“KING JESUS”

Luke 23:33-43

Fred Craddock, one of my favorite pastors, tells about a family that was taking a lovely Sunday afternoon drive, when suddenly the children began shouting:

“Stop the car! There’s a kitten by the road!”

The father kept on driving, but his children wouldn’t quiet down. He tried to reason with them. The kitten was probably someone’s pet. It might have a disease. The family already had too many pets.

It didn’t do any good. The children insisted that a loving father would stop the car for a stray cat. So, finally, the father turned the car around, drove back to where the kitten was, stopped the car, got out and reached for the scraggly kitten.

And do you know what? The ungrateful little beast scratched him! Fighting an instinct to strangle the kitten, the father packed it into the car and brought it home.

Once at home, the children created a bed for the little kitty out of their softest blankets. They fed the kitten droppers full of milk. They petted and fussed over the kitty. Soon, the kitten was purring and rubbing on family members, especially the father, as if he were its best friend.

The father looked at the scars on his hand left by the frightened and ungrateful kitten. Then he looked at the comfortable, well-fed kitty rubbing against his leg.

Had he suddenly become more worthy of love? No. His intentions toward the cat had always been to do it good, not harm.

Something had happened to the kitten that made it feel secure, loved, accepted.

How often does God try to bless us? And how often do we respond by scratching God’s hand?

Today is Christ the King Sunday. It’s ironic, don’t you think, that the Sunday before we begin our celebration of Advent, where we look with eager anticipation of the coming of the Christ child, we are confronted in our Gospel lesson with a picture of Jesus dying on the cross?

And yet the two are inseparable--Christmas and the cross. It is impossible to appreciate the events of Bethlehem except in the light of Golgotha. For the hand that reached down to bless our lives in the babe in the manger is indeed covered with scratches.

The truth is: if Jesus never died on the cross and was resurrected, his birth would have little, if any, impact on our world, indeed on our lives. 

BUT … because God loves us, every one of us, he endured the scratches.  And it is only through the scratches that God’s saving love is made real for each of us.

Are there children dying of AIDS in Africa? Jesus came to save them. Are there children dying of gunshot wounds in schools in America? Jesus came to save them. Are there people living in penthouses who have no purpose for life except to deaden their senses with drugs, alcohol and meaningless sex? Jesus came to save them.

Are there people living under bridges with rags for a pillow? Jesus came to save them. Are there families torn with abuse and adultery? Jesus came to save them.

Are there entire countries sinking under the weight of poverty and pollution? Jesus came to save them.

God’s love is so vast and so deep that everyone of us is under its umbrella.

Dr. Gary Nicolosi compares God’s love to the 1993 hit film, In the Line of Fire. Clint Eastwood plays Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan.

Horrigan had protected the life of every American President for more than three decades, but he was haunted by the memory of what had happened thirty years before.

Horrigan was a young agent assigned to President Kennedy on that fateful November day in Dallas in 1963. When the assassin fired, Horrigan froze in shock.

For thirty years afterward, he wrestled with the ultimate question for a Secret Service agent: “Can I take a bullet for the President?”

In the climax of the movie, Horrigan does what he had been unable to do earlier: he throws himself into the path of an assassin’s bullet to save the President.

Secret Service agents are willing to do such a thing because they believe the President is so valuable to our country that he is worth dying for.

At Calvary that situation is reversed, says Dr. Nicolosi. The President of the Universe actually takes a bullet for each of us. At the cross we see how valuable we are to God.

God loves us. Every one of us. Young, old, rich, poor, whatever color or family background. And God is working to draw us unto Himself.

This means that God sees something in us worth saving. That’s amazing, isn’t it? God sees something in us worth saving. I wonder why? After all, we’re not all that great. I mean, human beings are capable of some incredibly stupid activities.

You heard about that “allegedly” true story about the two duck hunters from Michigan, didn’t you?

Well, one of them buys a brand new Lincoln Navigator. Very expensive. Only a few days later, he and his friend go duck hunting in upper Wisconsin.

It’s mid-winter, and naturally all of the lakes are frozen. These two guys go out on the ice with their guns, a dog, and of course, the new Navigator.

Obviously, making a hole in the ice large enough to invite a passing duck, is going to take a little more power than the average drill auger can produce.

So, out of the back of the new Navigator comes a stick of dynamite with a short 40-second fuse.

Now, our two rocket scientists, afraid they might slip on the ice while trying to run away after lighting the fuse, decide on the following course of action:

They light the 40-second fuse; then, with a mighty thrust, they throw the stick of dynamite as far away as possible.

Unfortunately, their dog is a highly-trained Black Lab used for retrieving-- especially things thrown by its owner.

You guessed it, the dog takes off across the ice at a high rate of speed and grabs the stick of dynamite, with the burning 40-second fuse, just as it hits the ice.

The two men swallow, blink, start waving their arms and screaming at the dog to stop.

The dog, now apparently cheered on by his master, keeps coming. One hunter panics, grabs the shotgun and shoots the dog. The shotgun is loaded with #8 bird shot, hardly big enough to stop a Black Lab. The dog stops for a moment, slightly confused, then presses on.

Another shot, and this time the dog, still standing, becomes really confused and of course terrified, thinks these two geniuses have gone insane. The dog takes off to find cover, under the brand new Navigator.

The men continue to scream as they run. The red hot exhaust pipe on the truck touches the dog’s rear end, he yelps, drops the dynamite under the truck and takes off after his master.

Then BOOM! The truck is blown to bits and sinks to the bottom of the lake.

The insurance company says that sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is not covered by the policy.

The dog is okay . . . doing fine.

I suspect this story is an urban legend, still, have you ever noticed that people do some really stupid things? And yet God sees something in us worth saving.

It’s an awesome thought. God sees something in us? I wonder how many of us think of ourselves like Linus in that old “Peanuts” cartoon?

You know the one: Linus is looking at his hands one day. He says, “These are magnificent hands! These are hands that may create incredible works of art. These are hands that may one day shape the course of history. These are hands that may one day hold the future of the world!”

Lucy, the inevitable spoilsport, walks over, looks at his hands, and says, “They’ve got jelly on them.”

Well folks, my hands have jelly on them. Don’t yours? And yet God loves us. With all our imperfections, all our sins, God loves us. God sees something in us worth saving.

And that is why God sent Jesus.

Evangelist Tony Campolo says that in his teenage years he was terrified by a visiting pastor's depiction of Judgment Day.

This pastor claimed that one day God would show us a movie of every single sinful thought, word, or action we ever committed. The preacher then ended his lurid description with the announcement, "And your mother will be there!"

But Tony claims that Judgement Day will more closely mirror what happened during the trial over the Watergate scandal.

The prosecutor brought in a tape of a conversation between Nixon and his aides. Just at the most crucial part of the tape, the section that revealed their crimes, there was an eighteen minute gap of silence.

Nixon's faithful secretary, Rosemary Wood, had erased the incriminating evidence!

In the same way, Campolo says, Jesus will erase all the incriminating evidence against us.

Friends, I don’t know about you, but I need more than 18 minutes erased!  That is why Jesus came into this world and suffered and died.

The story of Christ’s death on the cross is not out of place on this Sunday before the beginning of Advent. This is the real “reason for the season,” as the saying goes.

Jesus hangs on a cross between two thieves. One of them hurls insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebukes him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And Jesus answers him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Friends, that second thief is you and me. We come this day confessing that without God’s love and mercy, we have no hope.

But because God loves us, and because Jesus died for us, we have abundant hope about life, about death and about life beyond the grave.

In December 1997, a young man in West Paducah, Kentucky, took a gun to school and killed seven of his classmates. Parents came from all over the community, frantically praying a parents’ most heartfelt prayer: Not my child. Please don’t let anything happen to my child.

There was one mother whose prayer was not answered that day. Her son died in the shooting. In spite of her shock and grief, the mother didn’t hesitate when doctors ask if she would donate her son’s organs to someone else in critical need.

Many months pass, and the mother discovers that some of her son’s organs went to a Methodist pastor. She contacts him and asks to meet. The day of their meeting, the grieving mother and the grateful pastor talk and pray and celebrate the life of the precious son who died.

And then the mother asks one last question: “Can I put my ear to your heart? Can I hear my son’s heart beating, one more time?”

When God wants to hear His Son’s heart beat, God puts His ear to our chest. Christ died that we may live. That’s how loved we are.

On this Sunday that honors Christ our King, as another church-year journey ends, and as we begin our preparation for Advent and Christmas, I pray that we will find comfort and joy in knowing that Jesus died to bring to reality a kingdom where we can all be freely loved and forgiven, despite our failures and shortcomings.

Everyone is welcome in this kingdom. God’s grace covers even you AND me.

And for that we can be certainly and eternally grateful. 

Amen!