Good Friday Homily April 18, 2014 - Second Word from the Cross

One of the criminals hanging there also insulted Jesus by saying, “Aren’t you the Messiah?  Save yourself and save us!”  But the other criminal told the first one off, “Don’t you fear God?  Aren’t you getting the same punishment as this man?  We got what was coming to us, but he didn’t do anything wrong.”  Then he said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into power” Jesus replied, “I promise that today you will be with me in paradise.”  Luke 23:39-43

Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker Movement in the 1930’s said, “The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.”

The Catholic Worker published a newspaper, established houses of hospitality in inner cities, and farms in the country where people from all walks lived together in community, where the poor were fed, clothed and sheltered and people envisioned a new way of being in the world.  She said of the movement:

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words—we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

“The Gospel takes away our right forever to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.” This truth is most powerfully illustrated here in this passage, as Jesus speaks to the two criminals from the cross.  One mocking Jesus, the other believing that they are getting what they deserve and so in awe of Christ.  “We’re getting what’s coming to us, but Jesus has done nothing wrong.”  It is to this criminal, who in the eyes of the powers that be deserves death, that Jesus promises a place in paradise alongside of him.  But we cannot look at this passage and imagine that the mocking criminal was any less loved by Jesus than the one who petitioned him.  Jesus died for all whether they repent or not, whether they know what they are doing or not, while they were yet sinners.  And we suddenly find ourselves in the same boat with these men.  There is no separation between us and them, between the righteous and the unrighteous.  We are all the undeserving poor.

Love is not something that is earned, it is freely given to all.  And it is this radical hospitality—this unconditional welcome that Jesus offers to the criminal—that transforms each individual and ultimately the whole world. 

Even though we imagine that there are all sorts of other things we can do to gauge people’s real repentance, all sorts of ways to evaluate progress, to measure outcomes in people’s lives, to get people to do stuff we want them to do, to judge whether some are worthier than others to receive our attention—all we really have to offer is the same thing that Jesus offered this criminal.  Welcome.  A radical welcome that discriminates against no one, that freely offers even to the most “undeserving” a place in paradise.

As Dorothy Day says, “there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”  To love even our enemy, to love not just the one who is kind to us, but the one also who mocks us, who abuses us, hurts us greatly, the one who disregards all of our good intentions and good deeds, who mocks our own sacrificial acts.

In so doing we will not just be welcoming people into a heavenly paradise after death, but with our own radical hospitality, again as Dorothy Day says, we will be creating “an oasis, a little cell of joy and peace in this harried world.”  A sign here and now of the hope of the resurrection and the Kingdom of God to come.  This is what it means to be the church, to be a community of faithful following the example of Jesus.  And with each small act of kindness, each loving response we offer indiscriminately to everyone, we throw our own pebble in the pond and we can be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.