The King of Grace

Luke 23: 35-43
The leaders scoffed at Jesus saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? 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 have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

We have such a gracious King.

When celebrating the kingship of Jesus, we come face to face with the tension between the worldly definition of Kingly power and the heavenly definition because Jesus turned all the definitions upside down and redefined what it means to be King. One of the most powerful examples of his brand of kingship was his response to the thief on the cross beside him. Gracious. He was gracious beyond what we can fathom. He was nailed to the one place where not even the Father would have faulted him for being completely swallowed up by his own agony but Jesus still remembered who he was and what he was called to be: an incarnation of the Grace of God.

I’m sure all of you have encountered a gracious person at least once in your life. Have you ever stopped to analyze what made that person seem gracious to you? What did they do? How did they act that made you appreciate just being in their presence? What was their response to you and others that made them so attractive?

We appreciate graciousness wherever we find it but one place where we are really blessed is when we encounter gracious behavior in our priests. The priest in the parish we belong to is a very gracious man and there are many gracious priests in this diocese – as well as in your diocese, wherever that may be. However, we have all been disappointed by priests who failed to reflect God’s gracious love and many wounds have been sustained by the body due to this lack. My response to that is: how many people have been wounded by the same lack of graciousness in us?

We, the Royal Priesthood, have exactly the same responsibility as ministerial priests to be beautiful and accurate reflections of God’s graciousness. We are called to be People of Grace and we are called to be a Gracious People. We are dignified daughters and sons of God and Christ the King is our brother.  It behooves us to become a little more familiar with Kingly behavior as it was and is defined by Jesus and then ask ourselves if we exhibit the kind of behavior that makes others feel worthwhile and blessed in our presence.

Note how Jesus responded to the thief. He did not make the thief go through a full account of his sins. The thief was already suffering the natural consequences of his failures and that was enough. Jesus, engulfed in exactly the same suffering as the thief even though he didn’t deserve it, did not respond to the thief or to the situation with judgments of good versus bad or right versus wrong. Jesus did not lecture, reprimand, demand restitution or require a complete change of character before he welcomed the thief.  And he didn’t harbor any resentment whatsoever that as a good person he was suffering just as much as this bad person. What he did was immediately become the thief’s best friend. “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

 Gracious.

The gracious person is not hung up on appearances and does not make judgments. In the welcoming heart of a gracious person it is not a shock that a thief can enter paradise on the arm of the king. Gracious people are free of the self-judgment that says, “I’m pretty good” or “I’m very bad” but instead, focus on appreciating the beauty and value that God sees in them and which allows them to appreciate the immense beauty and value of others – even those who don’t meet the accepted criteria of goodness or value.

We say off the top of our heads that others certainly have value because our Christian theology teaches that Christ died for the whole world. But generally what we really mean when talking about the value of those who do not meet our standards of goodness or right thinking is that they have ‘potential value’ or that they have not reached ‘full value’. Presumably they will reach full value when they meet certain criteria such as recognizing the error of their ways, apologizing, changing their behavior or their belief system or coming back to church. The problem with this attitude, besides that it doesn’t reflect the nature of our King, is that we get caught up in the necessity of having to watch and strictly maintain our own righteousness, something we have no capacity to do. It’s a jagged and weary circle of judgment and somehow the King of unconditional love gets left out of the loop. 

Truly gracious people have experienced true grace, know they are loved and therefore assume that everyone they meet is a co-receptor of God’s full love and is worthy of utter respect, attention and appreciation. This is why you enjoy being with a gracious person. You feel special. You feel as if that person really sees you. You feel valued and respected for who you are, as you are.

It is good to practice being gracious toward everyone you encounter but it will be a struggle to maintain a consistently gracious manner unless you have consistent encounters with our gracious King. I think we often think of grace as a thing, either something God gives to us in order to overcome a specific struggle (actual grace) or what we receive in baptism, the divine life that infuses our souls (sanctifying grace). Grace is all of that but it’s pretty dry theology until you experience the utter beauty of being in the presence of a gracious King who only has eyes for you, who is delighted that you have come as you are and tells you that he wants to sit with you at the banquet. When you have personally spent time being the focal point of gracious and joyful love, that’s when you begin to understand the fullness and wideness of true grace. That’s when you fall deeply in love with your King. That’s when you fall in love with how the King sees you and others and that’s when you begin to yearn to emulate the gracious dignity of your King. Then grace becomes an overflow from loved received rather than an outer action that can easily break down, allowing you to get caught up again in self-judgment and in the judgment of others.

 St. John of the Cross wrote:

When you regarded me
Your eyes imprinted your grace in me,
In this, you loved me again,
And thus my eyes merited
To also love what you see in me….
Let us go forth together to see ourselves in your beauty.
(Spiritual Canticle, 32, 33)

Be regarded by the King. Be imprinted by Grace.