The Eternal Now

Text: Luke 23:27-43

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            With all our focus on the end of time that comes with this season of the Church year, it may seem strange to have our Gospel reading be a portion from the crucifixion of Jesus. Typically that’s more in line with Holy Week than for our meditation at the end of the Church year. And yet there is something here, something about this account from Scripture—something mysterious that reveals itself when we ponder it; something that challenges our sense of time, the very notion of past, present, and future here at Calvary as Jesus is on the cross.   

            As He walks the Via Dolorosa, or the Road of Suffering, through Jerusalem toward Golgotha, Jesus speaks to the women following Him. Even while He’s in the most critical moment of history, His holy Passion, as He’s winning the salvation of the entire world, He still casts His sight to the future: “Daughters of Jerusalem,” He tells them, “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” And again, in an even more time-bending statement, Jesus tells the dying criminal on the cross to His right, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

            It seems that for our Lord, at the moment of His passion and sacrifice on the cross, that past, present, and future are all brought together before Him. The eternal future of a repentant man, the criminal on His right, is spoken of as a present reality: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” The present tumults that accompany His crucifixion, as the sun is darkened and creation is groaning at Jesus’ suffering is reflected forward into the future, as Jesus warns the women of Jerusalem about a time of distress that’s yet to come, and would come to them within a generation of His death, resurrection, and ascension when Rome slaughtered the citizens of Jerusalem and destroyed its most sacred places. As Jesus is on the altar of the cross, it would seem that our logical distinctions of how we divide time—past, present, and future—all break down in the presence of our Lord and His universe-changing sacrifice.

            And indeed, it has broken down. For it is not small thing for God Himself to die. In fact, it is the greatest, most cosmos-shaking thing for the One through whom the heavens and earth were made to die—and not only that, but to die in order to save the creation He made and that had rebelled against Him. It turns this moment of His passion and death into the very heart of all time and space—everything we know about God, creation, and ourselves will hinge on this.

            This is what St. Paul meant in our Epistle reading when he said, “And He [Jesus] is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” In Jesus, everything in the universe is held together, sustained, upheld. It continues existing, in spite of the chaos, the destruction, the things that we do to creation and to each other that undermine, corrupt, and hurt. Because Jesus has died in order to redeem His creation, because He loves it enough to sacrifice Himself to make it new in Him, all things are holding together, whether it was things in the past, those millennia before His birth, or the things that are, or the things that are yet to be, like the fulfillment of all He said will come before His return.

            It’s in this holding together of all things in Christ at His cross that we find our answers—answers about who we are, what the fate of the universe is, what God is going. We learn in Jesus that He’s making all things new. He has died to pay the price for everything that’s gone wrong. He’s risen again to infuse new life into what He has made. He is, as St. Paul told us, “reconciling to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.” His creation is being made new, eternally cleansed from sin and its corrosive effects. He’s bringing us to the place He always intended for us, as He turns and says to you, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

            And because in Jesus all things hold together, no matter when or where they happen, it’s all happening now. You are with Him in Paradise, not only in some far-off time when you slip off this mortal coil, but you’re with Him now. You’re in the Paradise of sins forgiven through His forgiving Word going out, spoken to you and healing the rift between you and the God who made you, cleansing you from the sins committed against you, making you new and whole, healed and holy. You are in Paradise with Him today as you come to His holy table, where He is truly present in His very real body and blood, just as present in His Holy Supper as He was on Calvary, winning the salvation of the world then, and now delivering eternal life to you right here, in this space, in this service. He keeps you with Him in Paradise, in the oasis of your ongoing cleansing in your Baptism, a promise in the water and Word that stays with you your entire life—past, present and future. His cross, which is in the past for us, to be sure, is still a very present reality. It will continue to stand until the end of time and then even beyond, into eternity.

            So, on this Last Sunday of the Church year, when we lift our gaze to the end of all things, if there’s anything you want to know about the end—the end of time, the end of the Church year, the end of your life, look for the answer in Jesus’ cross. That is where He rules as King over all things, where all things hold together in Him. If you have any fear about any of those endings, you have the antidote in Jesus’ sacrifice for you. If you wonder what will ultimately happen to you on the other side of those endings, look to what Jesus has promised at His cross. It’s all one moment for Him, the eternal now, and you truly are with Him in Paradise, even if it’s only known to the eyes of your faith at this moment. You are with Him and He is with you, even to the end of all things. In the name of Jesus, who is coming soon. Amen.