A Meditation on One of the Last Words of Christ
for the Dudley Birder Chorale’s Performance
of Théodore Dubois’ “The Seven Last Words of Christ”
April 1, 2007
Rev. Larry Lange
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Congregation
Green Bay, Wisconsin
“Verily, thou shall be in Paradise today with me.” Jesus promises Paradise to one of the two thieves crucified with him.
The original Paradise is now buried beneath the concrete upon which we routinely stand. Words from a few of the first European explorers here remind us of that Eden of old. They wrote that in this Paradise “an infinite number of fishes were seen in water so clear as crystal,” “fishes as big as children of two years old.” In this Paradise there were rivers so full of “otters that they appeared to have gathered to hinder the passage” of the explorers’ canoes. Upon the shores of those rivers stood “stags large and small,” and “bears and beavers in great abundance,” and the skies above were filled “with clouds of swans.”
We humans had been created in the image of God to till and to keep this Paradise and to exercise dominion over it in the same way that the biblical kings were to have exercised dominion: by protecting as precious the blood of the weakest of their subjects.
We, like most biblical kings, have failed. Brown clouds laden with burned carbon loom over our asphalt riverbanks from which the bears and otters and beavers have long fled, for gone are the infinite fishes and timbers upon which they once fed. Everywhere on this planet that was once Paradise, the weakest humans and creatures alike are being assailed and starved: their lives and livelihoods stolen from them and from future generations by insatiable thieves brawling for control of the global village. We have not tilled and kept Paradise nor have we exercised dominion over it as God has commanded.
We greedy thieves now hang condemned on either side of the Innocent One.
One of those thieves railed at Jesus, demanded that he be saved as if he had committed no sin, as if his ecological footprint were of no consequence, as if he had no part in the plunder of Paradise.
The other thief spoke to the one who imagined he had not sinned: “Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds.”
Then that same thief turned and said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”
Now it would be best if we were to renounce our armed robbery of Paradise. We might thereby prevent its ruin. Though we may avoid being arraigned for our crimes against creation, we cannot escape Judgment Day.
But even when thieves are dying there is hope.
When thieves suddenly perceive the Lord is at their side, their humble begging shall be blessed with this sentence: “Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”
Amen.