'Today you will be with me in paradise' by Arthur Going [Holy Week Vigil 2022]
Jesus gave us a litany of last words, known as the Seven Last Words of Christ. The deathbed words of the Suffering Servant provide a framework for Holy Week. Each day between now and Resurrection Sunday, seven friends will share their own stories to help us retrieve lament and to keep vigil with Jesus. Their stories have helped form my understanding of cruciform suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too.
Each short story will be paired with an image, a Scripture passage, and a prayer. This year I’ve curated a series of contemporary icons from Ukrainian iconographers. As we hold space for each other’s stories, we take shelter under the outstretched arms of Christ for every story of suffering around the world. In order to lean toward the suffering in Ukraine, one of our storytellers is giving us the opportunity to send help to two organizations on the ground in Ukraine and neighboring friendly countries, and to receive a special thank you gift from Michelle Van Loon in return.
Would you read our friend Art's story with an open heart for any words Christ might be speaking to you?
Epithaphios, Kateryna Kuziv (b. 1993, Lviv, Ukraine)- Source
“One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’
But the other criminal rebuked 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.’
Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’”
Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.
by The Rev’d Canon Arthur Going
I’ve always been stopped in my tracks both emotionally and spiritually by what I once read from a theologian named Gil Meilaender.
He said:
People talk constantly about setting goals. … life seldom works like that … Much of the time we’re already committed in important ways before we really decide what our ‘goals’ should be…. Don’t imagine that the point of life is to set goals. Think, instead, that its point is to be faithful to the commitments already built into your life. People who make goals central are people who think the most important things in life are consciously chosen. People who make faithfulness central are people who realize that, quite often, our obligations (or commitments) come to us in ways that are unexpected, unchosen and even unwanted.
I’ve always lived with the desire to set and even more, achieve big goals, but I was raised by a woman who was the picture of a life called to her commitments.
She seemed always to oscillate between joy and depression; the depression may have stemmed from being overshadowed by her own mother’s early death. In any event, she had herself in the grave thirty years before she died. I remember her telling me when I was a boy that one hymn she wanted to be sung at her funeral was “I’m but a stranger here; heaven is my home.”
If I had told her that Jesus wasn’t talking about “heaven”—our eternal resting place—but about the coming of the kingdom that day, through his death on the cross, she might have been confused by the distinction. But she lived with a simple trust in the promises Jesus made: Today… with me…
I can’t say that Jesus's word to the dying thief was my mother’s favorite Bible verse, but the promise of Jesus’ today-presence with her certainly filled her imagination and defined her sense of calling.
I don’t know if my mom ever thought about her life that way—calling. But I do know that she lived out her callings through her faithfulness to her commitments. Among those were the commitments that she made when she and my dad decided to adopt three children. I am the oldest of those three.
Living a life of calling for her sprang from the reality that there was never a day when she didn’t know Jesus: he was her constant companion, her abiding comfort. She made sure her children knew him, talked about him frequently, and then found ways to introduce him to her grandchildren. But it was a late sad season in her life, living with us in Texas when I saw the fruit of trust in those promises.
She was sometimes irritable, occasionally petty or vindictive; she could be hard on the people closest to her, She was a sinner (like all of us). What mattered most to her was that she was loved by the Father, redeemed by Jesus, grafted into the family of Christ in baptism, nurtured in one church family after another, sharing her faith with others and her gifts in service … (and this is critical) knowing the constant companionship of the Holy Spirit, praying in her groaning in last years, with sighs too deep for words.
Because there was silence at the end of her life. She suffered from primary progressive aphasia—she lost the ability to say her thoughts. The woman who scarcely had an unuttered thought was stilled. But, incongruously, one early morning, when I spied her praying in our kitchen (when she could barely speak anymore): “This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it .” Her commitments were her purpose.
There was, to the end, her simple faith, her knowledge of Jesus’ today-companionship. The simplicity of her faith had often embarrassed me, but in that late season, I envied it, when my big goals actually didn’t bring me the joy that her faithfulness did.
Our callings are so simple, actually. To know the love of Jesus, today. And to be faithful to our commitments. And our commitments as Jesus followers are always in one way or another about finding ourselves in the gift of giving our lives away.
The Rev’d Canon Arthur Going was born and adopted in Cincinnati, Ohio, educated at Princeton University, Indiana University, Christ Seminary, Covenant Seminary, and the University of Chicago, ordained as a Lutheran pastor in 1981, and as an Anglican priest in 2010. He has served as a parish pastor and church planter in Germany, Chicago, Augusta, St. Louis, St Paul, Plano, and Louisville.
Married for 40 years to Nancy, they live in Nashville and have two adult children and six grandchildren. For the last eight years, Art has served on staff of the Diocese of Christ Our Hope, focusing on leadership development and the spiritual health of clergy and parishes. He loves music (from Bach to Bluegrass), cooking, traveling with his wife Nancy, and the St. Louis Cardinals.
The Second Word: Today you will be with me in Paradise.
Read
I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, save my life!”
For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. [Psalm 116:1-4,8]
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation: And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” [Luke 23:39-43]
Pray
We praise you for your saints who have entered into joy, especially Art’s mother and the penitentnt thief whom we remember together today.May we also come to share in your heavenly kingdom.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world. If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
Listen
Listen to Last Words - a playlist for our Holy Week Vigil
Give
For your donation of $25 or more, Michelle Van Loon will send you (or the person of your choice - U.S. addresses only) an autographed copy of her new book, Translating Your Past: Finding Meaning in Family Ancestry, Genetic Clues, and Generational Trauma.
Any funds Michelle raises through this initiative will be divided between these two organizations who are both doing important work right this moment on the ground in the region.
If you would like to donate $25 or more and receive a signed copy of Translating Your Past as a thank you, click here to email Michelle with the name and mailing address of the person to whom you’d like her to send the book. In turn, she’ll send you her PayPal and/or Venmo information so you can send her your donation.
Click through the images below for more details.
