accordingly. We may
have different ideas about who the good guys and the bad guys are, but we all
pretty much agree that justice is about them getting what they deserve.
That isn’t what we get with King Jesus. He is not the messiah that we’ve been waiting
for. He is a very different kind of
king. He is the king of mercy.
All along, Luke’s Gospel makes this clear. From the very beginning, Jesus announces
that he comes to bring good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the
blind, and freedom to the oppressed.[1] He revived the Jewish practice of the Jubilee
Year, when debt is forgiven, slaves are released, and ancestral lands are
returned to poor peasants who have lost them – and extended it to include all
people. This is a program of mercy,
wiping the slate clean so that everyone can make a fresh start.
Jesus ministers to the poor, the sick and the outcast not
because they do or do not deserve it, but because their well-being enriches the
whole community. People are scandalized
because Jesus hangs out with corrupt officials and notorious sinners; again,
not because they “deserve” it, but because it is the sick who need a physician,
not those who are well.[2] He goes so far as to say that we should even
love our enemies because “God is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is
merciful.”[3]
This teaching is memorably illustrated in the parables of
the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.[4] God just isn’t preoccupied with reward and
punishment; or, maybe it is better to say, divine justice cannot be separated
from divine mercy. It is always in the
service of reconciliation, the restoration of relationships. Jesus demonstrated the truth of this
teaching not only with his words, but with his life.
It is not that Jesus was a Pollyanna or denied the reality
of evil. Quite the contrary, he was
fully aware of evil and confronted it directly.
What he refused to do was allow evil to in any way define or limit the
scope of love. So even as he is hanging
on the cross, he demonstrates a tremendous freedom in his capacity to forgive
his enemies.[5] Jesus refuses to abandon anyone finally to
the dominion of evil, because that would
make evil more powerful than God, more powerful than love. Jesus entrusted himself, his enemies, everyone
and everything, to the mercy of God. He
is the king of mercy.
How do we respond to this mercy? Luke invites us to imagine ourselves in the
place of the criminals crucified alongside of Jesus.[6] Note that these “criminals” were likely
instigators of violent resistance to Roman occupation – that is why they were
executed by the state. They have
witnessed the forgiveness Jesus offers, even though he is innocent and thus
unjustly condemned. One criminal joins
the leaders and soldiers mocking Jesus. A
real king wouldn’t be in this position. “Save
us both and let’s stick it to the Romans if you are the Messiah! That is what they deserve!” He remains locked in the logic of retributive
justice, of reward and punishment.
The other criminal recognizes Jesus’ offer of forgiveness as
an opportunity to move beyond this logic. He acknowledges “we are getting what we
deserve” but begins to imagine that God may desire something different,
something more, for us. He entrusts
himself to the king of mercy – “Jesus, remember me when you come into your
kingdom.” And Jesus responds, “Truly, I
tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
God’s mercy is so much larger than what we think we
deserve. Our sense of desert is actually
a barrier to our relationship with God.
If we feel we deserve to be rewarded for our goodness, our sense of
entitlement places us outside the flow of mercy; we don’t think we need
it. And if we think we deserve to be
punished because of our failings, our sense of disqualification places us
outside the flow of mercy; we think we are unworthy. But it isn’t about what we deserve. It is about what God desires to share with us:
Paradise.
When we let go of our preoccupation with reward and
punishment, we enter into the flow of mercy and find ourselves in
Paradise. I don’t mean Paradise as some
state of bliss beyond the pale of finitude and pain, but as a basic trust and
acceptance of the goodness of creation and the intrinsic relationship of the
good of each to the good of all. We
become free to respond to people and situations from the perspective of this greater
good. How we embrace this wholeness that
already is ours becomes more interesting than the question of what we
deserve. It entails humility and
gratitude, rather than praise or condemnation.
The king of mercy revealed on the cross is more powerful
than evil and death, because forgiveness keeps open the possibility of a future
with hope. Jesus is the Christ, the
Messiah, because he is transparent to the flow of mercy. In the words of St. Paul,
For in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, Christ has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him – provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.[7]
We are reconciled to God through the death and resurrection
of Jesus, not because we deserved to die and Jesus took our place; not because
God demanded a sacrifice to appease the divine justice; but rather because
through it the power of God’s ineffable mercy triumphs over all that resists it
and reunites that which has been divided by sin and evil. All things – not just some – every creature –
not just humans – all are reconciled to God through the king of mercy. When we trust this, we can embrace the future
with hope. God desires so much more for
us than what we think we deserve.
This morning, I invite you to consider the difference
between the question, “What do I deserve?” verses “What do we need to be
whole?” This seemingly slight shift in
attention opens up a whole new world.
Today, we can be in Paradise.
