Passage:
Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us." The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 25:39-43)
Reflection:
When I was about 12, I saw a raunchy Italian comedy, called Il Ladorne, depicting a fictional account of the life of the Good Thief. I remember very little of the story now, but I do recall the last scene. After various adventures and misadventures, the Thief gets sentenced to death by the Romans. At the end of the movie, he is hanging on a cross next to Jesus, who turns to him and says: "Today you will be with me in Paradise." The Thief responds, somewhat nonchalantly: "That’s okay. I can wait."
The Thief’s reply is, admittedly, a bit sacrilegious, and you might be wondering why I am quoting it now. But is this not very often our own response to Christ? When Christ tells us "Today you will be with me in Paradise," do we not say, "That’s okay. I can wait."
Isn’t death the greatest fear in our culture? Do we not almost worship youth, resisting, resenting the process of aging?
In the classic children’s book Through the Looking-Glass, Alice tells Humpy Dumpty: "One can't help growing older." However, Humpty Dumpty replies: "ONE can’t, perhaps, but TWO can." Well, we certainly try. Our society has developed a multi-billion dollar industry persuading us every day that aging is bad and that we must purchase fancy products to forestall it.
We fear the relentless drumbeat of Mother Nature, the inexorable march of time toward the grave. We fear death. No matter how miserable our life might be, we tend to cling to it. To paraphrase Woody Allen, the food at this place is terrible, but there is not enough of it.
But if we take Christ at his word, if we take our faith seriously, should we not look forward to being with our Lord in Paradise? Should we not see death as a blessing, as the ultimate gift that helps us to transition from this life, which is marred with sorrow, to an existence of eternal peace, infinite joy, unending love? Should we not, indeed, pity the young, since they, if they are to live to a ripe old age, are still so far away from being called into that blessed realm?
I find a couple of works of fiction relevant here. In the vampire novels of Anne Rice (bear with me for a moment), we see an interesting dilemma. The vampires are immortal, to a point. They can be killed with sunlight and fire, but they cannot die a natural death. Thus, if they are careful, they can, in theory at least, live till the end of times. But what do they do with their endless years? Rice’s vampires are atheists, and they find no ultimate meaning in the universe. In time an existential boredom sets in for them. They begin to despair and grow weary of the life they could possess for millennia. In a thought-provoking twist, The Vampire Lestat, the second book in the series, starts with a vampire killing himself, by jumping into fire, because he can no longer bear the weight of a meaningless existence in this world.
In another popular book, The Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta, two teens, are preparing to fight twenty-two other teenagers to the death in a brutal, inhuman television show, in which they must compete. Haymitch, their drunken and cynical mentor, initially gives them only one piece of advice: "Stay alive!" But, we might well wonder: Why should they "stay alive"? What is the meaning of life, we might wonder, if we can cling to it only by killing others in cold blood?
Staying alive is not enough. Existence itself is not sufficient. Existence is meaningful only insofar as it is oriented toward ultimate meaning – toward God. God, our Christian tradition tells us, is love, and he made the world out of love, to share his love with us. We are incomplete until we accept God’s gift of love, and requite him, by giving him our love in return. That is our true fulfillment. That is our true calling. That is what is meant to be our final destination.
But if so, then why not just die right now? Why must we endure, to quote Hamlet, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (Act III, Scene I)? Hamlet’s own answer is that he is afraid of what lies after death. But we, those of us who take the Christian of hope of the afterlife at face value, expect Paradise on the other side. Then why not just go now?
The answer, I think, is the responsibility we have been given in this life. In the Book of Genesis, humanity is given stewardship over the world. But human sin leads to alienation from God – alienation on a personal level, on a societal level, and for the cosmos as a whole. But in the Gospel of John, we see that the coming of Christ is the beginning of God’s remaking of the world, a long process of restoration that, in the biblical trajectory, reaches fruition in the final chapters of The Book of Revelation.
God invites us into this labor of love. We are to be coworkers with him in the work of redemption, of re-creation. We are to do so by allowing his love to imbue our hearts and allowing our entire selves to be channels of his love to all of the people around us, learning to love each person in our lives as God himself loves them.
As the title of an old play and movie says, you can’t take it with you. The houses, the cars, the companies, the TVs, the expensive furniture, and yes, I am sorry to say, even your smartphones, you can’t take it with you. But the love that you build in your heart by loving all of God’s people – that you most definitely can and will take with you. And the love that you help to build in others, that love they too will take with them into the life to come. There is eternity, there is Paradise, in every act of love.
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