The Gospel of Luke again features in Archbishop Mark’s reflections as Jesus speaks to one of those crucified with him, saying: “Amen I say to you: Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Download audio file

Subscribe to our podcast to receive each episode directly to your device.

• Episode 2: Amen I Say To You, Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise - Transcript

  Episode 2: Amen I Say To You, Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise - Transcript

  Author: Archdiocese of Brisbane

  In the last podcast, we began to explore the seven last words of Christ from the Cross. And we looked at the first of the seven words, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’. From the Gospel of Luke. And we return to the Gospel of Luke for the second of the seven words. Which are this time spoken not to the Father, as the first word was. But surprisingly to one of those crucified with Christ. He’s often known as the good thief. We don’t know exactly why he was being crucified, but it might have been theft, but it might have also been that he was regarded in some sense as a political troublemaker. But we do not know. And it doesn’t matter that we do not know.

  So, here is the second of the seven words from the Gospel of Luke. ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise’. I’ll read it again. ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise’.

  Now, again, the question that I put in the first podcast. Who is on the cross? Applies in this case. To whom are these words addressed? Well, they’re addressed, obviously, to the man who was crucified beside Jesus. But they were also addressed to us. Because in that sense we also hang on the cross beside Jesus. We are the so-called good thief.

  Now again, we see that Jesus is not so absorbed in his own suffering. That he’s unable to engage another. And this can happen with suffering. I can be so absorbed in my own suffering and the suffering of Jesus was incredibly intense and real. I can be so absorbed in my own suffering that I simply can’t engage others in any genuine way. But this is genuine engagement, from the heart of suffering and speaking into the suffering of someone who is dying with him.

  The ‘Amen, I say to you’ is a very forceful mode of speech. In John in fact, it’s a double Amen. ‘Amen, Amen, I say to you’. Sometimes we translate this rather clumsily, I think as, I tell you solemnly or very truly, I say. But it’s a particularly forceful mode of speech. In other words, what Jesus is giving voice to here from the cross isn’t just a pious wish. You know, I hope, you know, today we are together in paradise. It’s not that sort of thing at all. It’s a solemn assurance that has about it an extraordinary authority. A kind of power to decide in one who was stripped of all power and that was part of the process of the ritual humiliation of crucifixion. To strip the human being of all power.

  So here is Jesus seemingly reduced to nothing, no power at all. Who speaks with an extraordinary authority and has the power to give this kind of assurance to someone who is dying as he is. So again, the authority of the dying criminal Jesus, I mean. Is strange, is mysterious, but it’s not only asserted, it’s kind of proclaimed in this second word.

  In the Gospel of Luke wherever you find the word ‘today’ in Greek, ‘Simeron’. You are dealing not just with a temporal marker, not just on this day. It has a theological sense. ‘Today’ refers to that moment of salvation. Where God intervenes to save the human being. Not in some distant future that we might wish for. But in the here and now, God acts to save.

  So what Jesus is saying, when he says ‘today’. Is that there is a victory at hand, not a defeat. And yet the whole thing seems to reek of defeat. When Jesus says no ‘today’ that salvation word. What he’s saying is that this seeming defeat, in fact, for you, as for me, is a victory. How strange that is.

  That here you have the man who is cast out. And again, that was at the heart of the whole experience of crucifixion. You were cast out of the human circle and Jesus and the man beside him. Die outside the city, they are outcasts. And what Jesus says is that in this moment where you seem utterly cast out. You are in fact, coming home in a way that we shall see. Or in this moment where you see most abandoned as I do. You are to be welcomed.

  I mean, keep in mind the words spoken by the so-called good thief. ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom’. Here is the man who feels utterly forgotten. But who puts his faith in Jesus as remembrance of Him. ‘Remember me when you come into your kingdom’.

  Now, in response to those words, Jesus makes a promise, gives an assurance. That far exceeds the request. The man requests a remembrance. But Jesus promises that you will be with me in paradise. The promise found on the lips of Jesus far exceeds the request made by the dying criminal.

  And the promise seems impossible. But scripture is full of seemingly impossible promises. It’s the only thing in the end, God, the God of the Bible is any good at. Is doing what seems to be impossible. Turning defeat to victory, turning a casting out into a homecoming. Turning abandonment into welcome. Turning forgetting of the human being into a remembering of the human being. That’s what God is, that’s what God does. And it all seems impossible. But that’s the way God is.

  Those words placed on the lips of the dying criminal next to Jesus. Are a recognition, and this again, is deeply mysterious. A recognition of the regal status of Jesus. ‘Remember me when you come into your kingdom’. I mean, just try and imagine the scene. A figure less regal you couldn’t imagine than Jesus on the cross. But the dying criminal looks at Jesus and sees something other. Something vastly more. And that is Jesus’ regal status in a most un-regal situation. And words from the Gospel of John come to mind at this point. Where Jesus says before Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world. And that’s somehow what the other criminal has recognised. In recognising the regal status of Jesus. He understands that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. How could it be? If Jesus hangs on the cross as an executed criminal.

  In all of this, you see an extraordinary contrast being set up here between human justice and divine justice. Because you see these two men are both on the cross because of “human justice”, which you might want to put in inverted commas. But in the midst of this emblem of “human justice”, which is in fact injustice, the cross. You see, this inbreaking of divine justice. This assertion of right relationship where Jesus says, you will be with me, with me. And you will be with me in paradise. Now, in giving that assurance, in making that promise. Jesus declares in a most unlikely moment. That he has the power to open the gates of paradise.

  This is the sort of thing you find in the Book of Revelation, which echoes the Prophet Isaiah. The words of him we read in the Book of Revelation, who holds the key of David, what he opens no one shuts, what he shuts no one opens. In the Book of Genesis, the story is told that after the fall, the human being is exiled, it’s really self-exile. From the garden out into the desert. And we’re told that the seraph is at the gates of paradise, which are now locked and guarding those gates with a flaming sword, we are told.

  So once the human being is expelled from paradise or expels him and herself from paradise because of the fall. The question is who will open the gates again so that the human being can come home. Because that’s what it’s all about. And in fact, this will be the whole narrative shape of the story of the Bible from this point onwards. After the expulsion from paradise out into the desert, you go. And again, that first story outside the garden. Is the story of Cain and Abel. And at the end of that story, we’re told that Cain, having killed his brother. Goes off to live in the land of Nod, East of Eden.

  Now, I’ll let you in on a secret. The word nod in Hebrew doesn’t mean to have a little snooze, to nod off. In fact, the word ‘nod’ in Hebrew means to ‘wander’. So, Cain, we are told, having murdered his brother, goes off to live in the land of wandering. And at that point in the whole biblical story. The challenge or summons to the human being is to turn all our wandering into journeying. And I do mean our because it’s a story not just about Cain. You are Cain, I am Cain, we are Cain. The whole Bible is a summons to turn our wandering into journeying. What’s the difference? When I wander, I’ve got no sense of where I’m going. I might be exhausting myself, but I’m going around, around, around in circles, going nowhere fast. When I’m journeying, I may be exhausting myself too, but I know where I’m going. And in biblical terms, I’m on my way home to paradise. That’s what it’s all about.

  So here, that same narrative shape is built into the words of Jesus. ‘Today, you will be with me in paradise’. Which means that Jesus is the one who opens the gates of paradise. And we’ll see this when he rises from the dead. He is presented in the New Testament as the first one home to Paradise. Not the only one, but the first. And Saint Paul says in his letters that Jesus is the first born from the dead, the first born of many brothers and sisters.

  So, he’s not the only one who comes home to the garden of God’s ecstasy, which is our true home. And we can forget this. That our true home is not the desert. And sometimes we can forget that there’s anything but the desert. We think that’s the only thing there is. The land of death. But in fact, there is the garden from which we came and to which we must return. But only Jesus can lead us home to the garden.

  And that’s so that when he rises from the dead, rises in a garden. Mary Magdalene meets him after the resurrection, and she even thinks he’s the gardener. And they’re marvellous paintings of this with Jesus wearing a big gardener’s hat and a hoe over his shoulder. So, Mary meets Jesus in a garden. What garden is it? It’s not some garden in Jerusalem. It is, in fact, symbolically the Garden of Eden. And you see too in paintings of the Annunciation to Mary. When Gabriel, the Angel Gabriel, comes to announce to Mary that she’s to be the mother of the Royal Messiah. Very often in the paintings you’ll see through Mary’s window, you’ll see a garden. And sometimes it’s got peacocks in it. The symbol of immortality. What is the garden? It’s not Mary’s backyard. It’s the garden of paradise. Because once Mary says yes to God’s invitation, the God who doesn’t kick our door down, but who invites. Once Mary says, yes, let it be done to me. We’re on our way home to paradise. And when we speak of Mary being assumed body and soul into heaven. That’s just simply saying that she also follows her son home to paradise.

  She is, as it were, not chronologically, but theologically, she’s the second home to paradise. I guess chronologically, the good thief. And we’re meeting here is the second home. But theologically, Mary assumed to heaven, is the one who follows her son home to paradise, where she is crowned Queen of Heaven and earth, so we say.

  So, these words, ‘you will be with me in paradise’. They are fraught with meaning. That Jesus is the only one who can lead us home to the garden. Which is the garden of God’s ecstasy. And if you look at the Bible too. The root metaphor of scripture is the journey, the journey. And Jesus and the good thief are on a journey, big time. Now, why does the Bible fasten upon the journey as the root metaphor, the keyway of speaking about who God really is, who we really are, and how the two relate.

  Because according to the Bible, the real God is always a God who dislocates. Now, what’s a journey? A journey is where you move from one location to another. Now that can involve a wrench. I remember as a kid when I was playing football, I dislocated my ankle. I can still remember it. It was a wrench, and it was painful.

  So, the real God is a dislocating God. Can be a God of the wrench. Can in fact, be a God who inflicts pain of a kind. But why does God dislocate us? Why does God never leave us where and as we are? Only the false gods do that. The real God never leaves us where and as we are. The real God says, go move; dislocates us. Because God knows that unless we are dislocated, we will stay forever in the land of death. We will stay forever in the desert. And we’re not meant for the desert. We have to be dislocated if we want to move out of the desert, the land of death, home to the garden. Which is the land of the ecstasy of God, endless life and the joy that that entails.

  So here you have Jesus and the good thief and the call to us with them. To journey, to be dislocated, to leave the desert behind. Like the desert of Calvary. And to come home to paradise.

  Now, ‘to be with me in paradise’. What’s being said here? Well, again, it seems to imply that Jesus is the new Adam. This is very much what you find in Paul’s letters. Jesus is the new Adam in the sense that Jesus is the human being as God intended us to be in creating us. If you want to know who you are called to be, you’ve got to look at Jesus, the Jesus who is more myself than I am.

  If I might quote Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights, where Cathy, the heroine, speaks of this strange, dark love that she has for Heathcliff. She says to the old housekeeper, Nelly Dean. At one point she says, Nelly, he is more myself than I am.

  And that’s really the truth of Jesus as the new Adam, that if you want to look at who you are called to be, who you can be, then you’ve got to look to Jesus. So, Jesus, according to Paul, is the new Adam. Where Adam failed Jesus triumphs. Where Adam disobeys Jesus obeys. This is why Paul makes a lot of fuss about the obedience of Jesus.

  Interestingly too that Adam in many contexts, certainly in the rabbinic literature. Adam has royal and priestly characteristics. Such as attached to Jesus in these passion stories. So, Jesus is the new Adam. And the thief is going to be with the new Adam home in the garden. Keeping in mind what you find in Mark Chapter 3, where Jesus says, we’re told, in fact, that Jesus calls the twelve to himself. At the beginning of his public ministry, and he calls them, first of all, to be with him. That’s the language that’s used. So that they might be with him. And then be sent out. We’ll hear the same kind of language is used not before the sending out of mission, but at the end of every mission. When we will be with Jesus in paradise, we will have come home. But when we return to the garden, we don’t return as before.

  Again, it’s not just a mere circle. It is a journey going somewhere. We go back to the garden, but we go back changed. Because we’ve entered into the knowledge that God has. We’ve pinned our faith in Jesus as the one who can open the gates and lead us home. Left to our own devices. We simply can’t do it. But placing our faith in Jesus, it’s not only possible, it is the truth, the shape of human experience.

  So, ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise’. So that what is promised to the good thief is a summons to all of us. To remember that there is paradise and not to fall victim to a kind of amnesia. But to remember that paradise is our true home. That we are, in fact, we’re garden creatures. We’re not desert creatures.

  I can remember years ago when I was a student, we spent, I think it was about ten days in the Negev Desert south of Jerusalem. And one of the things I learned then is that we human beings, we are definitely not desert creatures. You have to do the most extraordinary things to even stay alive out in the desert. We had to drink nine litres of water a day. To replace the water that was lost through evaporation from the skin. And the thing about the desert is you never feel uncomfortable. You never sweat. You can be dying of dehydration and die very comfortably.

  But you’ve got to force yourself, this is what I meant to say. We’re not desert creatures. You’ve got to force yourself to drink nine litres of water a day. And in order to do that, you’ve got to eat sweet and salty things that make you thirsty. And the other thing is, you’ve got to strike the balance between drinking the water and retaining it in your system. Otherwise, again, you will simply dehydrate.

  So, we are not meant for the desert, but there are times when we fall victim to a kind of amnesia. That forgets that there is a place called paradise or the garden. And that is our true home. And that we are called to journey through Jesus, back to the Garden of God. At that point, we can turn from the second of the seven words to the third. And this time it is a word addressed to Mary and to John.

  And again, I’ll simply read it. ‘Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother’. So, I’ll read those words again. ‘Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother’. Now, this time, the words come to us not from Luke, but from John. And John is the passion story that we read on Good Friday. Now the words are spoken first to Mary, who is on the dark mountain, Calvary. And they’re spoken to her about John, the so-called beloved disciple, who is also there. And then the words, ‘behold, your mother’ are spoken to John about Mary.

  Now, the question of who actually is on Calvary is very hard to answer with any certainty. It seems beyond all shadow of doubt that Mary was there, of course, the mother of Jesus. But also, John, the beloved disciple. But also, Mary Magdalene. But the other accounts suggest that there may have been others. But in a sense, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is to recognise that the reader, you and me, is also on Calvary. There is a kind of space opened up in the story. Because some of the other characters on Calvary are not given a name. Well, their name is your name and my name. The presence on the dark mountain at the foot of the cross is no stranger. It’s you and me.

  So, these stories and these words are not once upon a time. They are addressed to us here and now. So, we are those who stand on the dark mountain with Mary and John and Mary Magdalene. Listening to the words of Christ that are addressed to us. In every bit as much a way as they are addressed to Mary and to John. So, in this third word, we turn from Jesus speaking to the Father, as he did in the first word. To the thief in the second. And now to his close circle.