Christ the King 2025
We are about to turn a corner in the church year. One church year ends this week, and another begins next with the First Sunday of Advent. In our family that means that my girls (Kim, Libby and Kathy) will start to watch their favourite ‘Christmas’ films: they all have long lists of films that must be watched before 25th December. These are not just films about Christmas or with Christmas themes (though some of them are), rather they are feelgood films that carry with them a sense of nostalgia and years past, films we have watched together in the wintertime. Musicals like South Pacific or Fiddler in the roof will be fed into the DVD player; It’s a wonderful life will most certainly be played on Christmas Eve and, at some point we will watch a version of A Christmas Carol. (Patrick Stewart has a version, Michael Caine stars alongside the Muppets (always a favourite as Rizzo the Rat narrates) but Guy Pearce’s version is very strong too). There is a scene in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge is shown a Christmas ‘yet to come’. Some of his neighbours discuss whether they can be bothered to attend his funeral – perhaps they will go along for the funeral tea! And then we are shown the ‘rag and bone’ men haggling over his meagre belongings: his bed sheets and hangings. At the end of the scene Scrooge is led to a headstone that has his own name on it…and it is then that he wakes up.
Over the last few years my parents have both died and Kim’s dad died earlier this year. Like you, we have had to play our part in disposing of their belongings. At a distance from both our families the burden of doing so has fallen largely on others but we have shared this as best we can as we have been asked about particular pieces of furniture from our parents’ homes…or books…or pictures. Is there anything you would want? For many families this division of loved ones’ belongings can result in huge family disagreements and rifts, compounded by the strong emotions that grief brings. The clearance of a house underlines the finality of death. …the division of items all too starkly speaks of the loss we have suffered: this or that person is no more, they have gone.
But to see your life being stripped away from you…? That’s what Scrooge saw, but his vision was just a dream in a storybook. In the gospel reading however Jesus saw this for real. Here he is, naked, humiliated, bloodied and in pain and, from the cross he can see even his clothes being parcelled out amongst the soldiers. Everything has gone from him. Soon, even his life breath will leave him and then…nothing. This will be us too: we brought nothing into the world and we will take nothing out, blessed be the name of the Lord
Before this moment comes however Jesus leaves us with so much more than his belongings.
This passage gives us two of the seven words from the cross. ‘Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing’ and ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’.
The first suggests that Jesus is clear eyed about what is happening to him, and clear eyed too about human nature and how perverse it can be. If ‘to understand is to forgive’ then Jesus understands only too well our fallen state and our need for mercy and forgiveness. There is a verse in Jeremiah I believe that says that ‘the heart is deceitful above all things’. Too true: ask any counsellor, spiritual director or psychiatrist. Those gathered around the cross are so sure of themselves and their actions, so confident that they are doing the right thing as they seek to remove Jesus from their lives and yet they have no understanding whatsoever about their own actions, their motives or the rightness of what they are doing: they are utterly deceived. Jesus bequeaths forgiveness to us. As the hymn says, ‘he empties himself of all but love’ and, if God is love then here we see God wholly and utterly.
And in His words to the second of the criminals he offers hope: ’Today you will be with me in Paradise’. Not everything has gone from him: he still trusts, he can still see a future both for himself in His Father’s presence and for those who trust in Him. Perhaps that’s where the second criminal differs from the rest of those alongside Jesus at this point. He has as true an assessment of his condition as he can muster and he can see Jesus’ goodness: ‘we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And Luke, in telling us the story in this way is consciously echoing verses from Psalm 22 (the psalm we read on Good Friday) where God’s servant is ‘poured out like water’, his ‘bones are out of joint’, he is mocked, pierced and his clothes bartered away. This Psalm is a psalm of trust and deliverance: God ‘does not hide his face from his servant but hears his servants cry and delivers him. This is Jesus’ sure hope and he offers this hope to the penitent thief: ‘trust me, all will be well.’
On that day near the burning rubbish heaps outside Jerusalem it appeared to some that Jesus was being reduced to nothing – save for the intercession of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus his body would have been cast onto the rubbish heap and lost to the wild dogs. But this is everything for people of faith. He shares our life…and he shares our death and he enfolds all life with His love, mercy, faithfulness and forgiveness, bringing us at the last into our Father’s presence. For ‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins’. All is not lost, rather, all has been freely given and God, in Christ, welcomes us home.