Today’s readings: 2 Samuel 5, 1-3; Colossians 1, 11-20; Luke 23, 35-43.
St Paul’s words to the Colossians today sound so empowering and refreshing: “You will have in you the strength never to give in, but to bear anything joyfully, thanking the Father who has made it possible for you to join the saints and with them to inherit the light”.
They may be words in heavy contrast with what we experience daily. Yet faith can only be truthful and meaningful if and when it is empowering, not letting us give in to crude reality as it comes across. Believing is hanging on to He who can bring us out of the power of darkness.
This is the depth of meaning that transpires from today’s scenario on Calvary. We have been following St Luke’s journey throughout this entire year, and till the end, Luke depicts a Jesus who is radically inclusive, making paradise go beyond the parameters of religion and moral judgments.
The “Remember me” addressed to Jesus crucified is probably one of the most powerful and emotional prayers to Jesus in the gospels. It is a prayer we ourselves repeat to whomever we trust and whenever we need to feel the solace of being carried in one’s heart.
It is the opposite of forgetfulness, which is not in the nature of our God. It is not the type of prayer asking for something, wanting to receive; it is not self-centered. It is a prayer of complete trust.
On the cross, Jesus, proclaimed King of the Jews, had only the authority of compassion. From the very beginning of St Luke’s gospel on that Sabbath day in the Synagogue, Jesus vouched to bring the good news to the poor and freedom to all oppressed and imprisoned. Dying on the cross he is still reaching out to the distressed.
The deepest meaning of the death of Jesus was that it abolished the simplistic and nonsense divisions between religion and politics, which serve only to make of religion a futile hope and of politics a blind project that distorts the vision of a true humanity.
Very often we are in danger of missing this out whenever we seek to mitigate for political correctness sake the impact of the gospel on society and culture.
As Kenneth Leech warns in his book We Preach Christ Crucified, “the notion of an interior spiritual kingdom would have been wholly without meaning to the people of Jesus’ time”.
The kingdom of God stands in contrast to, and in conflict with, the structures and values of this age. Jesus never meant to indicate that what he stood for had nothing to do with this world. The kingdom is ‘otherworldly’ because it operates as a critical process within human history.
Our prayer ‘thy kingdom come’ is basically a plea to recover the kingdom of God as a hope for the transformation of the world and, I would add, as a regulative principle for the reform of the Church.
This is the double prophetic strength that God’s word has for us today: that of confronting the world of politics not to remain closed in on itself and forgetful of the sufferings of people, and that of being provocative for the Church itself to become what it is in the light of Christ crucified.
An apolitical Jesus has no meaning. It would be a distortion of the Crucified. Among the major faults of politics as we experience it today are the temptations to conformity and compromise.
The politics of Jesus stands squarely against all this, calling for Christian resistance even in times like ours. Similarly, it is constantly calling the Church to be prophetic and renounce to authoritarian styles of leadership that bear no relation to the biblical model.
The lands of the Spirit are governed by a radically different politics than that we are imbued with endlessly in Church and society alike. As we speak of Christ’s kingdom today, we are called to look up to him on the cross from whom, paradoxically, we inherit the light and gain our freedom.