Paradise is now

The reality of now is that we live in Paradise.

Can you imagine?

With all that is going on in the world, we live in Paradise.

You see that guy over there?

The one with the sign asking for food?

He has no permanent place to live.

He wasn’t always without a home though.

At some point things were good then other things happened and still other things occurred and he is now looking for a place to live.

A job so he can buy food.

He does not wish to stand in the frosting November rain, the rain that makes us squint against the elements, makes our foreheads wrinkle and dig our hands deeper into our pockets as we rush to our car.

We get in our car.

We drive home.

We drive up to the light on the exit ramp and next to the car is that man who wasn’t always without a home, asking for food, wanting a job so he can pay the bills.

We are in paradise?

We are in paradise.

That woman coughing on the way to work is still trying to get over the COVID she had so many months ago.

She is no longer infected, she has long been testing negative, but she does not feel the same.

It’s harder to get out of bed, her bones ache, and she has had this cough for ages now.

And she is tired.

Tired of the aching.

Tired of the coughing that rattles her ribs and hurts her lungs, she is tired.

And we ARE in paradise.

A man.

Fully human.

A man was sentenced to death by Roman authorities.

He was stripped of his clothes.

He was mocked by his captors.

He given a crown and that crown was made of thorns and those thorns cut into his skin on his scalp and on his forehead.

He was beaten by the guards and was then forced to walk from where he was being held through the streets of Jerusalem.

He carried his own cross.

When he arrived at Golgotha, the place of the skull, he was nailed to that cross.

Hammer to nail, clanging, his skin was pierced first his skin, then the rough metal of a hand fired nail, thick and raspy, was driven deeper into his body tissue.

With each hammer fall, his body felt the searing pain of metal being driven into flesh.

He hurt.

He felt pain.

He was hoisted into the air attached to the cross he carried, gravity pulled him downwards as those nails kept him in place, with each breath he grew closer to death.

Those soldiers that beat him, now mocked him.

“Save yourself,” they said.

“He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”

He was on that hill, on that cross with two others.

Criminals and who cares about criminals anyway?

Yet one of those criminals could see.

Yes, he could see the violence before him, the bloodied man and mocking men, but he could see past all of that as well.

He could see who this man was.

And the criminal cried out from his own suffering,

“(R)emember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And that man replied.

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Today.

Today you will be with me in Paradise.

Not tomorrow.

Not eventually.

Not someday.

Not if we make it to the Bed, Bath, and Beyond before lunch, then we’ll have time for Paradise afterwards.

Not “hold on a sec, let me just finish this one thing and then we can head over to Paradise.”

None of that.

Today.

“Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Not even, “after we are removed from these crosses.”

Not even, “once we are dead, we shall see each other in Paradise.”

Today.

Now.

We ARE in Paradise!

You.

Sitting here.

Now.

You are in Paradise.

We are in Paradise.

And I know just how hard it is to realize that sometimes.

Because we do see that man without a home and we do know that woman who just can’t heal after COVID and we think and wonder, this?

This?

This is Paradise?

This is what all the fuss is being made about?

And you might be wondering where is all the cool stuff?

Where is my reunion with those who have died before me?

Where is my old pal Fido and shouldn’t he be bounding through the clouds so that we can play fetch for eternity?

Well, that’s perhaps a romanticized version of the kingdom that is to arrive when Jesus returns, but this.

This place.

This here and now.

This is Paradise.

It is the Paradise promised from the cross.

It is today.

It is now.

It is here.

And it is Paradise because of our confession of faith.

Because when we state the creeds and proclaim the Gloria, we are stating our faith in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

When we worship, we are creating and growing our relationship with God.

And our relationship, our very faith in God, brings us into the very presence of God.

And when we are in God’s presence, we are in Paradise.

And you might be saying, you might be pointing rather animatedly at all that is wrong with this world, and ask, “How can Paradise have suffering?”

This is Christ the King Sunday.

This is not an ancient feast day.

It was not celebrated in one of those old dark medieval gothic churches and that seem to shoot out of the ground in random English villages.

It was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925.

In the Roman church it is celebrated on the last Sunday of October.

In Anglican churches it is celebrated on this Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent.

In fact, this day isn’t even an official feast day on the Episcopal church calendar though many choose to celebrate it.

And I, we, choose to celebrate it because it is important.

And it is important because it recognizes that we are indeed, in Paradise.

And we are able to say that by recognizing that Jesus is our sovereign ruler, our triune God, our king.

So, just stating that Jesus is king does not alleviate human suffering.

It does not remove from this earth what is so plain to see.

The imperfections and wrinkles that mar God’s creation.

Yet let us look as to why this new feast day was created.

Throughout history and from time to time, Europe would go to war.

Tribes would fight tribes over who should live closest to the Rhine or which kingdom should control Flanders’ fertile fields.

It was kind of a thing.

And these wars would grow more violent as the technology used to harm each other progressed.

And it progressed until that technology was used against each other in World War I.

No longer were cavalries making glorious charges into enemy lines, now soldiers were being led into lines of literal fire.

Ground was kept by the use of machine guns rather than pikes; hundreds could be lost in the hopes of gaining but hundreds of feet of land.

Back and forth the battles raged.

Millions died.

A whole generation was deemed lost in this conflagration and this is Paradise?

And the world recoiled in horror.

No more would this happen again.

Great institutions were formed to ensure such violence happen again, the League of Nations was created.

And it took but twenty years for it to happen again, only the next time, it was worse.

And this is Paradise?

I ask you then to look at the reasoning for this day.

In his encyclical creating this day, Pius wrote, “as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ…”

These European nations, these so-called Christian nations at that time, ignored the paradise promised to them by Christ on the cross and instead fed on division and discord.

Yet if they pursued peace instead of war, the word of God instead of destruction would they then be working to realize that Paradise promised rather than a paradise lost?

Friends, when we acknowledge Jesus as king, as our saviour on the cross and in the midst of suffering we are entering into Paradise.

That that Paradise does not seem to be present does not negate the fact we are entering into relationship with Christ and through Christ we are invited into Paradise.

I am not sure we can realize we exist within Paradise without working to manifest it.

I don’t know that God will solve all the problems of this place without us recognizing that we have a hand in alleviating such problems as poverty and disease.

I do know, through faith and experience, that Jesus as king provides us with the hope inherent in God’s creation.

We may have left the garden, but we have not left Creation.

God is with us.

Through the promise of Christ, God is with us.

Perhaps it is not yet a Paradise realized through our human eyes, but when we look through the lens of Christ’s hope for all of us, through the salvation offered, we can understand the possibility of such a thing.

Paradise is here.

Today.

We can work to realize Paradise, or we can ignore the promise given.

We can give into the violence of this world, the violence of disease, of poverty, of prison, and the unclothed.

We can act as rationalists and say that those things are just a part of the world as it is, it will not change.

Or we can understand that we were given Paradise.

Through faith we can see this world as it can be, no, as it will be when we acknowledge Christ as king.

From the ashes of such destruction this day was created not as a seed or something that might one day blossom, but as a reminder.

A reminder that our faith matters and it matters when we put that faith in action.

When we acknowledge and serve God who wishes us to serve each other, when we remove our blinders and wonder at a world gifted to us through Christ, we are able to recognize and to see through the veil of sadness and sin that sometimes clouds our perception, that we are born of and into Paradise.

Paradise is now.

It exists.

We wake to it every day and every day there is at least hope we will be able to witness it.

Feel it.

Understand it.

We are promised paradise.

From this place and from these pews we are able to rise and realize that promise.

Given to us through our faith and understanding that Christ is our savior.

Our God.

Our king.

Amen.