Paradise Today

(Explanation: A practice begun by our current pastor, Josh Patty, at Central Christian Church involves mostly laypersons presenting meditations on each of the Seven Words From the Cross on Good Friday evening. The service this year was particularly moving and the meditations were genuinely reflective of each presenter's current faith understanding. Five laypersons prepared and delivered meditations, and Josh and I did the remaining two. Mine was based on the Second Word: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." [St. Luke 23:39-43] It appears below.)

Jesus isn't the only person executed this day. According to the gospels, he is crucified among common criminals. Jesus, having spent his entire ministry associating with the wrong kind of people, outcasts and the like, now dies keeping the same questionable company. Luke's gospel specifies that there were only two criminals crucified with Jesus, one on his right, the other on his left. One of the malefactors, no doubt in anguish with no hope left, does what probably he has always done: he unleashes all the self-loathing of his years on someone else, this time joining the spectators and soldiers at the cross in hurling taunts and poking fun at Jesus. But the other criminal interrupts his partner in crime, rebukes him and points out the stark contrast between the two of them and Jesus. They deserve what is happening to them; Jesus is innocent. This second man then, looking to Jesus, pleads for mercy, and Jesus replies: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

There are several directions we could take in applying this story to our lives. We could focus on the first criminal's pervasive bitterness and hostility, exploring ways to keep our lives from ending up like that. Certainly, we wouldn't lack for information and advice, what with the self-help books in print or the gurus on TV and the Internet that are as innumerable as the stars. Or, we could look more closely at the second criminal, the one who was penitent and who came to Jesus' defense. Many speakers have taken that tack, usually concluding with a kind of morality lesson that insists one has to ask for forgiveness before he or she can be admitted into heaven. Or we might zoom our lens more tightly on the crowd, seeing in them how easily public assemblies can turn into vicious mobs bent on violence. Such a focus would certainly resonate with much that is happening today. Or, there's still another course, that of looking at the main character himself: Jesus. Surely there would be much room for speculation on how, in the midst of unimaginably severe and sadistic suffering, anyone could still reach out to others with such deep compassion. But that kind of wondrous love really is beyond our ability to comprehend, and only silence and awe can approach the mystery of such amazing grace.

None of those possible directions for reflection, however, has seized my imagination tonight. Instead, my attention is being captivated not by any of the characters involved in the plot, but by a place, the one that is named: "Paradise." That word appears only three times in the Hebrew Scriptures and three times in the Christian Scriptures. Even so, it's where the spotlight will be directed in these thoughts.

But first we need a clearer understanding of how people in Jesus' day viewed the world in which they lived, their perception of the cosmos, their cosmology, if you will. We know that to them the world was flat, and it was a rather limited area surrounded by waters that none dared to venture out into very far. Sometimes we call their world view the "triple-decker universe." There was the deck on which they lived, and another underneath, which at the time of Jesus was beginning to be regarded as the space where those who lived less than righteous lives would go when they died. And then, above them was the third deck where God and the heavenly hosts resided. It was from that lofty height that God could observe all the goings-on below and be ready to respond with either retaliation or restoration. God also attended to the administration of the daily operations of the heavenly realm: making sure that celestial beings responsible for pushing the greater light by day, and the lesser light by night across the sky, and those in charge of lowering the lighted lanterns, which were especially helpful to travelers in finding their way in the dark, that all of these heavenly beings were carrying out their respective responsibilities.

While the divine dwelling was just beyond human reach, it was really rather close. Indeed, one biblical story tells of an attempt to build a tower tall enough to reach it.

I don't need to point out how woefully inadequate that view of the cosmos is today, do I? Space exploration, the Hubble Telescope, unmanned satellites launched into deep interstellar regions have drastically altered our world view. We can no longer entertain fairytale fantasies of being able to reach the upper deck if, like Jack, we have the magic beans that will yield a plant tall enough to get us there. So how do we conceive of Paradise, or heaven, or the Kingdom of God, or whatever we wish to call it in our kind of world today?

Curiously, glimmerings of answers to that question are coming not from scriptural or theological speculation, but from scientific inquiry, particularly Quantum Physics. Thanks to the influence of a colleague who is, more importantly, a friend, my reading of late has found me slogging through the enormously complicated "field" (those of you familiar with Quantum Theory will catch the double entendre of the word "field")...this field of which I understand very little, but at least enough to get some inkling of how life may continue.

Now this is where this reflection is going to take a weird turn, and if as a result of my having issued that warning, there is a mass exodus out of here (or on second thought, given the size of this Good Friday gathering, it couldn't be anything more than a dwindling departure--but if that happens), I'll certainly be sorry for alerting you ahead of time.

We've often been told that light travels at a speed of 186,282.4 miles per second. Actually that's not always the case, but for now it's close enough. The basic particles that combine to make up light waves are called photons. Physicists with the use of lasers have been able to conduct experiments showing how photons seem to behave strangely. Indeed, sometimes it seems as if the photons know they are being observed, and that, in turn, appears to influence different outcomes, contrary to scientific expectations. Not only so, but pairs of twin or "entangled" photons, even though they are seemingly separated and sent to opposite ends of space, behave as if they are still connected, as if there is no space between them, and if one of the twins is manipulated by scientists, the other seems to know and duplicates the action. This is a phenomenon that Einstein relegated to the realm of mystery, calling it "Spooky action at a distance."

Okay, this is getting too heady. What's the point?

Our bodies will die. We know that. But what if there are parts of who we are, particles of our lives that never die? What if the energy that is who each of us really is, what if the energy fields that comprise each of our loved ones who have died, what if the penitent thief on the cross, and what if Jesus himself still surrounded us and flowed through us and we through them? What if they are not far away but as close to us as photons are to each other even though they appear to us to be eons apart? How often I have heard people comment that in particularly trying times they have felt the abiding nearness of their loved ones upholding them and giving them strength. Might it be that Jesus really is present right now and at all times urging us on toward the same compassionate purposes he exemplified, even on the cross? We are still tied down to the earth and, therefore, our perceptions of what is possible are confined. But it may be that who each of us really is will continue.

Emerson, soon after the death of his son, wrote, "Our life is not so much threatened as our perceptions. I grieve that grief that can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature." Perhaps we are more closely related to all of creation in all times than we can possibly imagine. Maybe heaven is closer than when people saw the cosmos as a triple-decker structure, and maybe we are already in Paradise today. St. Paul affirmed as much when he said that there is nothing in life or death that will ever be able to separate us from the realm of God's love.