Luke 23:33-43

"Christ the King" - Year C

23:42 Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

23:43 He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

If we weren't so limited by our context we could see these lines in our current context.

Let's work our way backward into our present.

Welcome to another day in Paradise where steadfast-love weds mercy to justice. Look around again. And again. This is Jesus prayer come true; heaven has come on earth. We are partnered with one another, urging one another onward toward a wholeness already known and yet needing bodies and form.

In this Paradise we are loathe to leave behind for a static pig-in-a-poke in some by-and-by, we blink our eyes again and Jesus is truly here. We are encouraged to continue to stand for a merciful justice. Visit Facebook/StandWithFrank as another trial tries to separate that which G*D has joined together.
This is so overwhelming we find ourselves like Peter in the presence of another transfiguration—stammering: "Remember me when . . . ."

Returning to our senses we know ourselves remembered. When knowing we are remembered rather than forcing some remembrance to be repeated and repeated in some weird Groundhog Day, we can move forward together.

Can you look back over this year to remember when you were remembered and you lived a merciful justice? That honors Jesus far more than some heraldic claim that "Jesus is Lord" or trying to leave this Paradise of "joy to the world" and "fear and trembling".

Use this as a time for evaluation of the last year in order to better engage a next year. What finally needs forgiveness in order to participate in merciful justice?

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/11/luke-2333-43-november-24-2013-year-c.html

 

 

How far is it from the Paradise of here-and-now to the Paradise of there-and-when?

I am struck by how often folks ask for prayer as though it would be something I would do on their behalf somewhere down the line and how surprised they are when I ask, "Would it be alright to pray now?"

I am struck by how often folks don't make the connection between their vote and voice today and the way life will be for all of us, particularly the poor, in days to come.

There seems to be a disconnect between now and any other time, whether past or future. With that disconnect comes an opening for the best-talked, the one who appeals to the lowest common denominator or our largest fears to guide us in directions directly contrary to our own best self-interest.

How I wish Jesus had replied to the criminal next to him, "Truly I tell you, we are in Paradise, now and ever."

What would it mean to see today as Paradise. Surely we are not that much worse that some edenic once-upon-a-time constructed as an overlay on chaos with tree tests, loneliness not assuaged by a rib-mate, eternal stewardship regarding what has been entrusted to us, and snakes full of political promises.

What would it mean to see today as Paradise and have that connected with all the nostalgia of Paradise Past and all the dreams of Paradise yet winging its way from a future new heaven and new earth?

What would it means to see life as Paradise and death as Paradise? Might it begin to bind together the various disconnects in our life? My suspicion is that it would.

- - -

Dave (Reader)

I know this is a negative theme, and in the long run will not fly, but it might generate some additional thoughts.

Thinking of people who do not see the disconnects, I started to repy with the phrase "apparently not"!

Don't they see their thirst for war just breeds war? Apparently not! etc.

Don't they see that love and compassion- even praying for their enemies is what Jesus did? Apparently not!

- - -

Dave (Reader)

Found this in Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, and it was too good not share.

James Alison, Raising Abel , pp. 187-188. He quotes the first word from the cross in reflections that also bring in the shepherd imagery from the day's first lesson:

I'm trying to sketch out something much more interesting: in the measure that we learn unconcern about our reputation, in that measure the Father can produce in us the same love which he has for his Son, and the same love which he and his Son have for the human race. Here is where we have to make an imaginative effort, or at least I do. That love is in no way marked by any desire for vindication, for restoring besmirched reputations, for turning the tables of this world, and all that might seem to us to be just and proper, given the horror of the violence of our world. That love loves all that! It loves the persecutors, the scandalized, it loves the depressives and the traitors and the finger pointers. That love doesn't seek a fulminating revelation of what has really been going on as a final vengeance for all the violence, even though we may fear that it will be so. That love is utterly removed from being party to any final settling of accounts. That love, the love which was the inner dynamic of the coming of the Son to the world, of Jesus' historical living out, seeks desperately and insatiably that good and evil may participate in a wedding banquet.

This means that it is the mind fixed on the things that are above which allows the heart to be re-formed in the image of the Father's love, forgiving the traitors, the executioners, the persecutors, the weak, those gone astray, not on account of some ethical demand, or so as to obey some commandment, but quite simply because they are loved, they are delighted in. When Luke has Jesus on the Cross say, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" (Lk 23:34), he was not only depicting a Jesus who was effectively revealing the mechanism of death, which includes the blindness of its participants as to what they are doing, nor was it an ethical imperative that Jesus should forgive them so that he might go to his Father 'clean'; rather it was just that, in truth, and without any remorse or sadomasochism, Jesus loved his slayers.

This means that when we are able to stand loose from our reputation, and because of that, from our need to insist on a day of reckoning, the eschatological imagination, the mind fixed on the things that are above, begins to give us the capacity to love human beings without any sort of discrimination, in imitation of that love, quite without rivalry, which the Father has for us. Another way of saying this is to say that there begins to be formed within us something of a shepherd's heart which is deeply moved by humans and human waywardness. Please notice that "heart of a shepherd" means being able to look at wolves in their sheepliness. It is not a question of us fearing that there are many people dressed as sheep who are, in fact, wolves, but, on the contrary, of being able creatively to imagine wolves as, in some, more or less well-hidden part of their lives, in fact, sheep, and to love them as such. Various times in the Gospel the word splangchnidzomai crops up, which we usually translate as 'moved with compassion'. Jesus was moved with compassion by this or that person or situation, or that the multitudes should be like sheep having no shepherd (Mt 9:36). However the word is rather strong, and means a deep commotion of the entrails, a visceral commotion. This is what is so hard to imagine: as we become unhooked from our partisan loves, our searches, our clinging to reputation, with these formed in reaction to this situation or that, there begins to be formed in us that absolutely gratuitous visceral commotion, born outside all reaction, which the ancients called agape, and which is nothing other than the inexplicable love which God has for us in our violence and our scandals. We begin to be able not only to know ourselves loved as human beings, but to be able to love other humans, to love the human race and condition. ( Raising Abel , pp. 187-188)

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html

 

 

Death of prisoners is nothing new. Some are done in legally - sentenced to die. Some are done in illegally - most recent a U.S. Marine shooting a wounded prisoner.

Some prisoners scoff at death. Some prisoners weep at death. Some prisoners look for change at death.

These various scenes of violence take place in the context of every war. Some happen before declared war, some during, and some after.

In one way and another faith is implicated in war by giving the go ahead to protect itself in whatever its current manifestation might be. Religion becomes as much a victim of war as are prisoners.

In today's setting you may be interested in looking again at Sojourner's statement "Confessing Christ in a World of Violence." What does it say about the scene with Jesus and criminals being crucified? Points 4 and 5 seem to speak most clearly here.

Next week we begin another cyle of a church year. Will we be any further ahead at this time next year? Perhaps. It is not out of the realm of expectation. A key will be how we deal with the violence of words and actions around us. Is it worth the risk to not only model active non-violence as best we can, but to energetically advocate it for communities as well as individuals?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html

 

 

When all else is stripped from G*D, there is yet steadfast love.
When all else is stripped from Jesus, there is yet forgiveness.

What is there when all else is stripped from you?

Here it is that you will find your joy, your willingness, your paradise.

- - -

we have come through
a long long time
whether eons or milliseconds
this long time is beyond
our timing of time

this year for instance
we circled again
themes of creation
of salvation
in a time of liturgy

starting with waiting
a strange place to start
a silence before do-re-mi
we reach a longed for place
Forgiveness Paradise

having arrived
we note its fragility
our resistance
when push comes to shove
and we set out again

how many revolutions
of wheels and self
before we stop
resisting such a paradise
and move with it beyond it

# # # # # # #

revhipchick said...
thank you for this weeks post. i found it very helpful. i really appreciate the look at what is left when jesus has been stripped away. what is left when we have been stripped away.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

 

 

A captain of a ship is to go down with said ship. You are to ride a horse that brought you to your present occasion. Nowhere is it mentioned that we are in this business of leadership, of community fellowship, in order to simply save ourself.

Warnings have been out for quite some time that the powers that be were going to extort their pound of flesh from Jesus (& you?) for subversion of the common-sense of the day.

How might a leader respond at a time of their evident overthrow? Usually they have staked their reputation and life on a particular process and they will keep at it. So it is with Jesus (& you?).

Luke records four last acts of Jesus in this 23rd chapter.

On this last Sunday of another exhausting Church Year (it is hard work to participate in creating a new heaven and a new earth) we come to a final measuring question about our progress and in anticipation of work to be done in another Church Year - welcoming without boundaries.

We know that to do so will be the set up for more Judas opportunities for others, more disappointments, having to go through the same re-education we have gone through before. Imagine the eventual havoc of a thief loose in heaven. Who else might be there, even without a formal welcome this side of a great divide? It just throws everything up for grabs.

We know that to do less will be the set up for our playing Judas in our day.

Since there seems to be no escaping - keep your eye on what you understand Paradise to be about. When others fall by the wayside you can still invite them. When you fall by the wayside you can still be invited. To see through the illusion and ratify the experience of suffering is to set it in a larger context, a part of which is Paradise.

You may want to leave a note for yourself where you will regularly see it as an affirmation of your ongoing work, "I am a door-opener and welcomer of Paradise." It is that upon which you can survive the realities of this past year and upon which you can build for next year.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/11/luke-2333-43.html