Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Luke 23:33-43

I changed schools in second grade.  The cafeteria at Colerain Elementary School in Cincinnati, Ohio was a microcosm of the world that crucifies people. When someone dropped their tray, the entire lunchroom—hundreds of children—burst into applause. It was automatic, a learned, clearly unexamined practice of shaming. When you heard the crash, you looked to see who it was. Everyone looked. After a few weeks, I began developing low-grade anxiety. It dawned on me that I was one broken dish away from the final judgment. One slip near the dish area, it would be a slow-motion fall from grace, and I’d be hanging out there in front of a jeering moral universe that sourced shame as its power. Showing sympathy for the loser would have been weakness, so you just clapped along, maybe even louder.

One day, after a particularly loud crash, we turned to see a girl whose name I can’t remember. I probably thought, “Well, now it would be just better to move out town, maybe to Antarctica. This kind of thing can follow you through middle school, when it gets really bad.” But she didn’t frantically start picking things up. With a flourish, she tossed her now-empty tray on the floor, held out her arms as if receiving the praise of a grateful nation, smiled, and curtsied.

No broken dishes would break her. The applause faltered for a second but then got even louder. But it was for her. That same day, it happened again. And the kid did the same thing. Somehow we knew we had all been spared something.  The applause became solidarity, as if were the Oscars. The kid who dropped the tray got the bow, while the rest of us—who knew we had been nominated already by our clumsy growing bodies—secretly wished it had been us.

At likely around the same time, I learned about the two criminals crucified next to Jesus. One was the “bad guy,” the other the “repentant sinner.” We were taught he was saved because he admitted he deserved death. A neat little lesson: confess you’re awful, and you get a golden ticket into heaven.

I’ve learned a lot since then—about shame and about the Bible. Nothing could be further from Luke’s gospel. Crucifixion wasn’t a punishment for run-of-the-mill crime. It was Rome’s public reminder: fall in line. It was a first-century social media post saying, “This is what happens to people who threaten our power.” Those crucified were labeled: thief, bandit, criminal.  Humanity erased. Death applauded as moral.

Was the man next to Jesus really a criminal? Maybe. Or maybe he was swept up in a military operation as political theater.. Maybe he spoke against Caesar’s abuse in his village. And others had started listening. Maybe he broke a law simply trying to survive. Maybe he had absorbed the shame of empire and believed its verdict about himself. He was just messed up. No doubt he wondered: When I arrive in paradise with my shattered life, will heaven applaud as I’m turned away?

“Lucky you,” he says to Jesus. “When you get to the paradise you deserve… remember me.” Just to be acknowledged as having lived would have been mercy.

There’s a little Taizé chant many of you know: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  The first time I sang it, I was in college, sent with a pastor and another delegate to the regional synod assembly. We marched through downtown Cincinnati singing that chant—hundreds of Lutherans, singing in harmony as bystanders stopped and watched, people looking down from office windows.

It was the oddest experience. I don’t remember what issue we were addressing. No doubt it mattered. But people just stared at us. Did it change anything? Yet almost forty years later, I realize I was changed. I learned something about what the church is—not a people pining for the by-and-by, or descipable people trying to earn a ticket, but a presence in the city, in harmony, in peace, in community, in solidarity with those God loves but who remain unremembered by those in power. It was paradise.  And on that day, I knew I was at home.

The temple curtain tore when Jesus died. I wonder if it felt like that for the man on the cross when Jesus replied, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” This was not how it was supposed to work. In Greek, “with me” means something like “share my compartment,” “share my room.” Not a golden ticket. A place. Belonging. “What’s mine is yours.” This tender moment of mercy is paradise—a holy communion on a cross.

That other thief is probably the one most like us. I suspect most regular people longed for him to come down and unleash heaven’s armies. And it’s right there—our longing for God to use a bit of our kind of power, force, even violence. This is the place that gives rise to Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism imagines that God’s purposes are carried out through national dominance, cultural control, and the elevation of one group over others. It baptizes coercion. It confuses divine authority with political authority. It says paradise belongs to the deserving and is guarded by the powerful.

But Luke gives us a Christ who dismantles all of that. No kings. Not even really Christ as king unless we need a prophetic counterpoint, which is really how this particular Sunday got started, with rise of facism in Europe.

The God on the cross does not impose HIS will—God offers companionship. Jesus doesn’t defend his innocence—he sees the dignity of the condemned.  He doesn’t secure borders—he opens a room and welcomes a stranger. Christian nationalism believes order comes from punishment and exclusion. Jesus steps into the places where shame lives and says, “You can stay with me.”

We still struggle to imagine that weakness is strength, that generosity is power, that forgiveness is the judgment everyone deserves. In the face of current evil, it’s tempting to laugh at the idea that this kind of love changes anything. Yet Jesus ends his life by leaving paradise behind as a gift. “Today you will be with me.”

Not the realm we enter after we finally get everything right.  Paradise the experience whenever shame loses its grip.  Whenever compassion interrupts the applause of judgment.  Whenever someone sees not a label, but a person. Paradise breaks into elementary school cafeterias. It happens whenever we choose mercy over fear, welcome over exclusion, presence over power.

Jesus is planting a new world inside this one—  a world where belonging is not earned, where no one is forgotten, where even the most broken among us finds a place to rest. “Today you will be with me.”  Not someday.  Not once the world is fixed.  Today. Not when we’re all fixed. Today. The body of Christ, given for you.

But before we get to the table, to the water: River! You’re going to be baptized in a few minutes. We’re going to applaud for you in a few minutes. You might not realize it now, but the power of love in that sound is strong enough to counter any lunchroom, or false judgment, or pain, or struggle. It’s the sound of love winning. Welcome to paradise.