A Reasonable Percentage

O God, Creator and Ground of All Being,

We come together because we need you,

We need each other,

And we need to hear your Word. 

And if we hear it here, may we be so possessed by it 

That we become servants of it out in your world.

We pray this in Christ who was, and is, and is to come.

Amen.

It is told that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on a cross between two other crosses, on each of which hung a convicted thief. One of the thieves joined in the chorus of an unruly crowd and exhorted Jesus to save himself and them if he was indeed the King of the Jews. (There was a hand-lettered sign to that effect that someone had put up over Jesus’ head.) The other thief, it is told, said ”this man has done nothing wrong. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus, in response, tells this other thief that “today you will be with me in Paradise.”

This is a neat, familiar story, the gist of which, in many readings, is that either you get it, like the right thief did, or you don’t, like the left thief, and that your eternal fate hangs in the balance of whether you get it or not. I remember being a little stunned when I learned about the Orthodox cross, which has a diagonal element on the bottom where Jesus’ feet might have rested. In fact, the whole design of the Orthodox cross is taken from this scene in Luke's account of the crucifixion. [show and tell] The right side is higher than the left side, and a priest told me straight out that the slanted bar was a reminder of the two thieves, and which way each of them went. 

The familiar readings this story, this sentence of up or down, doesn’t make make much sense to me, frankly, but it does go along with all the other binary notions that haunt us all—the sheep and the goats, the great chasm that cannot be crossed between the Rich man and Lazarus that we heard about a couple weeks ago, and for that matter, life before in the Garden of Eden and life after the unfortunate misunderstanding that got us into the mess we’ve been in ever since.

My preferred reading of this story comes from Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. If you don’t know this play—and it is brilliant—it consists mostly of two bums called Didi and Gogo, two vagabonds, sitting at a crossroads, passing the time, talking to make sure they’re still alive. Didi, in an apparent attempt to stimulate conversation, says, “One of the thieves was saved. It’s a reasonable percentage.”

I like this take not just because it’s funny, but because it’s true. It puts the story back in the gray, between the black and white, where we all live all the time. It’s a pretty succinct summary of the mess we’ve been in ever since we got evicted from the Garden. 

So with that middle ground in mind, let’s notice a few things. The thief on the right does not ask for forgiveness, and the fate of the thief on the left is not told; the Orthodox cross clearly sends the left thief downward, presumably to Hell along with the Rich man and all the goats—but Jesus doesn’t say that. For all we know, Jesus looked over his shoulder and said oh, ok, you can come too, but watch your mouth. All that actually happens is that the left thief asks if Jesus is the King of the Jews (in a mocking way, which seems to upset everybody, but will not surprise any teacher familiar with the scathing honesty of seventh graders), while the right thief asserts that Jesus will be a king when all is said and done. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” This was pretty obviously the right thing to say in this situation, and is presumably why the lords of the lectionary assigned this reading for this Sunday, which is known as Christ the King Sunday. 

Christ the King. It’s not always a comfortable image. We modern western folks don’t think much of kings. Most of the kings I learned about growing up said things like “off with his head!”  or ordered slaughters or dispossessed people of their land, or imposed taxes to pay for wars they sent others to fight. There are good kings in stories, too, like Caspian and Rilian and Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy in the Chronicles of Narnia. But the good kings were highly idealized and often met with tragedy. The good kings aren’t real. Or at least they’re in the past, long ago and far away. 

And yet—we love kings. We want kings. We want to be kings. We want to own things, build fences around them and have spheres in our life where we aren’t required to cooperate or share. The state of Michigan and many other states have “castle” doctrines, and the word is not an accident. These laws hold that no property owner is ever required to retreat on their own property. Each one of us is King of what we "own," king of our own castle. Some of these castle doctrines authorize a property owner to shoot anyone who trespasses. We don't get to shoot traspassers in Michigan until they threaten our lives and limbs, but the castle concept still pertains.  This is a very American construction. One of the paradoxical features of our democracy is that we are said in our founding documents to be endowed by our Creator with certain rights. The final draft of the document in question says we are endowed with the rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This was a change from an earlier draft which listed our inalienable rights as "life, liberty, and property." I don't know if the change came because "the pursuit of happiness" is more poetic or more universal, but the point remains-- we rule, or aspire to rule, our own lives by divine right, which for thousands of years has been the defining characteristic of a king. This poses some obvious difficulties if we profess the Way of Christ and would live the words we pray. Jesus was not kidding when he told a young man that  “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” And of course we know that’s not going to happen either for the young man in the story or for us in the here and now. We love our castles and our treasures here on earth. We will not abdicate our thrones. We will not be perfect. At best, we will have to settle for a reasonable percentage, but generally, for real world humans there is never enough. 

I do not know the way out of this painful situation, but on Christ the King Sunday I will follow our Rev Sarah’s lead and grope gratefully for the idea that the Way of Christ presents itself to us plainly, in community. Beyond our personal sovereignty, here, in community, we long for and look for some central figure or idea by which we can make sense of everything else. This can go badly, of course, if we follow a bad King, but it can go well if we follow a good King. In a few minutes we will sing “Crown Him the Lord of Life, enthroned in worlds above, crown Him the King to whom is given the wondrous name of Love. Crown him with many crowns, as thrones before him fall, crown Him ye kings with many crowns for He is Lord of all.” When it comes, let us sing those words loudly and all together and remind each other that the name of our King is Love. Let us remind each other that the Way of Love, the love of God and neighbor, the way of our King, is a collective way, a shared way. It is a singular understanding that we are necessary agents of each other’s salvation, that Christ the King is not King of you or King of me, but is King of “us” in a kingdom defined by acts of love. 

Amen.