Paradiso [Wednesday Vespers Lent 1; St. Luke 23:43]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

This evening, we hear Jesus speak our second word from His cross, that of paradise:

“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

You want to know what is so great about America? Everyone can have their own garden. A garden is a luxury that was only afforded to kings in the past, because they had the wealth and time to invest in one. The common man was wed to work in order to scrape out a living, having no time for leisure.

But now, in this wonderland of freedom, everyman has a garden, or at least is able to have a garden. His land is his own. His house is his castle. He has the richness of the world at his fingertips and is free to come and go as he pleases. Truly, the United States is a land of a thousand kings.

A thousand kings that spend their luxury and leisure on dung. Our idea of luxury is getting rid of our gardens. Our idea of leisure is gathering the ugly. Indeed, we have become too rich for beauty and find it a waste of time. Our gardens lie fallow. We have turned, everyone to his own way.

Each and every time man attempts paradise, it goes the opposite way. It may be paradise for one person and not another, but even that one person will become disgusted by it, given time.

Yet it is to “delights” that our Lord first brought us into the world. A paradise of trees, Eden was a garden. A Garden of Delights, says the Bible. This is the imagery King Solomon wants us to have in mind as we listen in on his conversation between him and his wife. Eden, that perfect garden, was a delight to both God and man.

This delight was supposed to endure, instead we thrive in the squalor of earthly delights, which sin has drastically corrupted. So much so, that these same delights have become deadly sins, condemning us to hell.

Jesus says of St. John the Baptist, “What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who are dressed in splendid clothing and live in [delights] are in kings' courts” (Luke 7:25).

St. Peter declares, “But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. They count [pleasure in daytime delights]. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you” (2 Pet. 2:12-13)

Now that God has been sentenced to death on a cross, there is no more paradise to be found on earth. There are no more delights that do not lead to lust and sin. There is no peace for the wicked. Thus we get to the repentant thief on the cross who begs for his innocence from the condemned criminal, Jesus.

Earthly delights are no longer heavenly delights, just as the earthly criminal Jesus is no heavenly criminal. There is no place, even for the repentant sinner, dying on a cross, on earth. He must be put to death at Jesus’ side and raised again to Paradise.

And from our icon, Paradise, that heavenly garden, is not to be filled with trees, as some sort of naturalist’s paradise, but it is to be filled with people. More to the point, it is to be filled with the One Who Conquers in the fight, the One upon the Tree of Shame Who causes life to flow out of it in His Name.

The repentant thief had already been brought to paradise, even before asking for it! Though he stood condemned in his sin and though he was suffering unbearably, Paradise was there with him, granting the free forgiveness of sins. Just as Jesus is a criminal on earth, not in heaven, so too is the one who is brought into the kingdom of God a criminal on earth.

We are not to wish to remain with our earthly delights and most of the time can’t tell the difference between things that delight us and things that hurt us. Faith drives us on to our priceless treasure, our purest pleasure: Jesus Christ.

And Christ came for criminals. He came to seek and to save that which has been destroyed in sin and death. For we are all eleventh-hour believers, being found with only a shred of hope at the last possible minute. We all come late to the party and ask for the wages of those who have been there the entire time.

But the payment is the same. The Paradise is the same. This is because the Lord of both is the same. Jesus grants us paradise in the midst of earthly life giving us hope for eternity by His side.

There was a garden with two trees. One a tree of life, the other a tree of death. At the worship of the tree of death, the tree of life also became a tree of death, eternal death. A new garden was planted with a new tree. A cross of life and death, where the life of God was given into death, in order that the death of man would be given over to life in Paradise.