Today With Me in Paradise
This Feast of Christ the King sermon explores the paradox of Jesus’s kingship through the story of a unique copper crucifix that hung on a nursing home wall. The cross depicts both the dying Jesus and Christ the King side-by-side. What does true kingship look like with this humble servant is our king, and with paradise here, in his word and name?
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Transcript
Today, you will be with me in Paradise. Today….with me.
It was readily visible from his nursing home bed where the elderly priest lay dying, an 8 inch copper crucifix hanging on the institutional grey wall. Seen from a distance, the cross resembled countless others adorning homes, hospitals, churches, classrooms, bedrooms. and even as jewelry.
But, upon closer scrutiny you see that this particular cross is different, unique. Because on the copper surface was fashioned a figure, also of copper, a figure of Jesus, the Christ. But again, no ordinary crucifix. This figure was divided down its middle. The representation on the left was of dying Jesus, clad in loincloth, and sagging under his own weight. But on the right side was Jesus reigning as Christ the King. Christus Rex, clothed in regal robes and crowned Lord of all.
That unique crucifix was this very one.
Jesus the Crucified on one half – Christ the King on the other.
The cross belonged to my father-in-law The Rev. Bruce Powell, It had been the model for the life-sized one crafted for a side altar at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tampa where Bruce had served as priest in the 1950s.
On February 14, 2000, after a long and painful battle with cancer, Bruce entered into the Larger Life.
I well imagine he carried with him even then the vision and hope held by this Cross on his nursing home wall – Jesus the Crucified and Christ the King.
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Now, the Last Sunday after Pentecost. We are on the cusp of a new liturgical year which begins next Sunday with Advent 1. So, in a way, today is the Church’s New Year’s Eve, the Sunday when we acknowledge and celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, the Feast of the Reign of Christ.
But first let’s consider what SORT of Kingship Christ embodies.
For we know that Jesus refrained from seizing power.
We know that he resisted attempts to crown him – other than that gruesome crown of thorns.
Today’s Gospel from Luke is a portion of the Passion narrative and is also read on Palm Sunday.
In stark contrast to the voices who acclaimed Jesus as he entered the Holy City on a donkey: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” we now find ourselves at the foot of the Cross. We see that everything we know of earthly kingship is being turned upside down.
We see a king without worldly power, without an army, without jeweled robes, without a fine palace decorated with marble and gold, without any of those trappings that might suggest a regal role. What Jesus the Crucified/ Jesus the King represents is more complex, what he asks of us is deeper and more demanding than all that.
Truth be told, many might prefer a traditional earthly monarch of days gone by who can be satisfied by gold offerings, who has a kazillion flowery titles, and who keeps all of us commoners at a safe distance.
In other words, a king irrelevant to how we live our every day lives.
But our King Jesus is different.
This, remember is the One (with an upper case O) who washes his disciples’ feet, who cooks fish on the seashore for his amazed disciples, who wipes away tears, who seeks out the unlovable – prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, sinners – offering redemption. offering relationship.
This is the One who embraces a small child and says here is the greatest in my Kingdom.
This is the One who has allowed himself to be stripped and beaten by Roman soldiers, to be crowned with a halo of thorns and to be crucified in an unspeakably humiliating and public way.
As Our Lord hangs below a sign that sarcastically reads “This is the King of the Jews,” we are given a profound lesson in what true nobility is all about.
Funny isn’t it, that with all our 21st century notions, we believe that power is to be found in money, prestige, force, domination. I wonder — had we been there – at the foot of that Cross that dark day – might we have joined our mocking voices with the others, calling up to the Suffering Servant, “Come on down. Get back on earth where you belong, where you can REALLY make a difference.” WE NEED YOU HERE!!
But of course, Jesus doesn’t come down. At least not in the way those mocking him expect.
Imagine, instead, Jesus saying to them and to us from the Cross: “I have abdicated all that you wrongly equate with power. Here I hang motionless, victimized, scorned, rejected. You are quite right in saying that I appear to achieve nothing. But in reality my vulnerability conquers hearts. Where violence and force would threaten people, my powerlessness wins their love. Then, my cross becomes my throne. And the only kingdom I have depends upon you. The only followers that I want are those who will admit that they are just as poor and needy as I am.”
Well then, how fitting that the first person to recognize the kingship of Jesus is in fact a thief dying an agonizing death alongside him. A person with one humble request. With his eyes of true faith and with his heart so close to resting forever, the man asks merely to be remembered by Jesus — when?
When Jesus comes into his Kingdom.
Perhaps the thief actually knew Jesus’ proper name (Jesus/Yeshua) – and its meaning in Hebrew – “God saves.”
Our loving Lord, Christ the King, even as he himself takes his last breath, opens the royal treasury of divine mercy and offers not only remembrance, but pardon and redemption.
Not only forgiveness but friendship.
Not only solace but salvation.
Today, Yeshua Jesus says, you will be with me in Paradise.
Today. Not some far off time in the future but even now. I am with you. And you are with me. Today….with me.
Imagergy abounds this morning.
There is the hymn-like description of the Cosmic Christ in Paul’s letter to the Colossians – beautiful, powerful, compelling.
Here is my small copper depiction of Christ the Crucified alongside Christ the King that meant so much to my father-in-law and now to David and me. I will have it with me after the service should you like to have a closer look.
But most profoundly, the image we encounter in this morning’s Gospel reading, reminds us all that God in Christ IS King – despite the taunts, and jeers, and disbelief, and disdain cast his way – not only by Roman soldiers that Good Friday 2000 years ago, but over and over again by myriad others down through the centuries.
Yet as we truly embrace the profound reality of the Reign of Christ, we people of faith actually can see, like the person hanging next to Jesus that dark day, King Jesus on the Cross, at the intersection of suffering and joy,
on the instrument of death but also the symbol of life,
the place of brokenness but also of ultimate wholeness,
the place of humiliation and also of exaltation,
the place of abandonment and also complete identification.
Jesus is King for us, my friends,
today, tomorrow, and for all eternity.
And it IS this world, my world, your world, our world
over which he has triumphed.
Astonishingly, we also learn, like the thief,
that not only are we the subjects of this Cosmic King –
but we are his forgiven friends as well.
I’m reminded of the words of a hymn that captures this truth vividly. Listen with me:
Hail thou once despised Jesus!
Hail thou Galilean King!
Thou didst suffer to release us;
Thou didst free salvation bring.
Hail thou universal Savior,
Bearer of our sin and shame!
By thy merit we find favor:
Life is given through thy Name.
Today……..WITH US….for all eternity…..AMEN.
The Rev. Betsy Jennings Powell
Proper 29 Year C 2025 (Christ the King)
Grace Episcopal Church, Gainesville Ga