How the light gets in
Sermon for the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Christ the King (November 20, 2022)
View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Last Sunday after Pentecost, Christ the King, Proper 29, Year C
Preached at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of our whole 10 am service is available here.
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When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." And they cast lots to divide his clothing. The people stood by, watching Jesus on the cross; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews."
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
Luke 23:33-43
Edited Transcript
May only truth be spoken here, and only truth be heard: in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I invite you to be seated.
So this morning we are here to celebrate the feast of Christ the King. That is to say, we are here to celebrate the sovereignty of Christ in this world. And this morning I was noticing that this window here (at St. James' Church) is really an image of Christ as King. We see Jesus elevated on high, wearing a crown, surrounded by angels and signifiers of his power. We see him in this window as the kind of king that I think we think of when we think "king. "
And yet the Gospel reading is nothing like that, is it? In fact, the Gospel reading shows us what a mockery was made of the idea of the power of God. This whole Gospel is about how... when God, as it says in Colossians, when God came, and in him, in Jesus, "the fullness of God was pleased to dwell..." And yet what did we do with it? How did we respond? What did we receive? There were people that were filled with hope when Jesus was walking on this earth, that he might become the king, that he might become the one who was promised, who would save the people of Israel, who would restore to them their promised sovereignty. There were people who followed him cause of that hope that had been promised by the prophets.
And the real tragedy of what happened at the crucifixion, the real tragedy of this story is that not only did the Roman Empire make a mockery of that hope, but that the powers that be managed to get all the people who had had hope to turn on their own hope and to join in making a mockery of it.
So the image we have of "king" on Christ the King Sunday is not a king wearing a crown and glorified, but a king on a cross with a crown of thorns, with a mocking sign over his head so that everybody who passed by would know that there was no hope. Here's the king of the Jews. Save yourself, save yourself.
And even the criminals who were crucified alongside him, they said, save yourself. And while you're at it, save us. Where are you? The one in whom we had hoped: you too have lost to the powers that be.
All week I found myself wondering about the one man who doesn't lose hope. There are two criminals crucified on either side of Jesus, and one of them turns to the man on the cross, with the crown of thorns, who is not a king but a loser. And he says, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom."
When all hope was lost, he still saw hope.
How did he see the kingdom of God there? Because if he could do it, we could too, when we lose hope. How did he see the kingdom of God embodied on the cross?
And I can only think by looking at the two things that Jesus says in this passage—because with everybody else having their say and talking about "save us" and making fun—Jesus says only two things. At the beginning: Father, forgive them. They do not know what they're doing. Forgive them. And then he says, Today you'll be with me in paradise.
And of all the people to be able to somehow see the kingdom of God in the crucified body of Jesus. It's a miracle that it was that this one criminal—who just before he says Jesus, remember me—says to his buddy, maybe his partner in crime, on the other side of Jesus... He says, we've been justly condemned. He says, we deserve this fate. I'm here to tell you that nobody ever has deserved to die that way. Nobody deserves to be crucified. And so this man—tradition calls him St. Dismas—this criminal says on the one hand, I deserve to be crucified (which nobody does). But that's how low his own opinion of himself was. That's how broken he was. And yet he hears Jesus' words, "forgive them, "and he can claim at the same time, one breath after he said, I deserve to be here and suffering in this way... He doesn't ask Jesus. He tells Jesus, he claims, 'Remember me when you come into your kingdom." Remember me!
He finds his place in God's kingdom by gazing on Jesus. And I believe it's because he could see that no matter what we did to Jesus, Jesus did not stop loving us. Jesus' heart was open to the very end. Nothing could stop the power of God's love. And that is the glimpse of the kingdom that I believe that St. Dismas, this criminal, saw. And if he saw it, we can too.
The poet and singer Leonard Cohen has a line from his song Anthem: There's a crack. There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. And I believe that what happened in Golgatha on that day was that Jesus: Broken. Open. It was Dismas who saw the light that shined in. The light of love. He saw the light. And so even in that crucified body, he could see it. He saw it! And we can too. In the Gospel of Matthew, the moment that Jesus dies, the curtain in the temple is torn in two.
When we celebrate the Eucharist and we break the bread, we stop and hold silence. We stand in awe because it's in that breaking, that cracking, that the light comes in.
So I invite you to listen for that today, and I invite you to look for the places where the kingdom of God is shining through, not only in the good, but in the places that are darkest and hardest and most broken. Because as it says in Colossians, "He has transferred us out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of his Beloved Son."
And we too can inhabit that kingdom, no matter what. No matter what.