Last Sunday After Pentecost/Christ the King
Year C RCL
North Fork Ministries
November 24, 2019
Gospel:
Luke 23:33-43
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."
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I’ve been wondering something about Jesus lately. I’ve wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t died as a young man, on the cross on that awful afternoon at a place called “The Skull”. He only had three years of active ministry – teaching and preaching and healing. In contrast, Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, taught for over 40 years and his disciples left behind thousands of pages of scripture.
I wonder what would have happened if Jesus had been able to teach longer? What would our meager collection of four gospel stories have looked like then? I have a guess. I think that had Jesus lived longer, and continued to evolve and learn more about the nature of his own divinity, his God-self, he might have offered more instruction about the technology of a relationship with God. Clearly Jesus offered his disciples a purpose, an aspiration - the desire to find unity with the Divine. And he taught much about how to live in this world – commending to his followers a life of compassion, forgiveness, and love. But the details, how to get from here to there, from the experience of everyday life to an experience of the transcendent, sometimes those details seem a little sketchy.
Rather than provide us with an explicit instruction manual, Jesus more typically taught by example – demonstrating compassion, showing forgiveness, reaching out to the marginalized and practicing peace. He taught by the way he lived, and in Luke’s depiction of Jesus on the cross, we find a Jesus who also instructed us through the way he died.
Today is the last Sunday in Pentecost and the Feast Day of Christ the King. Artistic depictions, icons and paintings, of Christ the King are typically not composed of the mutilated, naked, and broken body of Christ we are accustomed to seeing in a crucifix – but a king wearing a golden crown instead of a crown of thorns, wrapped in royal robes, with a look of serenity, of peaceful repose, on his face. Serenity reigning supreme.
I know, it’s unexpected and a little startling, on the feast day of Christ the King, the last Sunday before Advent, to hear the story of the crucifixion. If you are like me, you may be thinking, “I don’t really want to go there. It’s almost Thanksgiving. Christmas isn’t far away.” Why would we want to go now to a dark place called Golgotha?
The inscription on the cross, “This is the king of the Jews,” was intended as a kind of joke by the Roman soldiers. What sort of king would hang on a cross? It was a cruel and humiliating kind of death, one meant to send a message to anyone who would challenge Roman authority, that a similar fate awaited them. But the joke…was on the Romans. Jesus knew how to die with dignity and grace, because he knew how to live. We die like we live.
Hanging on the cross, in unimaginable pain, Jesus possessed the presence of mind to ask God that his tormentors be forgiven. And despite his own suffering, Jesus was able to offer assurance to the criminal who hung on the cross beside him, that, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” And I can imagine that the countenance of the Christ the King above the altar, the tranquility present in his face, isn’t too far off the mark.
Thich Nat Hahn, the noted Vietnamese monk and peace activist, probably best known as the popularizer of the “mindfulness movement” today, found himself, during the war in Vietnam, in the midst of an intense bombing raid on a Vietnamese city. He was wounded himself and surrounded by turmoil, death and destruction. While others scrambled through the chaotic streets, Thich Nat Hahn, continued to move with grace, assisting others. Afterwards people remarked at how he was able to maintain his sense of peace and composure in the midst of the madness. He replied, “Surely you wouldn’t expect me to lose my serenity?”
Which Nat Hahn’s storied serenity is the result of a lifetime of the practice of mindfulness. Paying close attention to the body, the breath, and the sensory elements that surround us – focusing on the present moment.
I think that for Christians, Jesus on the cross exemplifies the way in which transcendence is rooted in the body. We are flesh and blood human beings. We are mere mortals, with an innate desire to taste, to have a glimpse, of the Divine. If you didn’t have something of that desire, I don’t think you would be here, seeking God.
But we are sensate creatures. And it is the bodies we inhabit and the physical sensations that awaken us to the presence of our surrounding environment that provide the means through which we can know God.
Three days after this scene on the cross, Luke describes another setting in which two disciples on the road to Emmaus hear the Christ say, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”
There is no reason to ever seek suffering. It seems to be an inevitable byproduct of the human condition, occurring quite naturally. We can’t avoid it. We can, however, choose how we experience suffering – whether it is physical, emotional, or psychological. We have the option of embracing the present moment, acknowledging our pain, but not allowing the pain to become us. We do not have to become our suffering.
The psychiatrist, Bessel van der Kolk, has spent most of his career studying the effects of severe trauma. He speaks of how we have lost touch with our bodies, become a disembodied people. He notes how we refer to emotional experiences in physical terms – like heartbreak or gut-wrenching encounters. And indeed our emotions don’t just stay in our brains; they lodge in our bodies. He describes how people who have known severe trauma, whose bodies remain in a state of heartbreak or retain their emotional experience, eventually shut down their connection with their bodies. The emotional connection with the body is lost. The treatment? Finding ways to reestablish the connection with the body – meditation, yoga, practicing mindfulness, simply reconnecting with the breath. We forget that we occupy bodies and that our bodies are “temples of the holy spirit”. God speaks to us, not just through our minds, but through our bodies - if we have learned to inhabit them.
Practice breathing here
And if we truly inhabit our bodies, we are less likely to be possessed by the disturbing and unpleasant things that happen around us. If you are present in your body, it is possible to simply acknowledge harsh words or cruelty, and return to an awareness of the breath. One may experience suffering, suffering even as Jesus did on the cross, and not be owned by it.
As the psalmist reminded us this morning:
God is our refuge and strength, *
a very present help in trouble.
"Be still, then, and know that I am God;