Did you go shopping last Friday? Did you sign a Christmas card, or stuff a Christmas card, or mail a Christmas card? Did you get out any of your decorations? If you have caught even a little bit of the Christmas spirit, then the Gospel you just heard must have sounded like a bucket of cold water in the face! What might have inspired the powers who pick the Sunday lessons to select this passage? Were they trying to shock us out of any nascent Christmas spirit, so that we would be ready to begin Advent next week?
There is at least one ray of hope in this Gospel passage: Jesus’ promise to the one we call the “good thief:” “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” This line is most often quoted as authority for the belief that we will proceed immediately to Heaven after death, without any waiting period. No purgatory. No sleep-like holding time until a Second Coming. That sounds like Good News. It is assuring to think that our loved ones are already enjoying eternal bliss, and that we can look forward to the same upon death. But just possibly, our eagerness to see this good news has blinded us to an even better proclamation intended by the inclusion of this promise in Scripture. I say that because of two words that suggest this promise is not about a later time after death at all. They suggest a promise of much more immediate import.
The first is the word “today.” Heaven does not have any “today;” it doesn’t have any “yesterday,” and it doesn’t have any “tomorrow.” It doesn’t have today, yesterday, or tomorrow, because Heaven is timeless. That’s why it is possible for us to encounter the power of Jesus’ Passion every time we come to the Eucharist, even though it happened nearly 2000 years ago. We can encounter it in our “now” because Heavenly things are not bound by time. Time is a dimension of this life that came into being with the earth and the sun and the stars. Heaven is not a planet that revolves around the sun, so the sun does not rise and set, creating “today.” Jesus’ promise that something would unfold “today” signaled something would happen before the sun set on Calvary.
The same is conveyed by his promise of “Paradise.” We think of “Paradise” as a synonym for “Heaven,” but it had not gained this usage in Jesus’ time. Those Jews who did believe in a life after this one used the term “Hades” to describe the location of that life. All went to “Hades,” both the righteous and the unrighteous. Do you remember the Gospel we heard recently about the wealthy man who saw the leper Lazarus with Abraham after death? All of them were in Hades. They were just in different departments! The word “Paradise” is only used two other places in the New Testament. One is in the Book of Revelation where it is spoken of as the location of the Tree of Life. You remember where the Tree of Life grows, don’t you? It grows in the Garden of Eden. Eden was in this world, not in a world to come. It represented God’s intentions for us in this life. In Jesus’ time, “Paradise” captured that meaning—a place where the abundant life God intended for all humankind is enjoyed.
With all this in mind, is it possible that what Jesus was promising to the good thief could be restated this way: “Dear brother, trust that before the sun sets on us today, you will know life as God meant it to be enjoyed; you will know unspeakable joy.” How is this possible? The only thing the good thief knew would come before the sun set was this: the soldiers would come to break his legs. He would be unable to raise himself up, and he would soon lose the struggle to breath. But he would have a few final breaths. And in those moments, he would experience a kind of life he had never known before. In those moments, he would be living beyond all fear. He would be past everything he had feared: fear of being found out, fear of punishment, fear of torture, fear of death. He would breathe his last filled only with the assurance of Jesus’ love. Could this be Paradise? Could life without fear, trusting solely in God’s love, be the ingredients of Paradise?
A conversation I recently had with a fellow parishioner suggests that this is so. She had recently competed chemotherapy for breast cancer. When I asked her what she took from this experience, her answer surprised me. She looked me straight in the eye and without wavering, she said, “I no longer fear death.” She didn’t just say it. She embodied it. Her eyes glistened with the excitement of discovered truth. There was a glow about her. She had tasted a bit of fruit from the Tree of Life. She faced the greatest challenge of her life, and it led her into Paradise.
Some of you may be saying, “I’d like some of that fruit, but if possible, I’d like to get it without being crucified and without facing a life-threatening condition.” Can we? Can we get to the other side of fear to life trusting only in God’s love without such suffering? The good thief has a clue for us about the path. The very first fear he overcame was not the fear of death. It was the fear of being found out for who he was. Ironically, he would be the first to say, “Don’t call me the ‘good’ thief. I wasn’t good at all. Call me the ‘honest’ thief, because the point is, I was NOT good. I was bad. True life didn’t open for me until I was able to see that and confess it to Jesus.”
Even if we are not felons like the “honest” thief, we can fall prey to some temptation of pretense. And nothing is as effective at keeping us in the Kingdom of Earth and out of the Kingdom of Heaven, out of Paradise on Earth. Look how pretense works: If I hinge my salvation on thinking of myself as smarter than I really am, or kinder than I really am, or prettier than I really am, then I am in a pickle to explain the bumps in my life. They can’t be my fault! So, they must be YOUR fault. I ruin your day with my harsh response, so one bump causes another. And then another. And then another. Look how the opposite condition works: When you extend undeserved grace to me, it feels so enlivening that I pass it on to another. And this third person, similarly enlivened, passes it on to another, and so it goes until the Kingdom of Heaven breaks out. Paradise is unleashed!
It is, of course, hard for us to keep this up 24/7 when striving toward Paradise all by ourselves. The great pearl of our faith is this: We are not alone. We have a God who was desperate to show us how we can thrive, so desperate as to become one of us, that we might know our striving is never alone, that we might know we have the power of God’s love working with us and in us through all we experience.
We have just over four weeks to prepare for newly receiving this pearl. Let me suggest this meditation for your Advent preparation: List your fears, including any fears about who you really are. Then, try to hear Jesus’ promise as though spoken to you, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” The One who can take us to the other side of our fears is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That One is Jesus. And we can be with him in Paradise TODAY.