"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise. " Today's feast, Christ the King, is a lukewarm challenge to our faith that challenges our contemporary fragile, our Christianity nearsighted, with small projects.
say that Christ is king, it means that he will have the last word on history, on every story, even on my personal history. To say that Christ is king, it means not to give false evidence to the defeat of God and man in the modern world, believing instead that the world - despite everything - is not falling into chaos, but very tender and pregnant in the embrace of the Father. To say that Christ is king, is to create spaces of representation of the United where we are living our vocation to life, small advertising space to tell those who have lost the hearts and minds here, God loves you.
Today is the feast in which the ecclesial community is looking ahead, beyond and within our efforts because, again, the yardstick of our being is the realization of the United Church.
Christ, a king out of the box, then. Worse, the royalty of Jesus is a royalty that contradicts our view of God, because this God is defeated King of all losers, more than any fragile fragility. A king without a throne and scepter without hanging naked on a cross, a king who needs a sign to be identified. This is our God, brothers, defeated a god, not a triumphant God, not an omnipotent God, but God OSTES, displayed, disfigured, wounded, gave up, defeated.
A defeat, however, is a clear gesture of love, an impressive gift of self. A defeated
God of love, a God who - unexpectedly - shows his greatness in love and forgiveness. God - yes him - is at stake, it turns out, is revealed, is delivered.
God is not hidden, mysterious: it is clear, obvious provocation; hung on a cross, seemingly defeated, play all out to bend the hardness of man.
Jesus came to tell God to tell it. He, son of the Father gives to us and tells us who is truly God and the man replies. "No, thank you." Maybe God prefer a stern and forbidding, the supreme selfish enough in itself, powerful enough to convince and hold good?
Perhaps the pagan idea of \u200b\u200bGod that we do not satisfy us more because we like more, does not force us to conversion, he asks only superstition, not turn our affections, just tickle them.
The key to reading the Gospel today is all quell'inquietante assertion of the crowd to Jesus: "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself." Sentence to say that Luke is also the priests and soldiers pagans all agree that a sign of weakness in the thinking of others. The powerful, as we imagine, is the one who saves himself, who can afford to think only of themselves that has the means to be satisfied without the need of others. In this God is what we can not afford to be the most powerful of the powerful, who can do anything that does not need anything or anyone, lucky man! God becomes the projection of our most secret and unacknowledged desires, is what we admire in man politically successful, rich and secure a God with whom we can relate only trying to seduce him, to flatter, to bribe him.
No, brothers and sisters: Our God does not save himself, save us, save me.
God by giving self-fulfilling, relate, opening up to me, to us.
The two thieves crucified with him on Calvary, are the result of our discipleship.
The first challenge God sets the record straight: "If there is' that happen, deliver me from this suffering, save yourself and us, save me" concept of God as a king that simply subject, but under certain conditions however: in exchange for what they want, such as a redemption in extremis, does not admit its responsibility, it is not adult in his life read, try the shot, if it goes wrong. It is not loving his request: oozes pettiness and selfishness. How to - unfortunately often - our faith. What if I gain?
The other thief, however, is baffled. Capacitance does not know what happens, God is there who share his suffering. Suffering a result of his choices, his, innocent and pure that God hears and receives the shocking reality of what happens: weeping, cries out his love and calls for repentance and salvation.
Well, this is the icon of the disciple, brothers and sisters: one who realizes that the true face of God is compassion, tenderness, love and forgiveness. In our human suffering, we have two choices: we can fall into despair or fall at the foot of the cross and recognize, "this man really is the Son of God."
Yes my brethren, God is truly a king abnormal king hard to understand with our human logic.
A king who presented an alternative way of living, another way of thinking, a thinking that totally contradicts our "first of all we save ourselves and then, if anything, we will save the other."
So let's be honest, brothers, we understand it really is a God like that? A God who is weak with the weak? A God who is love and mercy for all? This is, indeed, the King we want?
We do not give a hasty reply, please, because if so - sincere and reasoned as it is logical - we can not camp in any way further excuses to devote Our conversion to full-time staff. Honest and final. Amen.
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