Year C Readings
 Jeremiah 23:1-6
 Psalm 46
 Colossians 1:11-20
 Luke 23:33-43

Collect of the Day

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Homily
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Amen.

When I was a kid… music played on our stereo system constantly. My dad used to get my brother, Loren, and me up for church by cranking some Wagner opera… you know… the lady made famous by Bugs Bunny and ol’ Elmer Fudd… the lady with the spear and the pointy helmet: hayatoho-oh!!! It wasn’t always that bad though. Mostly it was “Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys” with a smattering of British Choral Music, French Piano Music, and Italian Opera. There was also some Simon & Garfunkel and Flatt & Scruggs, which I liked very much; but my brother insisted on listening to Elvis and Neil Diamond, both of whom I could not abide. And we also enjoyed a regular diet of Gospel music, which remains to this day a great source of comfort to me: both when I’m up and when I’m down. From Marian Anderson, to Aretha Franklin and Mavis Staples, to those princes of harmony, Take 6, the hope and challenge of the Gospel sung with the overflowing emotion of the Black Church has always moved me in that place of understanding where despair ends and hope begins.

When I was 9 years old, my dad came home with this album by Aretha Franklin called “O Happy Day,” which is a live recording of a worship service at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit Michigan in July of 1987. The whole thing is electrifying. And it’s not just the music. About half way through the album, the Rev. Jesse Jackson gets up and gives a barn burner of a sermon. As you might expect, this Doctor of the Black Church acknowledges the darkness of the world and the precarious place of Black People in America, but then he begins to lift them up. He begins to preach the hope of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and he ends the sermon exhorting the faithful with the words, “Hold on to your faith, because the morning had to come. Hold on to your faith, because it’s morning time… it’s morning time… it’s morning time!”

There is an expressive power in the Black Church which distinguishes it from the stately, sometimes overly-intellectual worship of much of the White Church. In particular, this expressiveness is evident in the way the Black Church sings and preaches about hope. The great line from that epic duet with which Aretha Franklin and Mavis Staples raised the roof that July day in the Motor City was this, “O happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away.” You see the Black Church embodies the experience of that person hanging on the Cross next to Jesus who was given the assurance in the final moments of his earthly life that there was more—indeed, much more—to come. He died a painful death, and perhaps one that he deserved. But he died happy. He died happy.

How many of us are similar to the other guy hanging there, I wonder, who rebukes Jesus for not using his power to prolong what life he has. How many of us still can’t bring ourselves to see beyond the troubles of our lives to the glory that is to come when Christ makes all things new. Perhaps for many us, things just look so bad that it’s hard to imagine not being heartbroken for ourselves and for the world. Or perhaps we feel so bad about something that it remains impossible for us to imagine having our hearts joined to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I know I struggle with this sometimes.

So I want you to notice, mark, and inwardly digest this, beloved in Christ: when Jesus tells the one man “you will be with my in paradise,” that doesn’t mean he has rejected the other person. And we know this absolutely for certain, because immediately before that beautiful and profound exchange, the prayer of the Crucified Christ is, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

You see, the grace of the Cross is “sufficient for the sins of the whole world,” as John points out in his first letter to the Church (2:2). And before his letter, we hear in John’s Gospel that “God so loved the world” (3:16) and for this reason, the Divine Creative Love became incarnate in time and space. The Cross of Jesus Christ does not procure God’s love, rather it reveals God’s love… a love that has eternally been the reason for and the lifeblood of the entire universe. The Cross of Christ is not a transaction with some angry old man in the sky. The Cross of Christ is the revelation of the heart of One who has loved us “with an everlasting love.” (Jer. 31:3) What we have to get clear on is that it is not simply the sacrifice of Jesus in the atonement of our sins that saves us. More than this… yes: more than this! It is the way the surrender of Jesus opens our eyes to an entirely different way of being than what we are taught by the world. It is the loving-kindness of our God which is revealed in the Cross. We can either mock it, or turn and be embraced by it.

My five-year-old son, Ian, loves the song “Jesus loves me” and wants to hear it most nights at bed time. Now there’s a verse in that song that goes like this:

Jesus loves me, he who died,
heavens gates to open wide,
he will take away my sin,
let his little child come in.

But the Gospel points to a God who never closed the gates to begin with, and who comes to us in Jesus to help us see that if we’ll simply turn around, we’ll see the Heavenly Father standing at the entrance to the Holy City with arms and gates wide open. So I changed the words to “Jesus loves me,” ‘cause I want my little boy to know one thing from the beginning to the end of his life: that he is loved unconditionally by me, and that my love is the reflection of God’s much greater and equally unconditional desire for him:

Jesus loves me, he who died,
All our eyes to open wide,
he will take away our sins,
teach us all to love like him.
Yes Jesus loves me! Yes Jesus loves me!
Yes Jesus loves me! The bible tells me so!

We know we are loved by God, because God loves the whole world, and we are part of the world. I can’t know God’s love for me apart from God’s love for everyone. Aretha’s Happy Day isn’t just a personal thing: it’s a universal thing.

Notice, again, that the difference between the two criminals crucified with Jesus isn’t that one is welcomed into paradise and the other is not. Rather, the difference between them is that one dies in peace, while the other dies in a state of abject terror. To the one that opened his heart and his eyes, Jesus gave the assurance of his love and power. To the one who closed his heart, Jesus said nothing. Does Jesus love him any less? No. But the man who rejects Jesus never finds out how much he is loved.

You see, grace is not coercive. There’s nothing abusive or manipulative in God’s love. If you open your heart to it, it will set you free from the terror of the world. If you turn away from it, you will be completely blind to its power and promise. Christ will come nevertheless, and you will see the Son of Man coming in his glory with the Holy Angels (Matt. 25:31), and when everyone finally understands the abundant life that God is trying to give us “every knee shall bow” (Phil. 2:10), not out of fear, but in adoration and praise.

So listen again to the Collect of the Day, and may it water the desert of your deepest doubt:

Almighty…
everlasting God…
whose will…
is to restore…
to restore all things…
all things…

Almighty and everlasting God,
whose will it is to restore…
all things…

Will God truly turn all of this around? What about…

the children of Gaza, buried by their parents in the dust of what’s left of their ruined lives, to them Jesus says…  Today you will be with me in paradise.

To the parents in Israel wondering if their children will ever live in a world where it will truly be ok to be Jewish, Jesus says… You will be with me in paradise.

To the parents down on Division street going hungry to feed their children Jesus says… You will be with me in paradise.

To the refugees from Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, and South America who are now alone in the world because their family has all been killed, Jesus says… You will be with me in paradise.

To the desperate and forsaken elderly Americans languishing in cruel loneliness in nursing homes all over this city, Jesus says… You will be with me in paradise.

To the teenagers orphaned by cancer, Jesus says… You will be with me in paradise.

To the teenagers walking the streets because they are transgender, or gay, or lesbian, or just not what they’re parents wanted, Jesus says… You will be with me in paradise.

To the men and women lost in some kind of addiction… You will be with me in paradise.

In Jesus we find out that God is One who isn’t going to give in to Evil. By the surrender of Jesus to the Cross, we find out that God has taken even death and transformed it into an archway, through which we may walk into a place that the Jesus calls Paradise. Open your hearts to his promise and power, because the One who loves you is Christ the King:

“…the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers– all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.