Christ is Dead

In Luke's Gospel Jesus assures one of the bandits who was crucified next to him that "today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43)." Today we both will be taken away from this world. Today we will be dead.

I used to interpret this promise as meaning that Jesus and this bandit will be in heaven that day. But Jesus does not say that the two of them will be in heaven together today, rather "today you will be with me in paradise." The witness of the Gospels and other New Testament texts tell us that Jesus died that day. On the third day, the morning after the Sabbath, Jesus is resurrected. And then forty days later Jesus ascends into heaven. Forty days later! Jesus was not in heaven on that first day, nor was the bandit. However they were in paradise.

If Paul was able to help us understand the tree yesterday there is a good bet he will be helpful in us understanding the "paradise" Jesus and the bandit entered when they died. In 1 Corinthians Paul describes people who have died as having "fallen asleep." When Jesus and the bandit died that day their existence did not end. They did not perish. Instead, they entered a state similar to being in a good heavy sleep. It is paradise because they are in the presence of God. It is paradise because God is holding them in his Almighty arms. Time passes without a care.

Tonight, Holy Saturday, we celebrate that God raised Jesus from the dead. He awakens from this gracious state of sleep to live as a new creation. Paul says that all who are united with Christ will awaken from sleep as well. He explains this in 1 Corinthians 15 by comparing Jesus to Adam again, just as he did in Romans 5. "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a human being. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive (1 Cor 15:20-22)."

Tonight Jesus beats death forever as he leaves the state of sleep and once again lives. We don't know when. We don't know how. In the first century Jewish world a new day began at sundown. The first Easter Sunday actually began when the sun set the night before. At any time that night God gave Jesus new resurrection life. In a traditional Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday a new paschal candle is lit by the flame of a new fire. It represents the new life given to Christ that first night.

Jesus' resurrection life at Easter is our good news as well. As Paul said in both Romans and 1 Corinthians we all are connected to Jesus' death and resurrection. A promise of resurrection life is given to all of us. Jesus is the first fruits, but the day will come when all who sleep in the arms of God will live again. The day will come when we all will gather together, resurrected children of God, at the great feast in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus will be there. The bandit will be there. The loved ones you have lost over the years will be there, resurrected from the dead. You will be there too. We who are united with Christ will be given the same resurrection life he lived at Easter.

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:3-5)."