I Tell You the Truth, Today You Will Be with Me in Paradise

Rebecca Sheridan
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Luke 23:32-43

    What is heaven like?  What will it be like when we die?  The dying part is not so fun to think about, but dreaming about heaven is something worth looking forward to.  Many songs have been written about this topic – Stairway to Heaven, Heaven on My Mind, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, Heaven Is a Place on Earth. You may be familiar with the Christian music band Mercy Me’s song, “I Can Only Imagine,” which is exactly about imagining what we will experience when we go to heaven.  We might think of seeing loved ones again who have gone before us, St. Peter at the pearly gates, or perhaps, even a garden when we hear Jesus promise us “paradise.”
    The Bible gives us a few descriptions of heaven; notably the book of Revelation describes heaven as a place where the streets are paved with gold, where it is always day and the gates are open with a river running through the city and trees with leaves of healing for the nations, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more.  In the gospels, Jesus tells parables about what the kingdom of heaven is like.  But paradise, specifically, as another word for heaven, is not used much in the Bible – in 2 Corinthians 12, our Revelation reading for tonight, and here in Jesus’ conversation with the penitent criminal shortly before their deaths are the only mentions in the New Testament.  “TODAY you will be with me in Paradise,” Jesus promises.  Whatever we can imagine heaven to be, just hearing that word, “paradise,” is a huge gift.  This is God’s big deal promise, not only to this criminal, but also to us.  This is why Jesus came and why he hangs there on that cross – to die for us, so that we might live with him eternally, so that we might be with Jesus in Paradise.
    The word paradise specifically brings us back to the beginning and indicates God’s desire to restore all creation to himself through Jesus Christ.  In our first reading from Genesis, we are reminded how we put Jesus there on that cross through our sin.  We rejected the gift of paradise God gave us.  Adam and Eve enjoy living in this original paradise of Eden with God.  We might be tempted to blame someone else like Adam and Eve for paradise lost.  Adam and Eve are good at pointing the finger and playing the blame game, using “the devil made me do it” as an excuse to God.  And we too, maybe think, “if only they had not eaten that fruit, we’d still be hanging out peaceably in the Garden of Eden.”  But just as Christ’s mercy and salvation is not just for the criminal on the cross but also for us, so Adam and Eve’s sin is ours.  Their story explains our situation – we do what we shouldn’t, we don’t do what we should, there’s an inevitable pull of sin for all of us that we share in our common humanity.  Whether it’s eating a forbidden fruit, breaking one of our Lord’s commandments, or simply failing to trust God, we are all sinners in need of a savior.  Indeed heaven is not a place on earth, when we look at all the trouble going on in the world around us.  We long, like Adam and Eve, like the criminal on the cross, to return to that promised paradise, to walk in the garden with God, but we can’t do it on our own because of the sin within us. 
When we come to the point of recognizing that we cannot undo our sin and it’s no one’s fault but our own, then we can turn ourselves back to Jesus, thanking him for his mercy and grace.  Then we recognize our need for Jesus, and the great act of salvation he extends to us, despite our NOT deserving it, on the cross.  It is this promise of Jesus, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” that ushers us through the pain of sin and death into a welcome promise of life everlasting.  Every time we look at the cross, we can give thanks for Jesus’ death and resurrection, that we are fully forgiven and saved for eternal life, so that we might enjoy paradise with him.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.