It’s jarring to read a portion of Luke’s Passion Narrative on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It sounds more like Palm Sunday or Good Friday. So perhaps some of you are wondering what this story doing here on our last Sunday in our church year. (Next Sunday begins our new liturgical year with the season of Advent.)  The church tradition – although not a very old tradition – is to call this “Christ the King” Sunday.(1) It’s a feast day to celebrate the all-embracing authority of God’s Christ – of God’s Redeeming urge pleased to fully dwell in Jesus. So we sing hymns about mighty Jesus victorious in battle, Jesus ruling over all: Jesus as King of kings, and Jesus as Lord of lords. And at the same time we have this Gospel passage about Jesus hanging on the cross between two criminals with a mocking sign declaring his kingship. As one person in Bible study this past Tuesday asked, “isn’t there something better to read about Jesus’ kingship?” That question has stayed with me all week. I know my Bible stories and I haven’t come up with anything better than this.  

According to Luke, Jesus was executed as a criminal with other criminals. He was friends with criminals while he lived, and then he died with them too. What kind of king would be executed as a criminal? Well as it turns out, OUR kind of king would be executed as a criminal. Because our kind of king was a king of “nuisances and nobodies” as Dominic Crossan says.

Jesus was not the kind of king recognized by most of the folks in Jerusalem. And when Jesus was arrested, according to Luke, Jesus suffered ridicule from the Roman soldiers and others in positions of power, while the crowd stood by, watching. Jesus doesn’t even get a break from the guy hanging next to him. Now that really takes some nerve doesn’t it? The challenge to Jesus is that if he’s really a king, he should really do some saving, starting with himself. That’s how “real kings” behave.  It’s not at all coincidental in Luke that Jesus’ ministry begins with Satan challenging him to displays of power, and at the end, it’s the Roman soldiers and a criminal. But, according to Luke, Jesus was on earth to show how God behaves, not so much how a real king behaves. One of the important things that Jesus taught was that God, as it turns out, doesn’t save us by getting us out of humiliating and painful situations. God doesn’t save us from chaos and God certainly doesn’t save us from dying.
A while ago a young woman stumbled into the church looking for some spiritual counsel. Her family was in crisis – coming apart at the seams really – and she didn’t know where to turn. She didn’t ask for financial help; she wasn’t looking for food or a place to stay. She wanted to know if I believed in Jesus. (I said, “yes.”) She needed to tell her story and ask a question. Her story was heartbreaking. And her question was, why were bad things happening to her if she had agreed to follow Jesus. She told me that her faith must not be strong enough. She wanted me to tell her what she could do to strengthen her faith.  I found myself saying, “wait a minute. Back up. You think that if you had had stronger faith in Jesus nothing bad would happen to you? Really?” She had already been quoting scripture to me right and left, so I didn’t ask if she’d actually read the Bible. Instead I asked, “Have you looked around?” She looked stunned and then she began to wail. She sat in my office and cried and cried -- a river of tears.

Many of you already know that I believe that tears are sacramental – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace (that’s the catechism definition). And I believe that tears are a sacrament instituted by our Lord. He wept over Jerusalem. When asked to order his disciples to stop the ruckus they were making in the city, he responded that “if they were silent, the stones would cry out.” According to Luke, when Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!”
Of course, by the time the Gospel of Luke was being written, Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans. The western part of the retaining wall of the temple mount remained – the Wailing Wall is what it has been called for many centuries.  Three years ago I traveled with a group through the West Bank and Israel. While we were in Jerusalem, we had an early morning appointment to go into the western wall tunnel – excavated to first century street level. We walked into Old Jerusalem at about 7 a.m. We had a half hour wait near the Wailing Wall before our tour began.

I was interested to see the Wailing Wall – it is one of the most holy sites in Jerusalem. The area approaching the wall is divided into two parts: a large part reserved for men and a smaller section reserved for women, divided by a high fence. Normally I’d feel annoyed by a separation like that -- but I think I was feeling worn down by the intensely oppressively patriarchal nature of the region after a week or so of being there, and I found that I was quite relieved to be in an area reserved just for women to pray. You probably know that the custom at the wall is to write a prayer on a piece of paper, fold it up into a tiny bit and place it in a crevice in the wall. I have to admit to you – I wasn’t going there to pray. I was going to see other people pray. I was going to watch. But I wanted to watch up close – and so I wrote a prayer on a piece of paper, waited for a clearing at the wall, and walked forward to place my piece of paper in the wall.

Then something made me think to place my hand on the stones. It felt as if I’d touched something electric – a powerful force went up my arm and through me and I burst into tears. I cried so hard I had the feeling I might never be able to stop. I did finally catch my breath and I thought – “ah – so that’s how it works. It’s not the ‘wail if you want to wall’ or the ‘wail if you feel like it wall.’ It’s the wailing wall. The stones themselves were crying out, testifying to the collective sorrow of that place. The stones themselves are still crying out – for an end to violence – for justice and peace. And I could feel their distress when I put my hand on the wall. The wailing is not about the cheap comfort of blame, or righteous indignation, but the intense grief over the gulf that exists between the world as it is and the shalom of God.

It is a deep desire for the peace of God that echoes through the Gospel of Luke– more than all the other gospels combined (2) -- from the beginning in Zechariah’s song: “to guide our feet into the way of peace” (1:79), that carries on with the song the angels sing, [when Jesus is born] “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace.” (2:14). “As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” Not governmental power, not military might, not nuclear deterrence, not oil reserves, not wealth, but justice and freedom from oppression, and freedom from oppressing -- respect for the dignity of every human being.

It strikes me that our Gospel passage today begins with Jesus’ prayer that God forgive. The word for forgive can be translated set aside, let go, cancel, pardon. Forgive those who are gambling on clothing, those who are onlookers and bystanders to unspeakable horror, those who are mocking and deriding victims, even those who are executioners. His response is to pray to God to forgive them all, even while they are still doing it! Never mind waiting for repentance; their bad behavior is ongoing! Jesus, as it turns out, is the King of Compassion. This passage begins with forgiveness and ends with a promise of Paradise, a word with a very rich etymology: from an Old Persian word that came into Ancient Hebrew during the Babylonian exile, meaning a park or a garden with fruit trees and other costly plants. The word paradise was used figuratively in ancient Hebrew scripture to mean the transcendent state of blessedness for those who love God – a state of being that is fruitful, productive and generous. (We need not weigh paradise down with centuries of dogma and literary imagination about the after life. While God is forgiving anyone who participated actively or complacently in Jesus’ execution, we can ask that God’s forgiveness extend to those who construct the doctrinal gates to the garden in the hopes of keeping other folks out.) And we can ask that God’s forgiveness extend to others for what they have done and not done. It seems to me that the peace of God, or the paradise of God, begins and ends with generosity – the generosity of forgiveness and the generosity of paradise. It is generosity that begs forgiveness for others and generosity that bears fruit for all who live in Love.