This past Sunday marked the end of the “church year,” the last Sunday of Pentecost, when we celebrate Christ the King.
Lest we forget, our gospel lesson reminds us that our king is a slave executed as a criminal, scoffed by leaders, mocked by soldiers and even derided by a condemned prisoner.
So much for power! As our Savior, hanging from a cross, lay dying from a torturous death, on an instrument of death that the clever world designed, a criminal, who is really us, looks into Jesus’ eyes and sees something of Christ’s glory, and out of the depths of his soul asks for forgiveness.
Jesus, with no interrogation, no reluctance, no hesitation, no doubt, shows grace and mercy by inviting him, by inviting us, right now, to be with him in paradise.
Bam, it happens that fast.
Our spiritual sages refer to a “thin place” as a place where the boundary between the finite world and paradise is very thin – a place where we experience the glory of God, like when we see a beautiful sunrise or walk into an enormous cathedral or feel the expanse of the night sky.
Yet, I also think that there are “thin places” that have nothing to do about the physical place, and everything to do about the connection between people, being near someone, like Jesus is near to us.
I had an experience of this kind of “thin place” recently in the pulpit, of all places, during our Veterans Day service. In my homily, I began to tell my father’s story as a veteran, and maybe because the church was filled with veterans and their families, or that people were leaning forward in their seats, or that I was exhausted, overwhelmed by post-election sorrow, (probably all of the above), I began to cry. Tears came; there was no holding them back. And in that pulpit, so vulnerable, I felt loved, held, honored, and indeed experienced the veil between the ordinary and the extraordinary as very thin.
Paradise: In that vulnerable moment, I felt the beauty of my father’s brokenness rather than feel the shame of his failures.
At the age of 21 my father enlisted in the Army to avoid being drafted into the Korean War. He returned from the war, married my mother, from a working-class, union strong family, whom he courted with love letters from Korea.
And then, with a wife and four children in tow, he took great risks to pursue the American Dream.
I grew up poor and privileged.
I know what it’s like to have bill collectors at the front door, eviction notices plastered on windows, to have no winter coat over many winters, holes in the soles of my shoes, to go to bed hungry, and to have Christmases ignored. And there was too much shame to discuss any of it.
I also grew up in a home on a lake, a simple home, but in a beautiful setting. And I enjoyed watching my mother prepare dinner parties when business ventures looked possible.
Words and phrases like “No time for idleness” and “You can do anything you set your mind to” were spoken in my home. Thank God. I wouldn’t be here without that kind of encouragement.
Finally, when my father was in his mid 50s, he made a success of owning and running his own bar/restaurant: Gerties’ Grill, a small hamburger joint also referred to as Galloping Gerties. It became the enlisted men and women’s Club House.
My father became both chaplain and counselor and social worker to the many, many young service men and women away from their homes who poured out their grief and fear and joys to him. Though finally financially secure, he died a broken man. His dreams never realized.
I’ve been thinking about my father a lot lately because I know, if he were still alive, he would have voted for Donald Trump, without a doubt. My father was not a bigot, nor was he stupid; not a reader, not educated, but he was smart and intuitive, and a wicked hard worker, and he defended the “little guy.”
We would never have discussed it — he would know that I would be a Clinton supporter and I would know he would be a Trump supporter; a dance I still tango with all my siblings.
My father never felt worthy of God’s love; there was no convincing otherwise. He would have felt camaraderie with the down and out, with those who know that whenever any kind of Titanic sinks, it is the wealthy who are saved.
And a vote for Trump would have been a vote to break the system that keeps the downtrodden, down. Why not throw a final brick through the wall that is protecting the elites in Washington?
My tears in the pulpit were a gift. I am asking an old question of faith in a new way: How can I live my life believing in the kind of King Jesus is? In other words, my father is the crucified, (and many others) and I am the one, staring into his dying, seeing his glory, and asking for his forgiveness.
And I am overwhelmed by his words: today you will be with me in Paradise.
The Rev. Jamie L. Hamilton is from All Saints’ Church in Peterborough.