Scripture readings: Revelation
21:1-10, 21:21-27, & 22:1-5; Luke 23:32-43
Jesus said this to the criminal who was being
crucified beside him. He said: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me
in paradise.” (Luke 23:43; R.S.V.)
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| Photos Taken: Walking Near the Palouse and Snake Rivers And Driving Home to Washtucna WA |
“I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in
paradise.” (N.I.V.)
That criminal had to be surprised by what Jesus said,
and even confused. He would have been surprised and confused and somehow set at
rest by the love that could be felt in Jesus’ words.
He would have been surprised and simply confused by
the words “today” and “paradise” going side by side. He would have recognized
that paradise meant heaven for God and the angels. He would have recognized
paradise as meaning some kind of heaven for him, if only he deserved it, at
some future time when the kingdom
of God
Many of the Jews of that day believed that paradise
for humans meant the thing that God would someday in the future create on earth;
when the judgment and the kingdom
of God
Many of the Jews believed that, in the period between
one’s death and the resurrection, the soul lived a kind of shadowy, semi-conscious
existence. They did not all think this way. They had conflicting ideas about
this.
What shocked and confused the sorry criminal was that
Jesus seemed to say that they were not going to be resurrected into paradise
someday, but that they were going to die their way into paradise today.
There are Christian people who love Jesus, and belong
to him with all their heart, who believe that heaven does not immediately
follow our death. They believe that the soul sleeps until the resurrection of
the body, at the coming of the kingdom
of God
They believe it is a mistake of grammar to put
“today” and “paradise” together. They believe that Jesus used the words, “I
tell you the truth today.” And then they believe he said, “You will be with me
in paradise.”
In other words they believe that Jesus said something
like, “Today I tell you the truth, you will be with me in paradise at the
resurrection.” Those who interpret these
words from the gospel in this way see the love and grace of God in this
promise, as they interpret it. And there is love and grace in it.
The problem with that is that there is no other place
where I can find Jesus using the phrase, “I tell you the truth today,” or even,
“I tell you today.” Whereas Jesus does to say: “Today I will do this,” or
“Today this will happen.” (Mark 14:30; Luke 19:5)
The sorry criminal who asked Jesus to remember him
was surprised and confused when Jesus put the words “today” and “paradise” in a
way that made them work together, because Jesus was giving him more and better than
he had asked for Jesus was giving him more than he dared to hope for, and more
than he even believed possible.
I believe that this is how God works. I trust that,
in Christ, God gives us more and better than we dare, more than we hope, more
than we believe. This is typical of the God revealed in the Bible.
This is like the plan of God, when he responded to
the request for a king, so they would be like other nations. They asked to be
like the rest of the world because of the weakness of their belief. God gave
them kings, as they requested, but he used their request for a king as part of
his plan to give them and us a king named Jesus. The very center of God’s plan
for the world consisted of giving his people something much better than they
believed in.
The word paradise is not a common Bible word, but it
is a common Bible thing. It belongs to a group of words that mean “garden”.
There is a garden, called Eden Holy City
A paradise was a garden like a park. It was a garden
for great people. A paradise was a garden for royalty where a king or a queen
could go out and pick a ripe peach.
It was not just a fancy ornamental garden. It was a functional,
fruitful garden. It was useful as well as beautiful. A paradise would have
trees, and fruit, and water, and beauty.
More than that, a paradise was meant to be lived in, and
shared with others. It was a place for fellowship. It was a place to be at
home. In ancient times a home was never a place to be alone.
Paul talks about our being at home in his Second
Letter to the Corinthians, in the fifth chapter. It starts out: “Now we know
that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God,
an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” (5:1)
And then he says, beginning in verse six: “Therefore
we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we
are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I
say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we
make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from
it.” (5:6-9)
Now home is the place where we sleep but, even more
than that, home is a place where we live, where we are truly and fully
ourselves. Paul uses the idea of being at home in the body to describe being
physically alive in this world. When our bodies are healthy and well, we are at
home in them, we are truly and fully ourselves in our bodies.
And then Paul says that we can be away from our
bodies and at home with the Lord. This would mean that, when we are not alive
physically in this world, we are living with God.
When God’s people are away from the body and at home
with the Lord, we are truly at home. We are truly and fully ourselves. To be at
home in the body is a fruitful and beautiful place to be. To be at home away
from the body, with the Lord, is also a fruitful and beautiful place to be. It
is like a paradise.
And then the Book of Revelation shows paradise coming
from heaven to earth, at a future time when the judgment of God has come, and
the living and the dead are brought together in the resurrection, and heaven
and earth are made new. Paradise is described
as a city, and it is described as a garden, and it is described as the Bride of
Christ; the Bride of the Lamb.
In the Old Testament, God’s people, in the form of Israel
We are talking about things beyond our understanding;
but if God is beyond our understanding, and if he loves us, and wants to share
himself with us, then God will have to take us to a place, or an experience,
beyond our understanding.
I mean who can understand “streets of gold as clear
as crystal”? And how could we ever really want such a thing?
Our understanding of the joys of heaven is like the
understanding that a four-year-old would have of a honeymoon. A four-year-old
went to his cousin’s wedding and at the reception he heard all the talk and
jokes about the honeymoon. He was confused by this, and he wondered what it was
all about. So he asked his Dad.
His Dad carefully did his best. He said, “Son, when
you grow up, if you get married, your honeymoon will be one of the happiest
times of your life.” “Will I be able to take my toy dinosaurs along?” “Uh…no…you
probably won’t take your dinosaurs on your honeymoon. But you’ll still have a
great time.” “Then can my friend Jeffery come with me on my honeymoon?” “No,
Jeffery won’t come.” “Then I don’t know if I want to go on a honeymoon, Daddy.
It doesn’t sound like much fun to me.” (“1001 More Humorous Illustrations”,
Michael Hodgin, #566)
To say that paradise in heaven, and in the
resurrection, is the best of all homes is comforting because it enables us to
imagine heaven being full of comfortable things; but gold, and jewels, and
blazing light, and thrones, and crowns are not comfortable things at all. They
are just the opposite!
Remember that paradise is us; paradise is a network
of people. It is the gathering of all God’s people who have ever lived or will ever
live. John tells us that we will shine with the glory of God.
Imagine glory being the clothing of God. Think of
what it would be like for a little girl to dress in her mother’s dress, or for
a boy to wear his dad’s boots and hat: dressed in their parent’s glory. Or
think of a small child singing in a Christmas program, or riding a two-wheeler
for the first time, with their mom and dad watching.
They are in their glory, but there is nothing
egotistic or proud about that glory. They are full of glory because their
parents are full of pleasure in them.
The Bible gives us pictures of glory because it is as
hard to put into words as the feeling of a child basking in the glory of his or
her parents’ pleasure. You can only understand it if you already know it. If
you don’t know it no one can explain it to you.
A lot of our life, in the present, is about the
process of learning. We learn what our limits are, and what we can’t do, or (as
we get older) what we can’t do anymore. Life is a lot about learning what
doesn’t give other people pleasure, but paradise is different. A toddler walks
because someone who loves them is holding out arms of love and strength to
them, and beaming with pride and joy. Glory, for us, will be a life of what we
can do because we can see God’s pleasure in what we do, because we see him
there reaching out to us.
There are walls around the paradise at the end of the
Bible. I really don’t like walls except as places to put bookshelves or to keep
the weather out. Walls are not comfortable except as shelter.
Sometimes I have thought that the walls around
paradise, in the Book of Revelation were about shelter and safety, but the
gates of the city are always open, so safety and shelter are not the issue.
The enemies outside are not to be feared. The enemies
at the end of the Book of Revelation are not trying to get into paradise at
all. They don’t want to come in. But for us the walls are about coming in.
For us, a lot of life is about going out, letting go,
leaving something or someone behind. But paradise is about coming in. It’s
about people and pleasures coming together instead of pulling apart. Paradise is about hellos and not goodbyes. Paradise is that kind of good home.
The sorry criminal on the right side of Jesus looked
his own life in the face. He saw himself from the point of view of his own
cross. He firmly believed that he deserved to die there. He was getting what he
deserved. That is what he said. It was right and fitting: a horrible thought.
Then he said to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you
come into your kingdom.” He doesn’t mean just, “Think of me.” In the Bible, “remember
me” means, “Act upon me and deal with me. Take up my case.”
The criminal knew that his own cross was his proper
fate. His life had been the kind of life that deserved that kind of death. He
saw himself as he was. There was nothing he could do about it. He had nothing
to fit to give to make things different.
Then he looked at Jesus dying on the cross next to
him. Even there Jesus seemed like a king. Maybe Jesus would look at him and see
that something else was right for him.
Jesus did just that. Jesus looked at him and saw that
paradise, today, was right place for that sorry soul. There, beside him, was a
man who would thrive on grace. There was a human being who would love to come
in, and come home, at last, for ever, and hear a father graciously say, “Well
done!”
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