Next Sunday we will be stepping into the wonderful, colorful, joyful season of Advent! Our eyes will turn toward Bethlehem off in the distance, and our hearts will once again overflow with the peace, joy and love found in the birth of Jesus.

But that’s next Sunday!

TODAY – however – is something of a paradox. Where next week we will focus on the Savior’s birth, today’s lectionary Gospel reading is about Jesus’ death. The scene is Calvary, and Jesus has been crucified. His cross is hoisted up between two other death-row inmates, both of them criminals. One of those men taunts Jesus, telling him to prove that he is the Messiah by saving himself – and them. The other rebukes his partner in crime saying, “Hey, we deserve what we’re getting, but this man has done nothing wrong.”

And that’s when Jesus turns his head toward this dying man and says, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Why do you suppose the Church today takes up such a reading about the end of Jesus’ life, just before we turn to the story of the beginning of Jesus’ life?

Well, today is a special Sunday called Christ the King. It is the last Sunday in the Christian year. Our Christian calendar begins next week on the first Sunday in Advent. From there, the liturgical seasons roll on – Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost – all the way to today, Christ the King Sunday. Today the Church proclaims that what Jesus came to accomplish has indeed been completed. The birth of our Savior has resulted in the salvation of humankind.

So Jesus turns to the criminal on the cross beside him and says, “Today…you will be with me in Paradise.”

The salvation born on Christmas Day has come into the life of the thief on the cross! The kingdom of God promised in Jesus’ birth has arrived!

“Today you will be with me in Paradise!”

Today!

And this promise of Jesus is not only made to the thief on the cross.

It is a promise made to you…and me!

So this morning, I want to invite you to step into this new day Jesus says has come!

First of all, it is a GOOD day!

You know, some of us live our lives in the past. Yesterday is our primary orientation. The older I get, the more I find myself remembering “the good old days” when I ran the 100-meter dash in 8-seconds flat, scored 400 points once in a football game, and could jump so high I could slam dunk a basketball between my legs…backwards. Why, back in those days, we used to walk to school, five-miles, uphill, through chest-high snowdrifts, on music days carrying the piano! Oh, those were the days! But along with all those amazing accomplishments of my more youthful years, I remember other things too – being rejected by the girl I loved in 6^th grade (I’ve never gotten over that one) – discovering that, contrary to my parents’ assurances, I was not the most handsome, smart, athletic kid ever to be born (haven’t gotten over that one either) – experiencing death for the first time when my grandfather passed away when I was 12 (death still shakes me to the core of my soul). A lot of my life today has been shaped by the past and I carry it with me to this very moment. Some of the baggage is good. Some of it is not so good. Some of the things we carry from the past are downright destructive.

But the real problem with centering our lives on yesterday is that we miss out on the beautiful goodness of TODAY!

Thanksgiving is just a few days away. Like Christ the King Sunday, Thanksgiving calls us to think about and celebrate the goodness of life even among all the challenges we face. I was once so blessed by a young man I was counseling with. He had just gone through a divorce and in meeting after meeting he talked endlessly about what a painful nightmare his marriage had been. There was a lot of hurt there. Then, one day, he told me he had made a discovery. “I had my kids with me last weekend,” he said, “and we had such a wonderful time together. But when I dropped them off at their mother’s house, and as I watched them walk up to the door, I found myself feeling such rage over all that had happened. So I sat there stewing in all that anger as they walked up the front steps, but all of a sudden, just before going in the door, my little girl turned back to me and blew me a kiss. That was the most powerful kiss I’ve ever had. The rage melted away, and I realized something. I realized that if my ex-wife and I had never been married, I never would have had that kiss – I never would have had those two beautiful kids. As painful as our marriage was and our divorce is, there is goodness in it.”

 That was a GOOD day for that young man!

And today is a GOOD day for you! You woke up! God gave you this day! God painted you a sunrise, and made your coffee smell the delicious way coffee does, and God blew breezes at you, and even sent birds to sing you a morning love song! All sorts of difficult things have come into your life, and there have been moments when you thought you couldn’t go on, but here you are – alive, loved, cared for! God has given you family members and friends who treasure you! God has brought you into a church family that loves and supports you! God has helped you discover that your life counts for something and you have shown it by helping others have a Thanksgiving dinner or in any one of a dozen different ways you give yourself away.

Oh, today you will be with me in Paradise! Today is a GOOD day! Give thanks for today!

And today is a NEW day!

Have I ever told you about how my best boyhood friend Dennis Astrella and I almost burned down a whole neighborhood? We were maybe 14 years old and had decided to go into the aerospace business. In the basement of Dennis’ house, we built a model rocket, and a launching pad, and bought some of those solid fuel rocket cells they have at hobby shops. When it was all done, we took our spacecraft and all its equipment to a vacant field behind the Beverly Road neighborhood. There we set up the launch pad, connected wires to a battery, had a countdown, pushed the ignition button and – WHOOOOOSH! Off went our rocket into space leaving behind a big twisting plume of thick white smoke. Dennis and I proudly watched the ascent of our personal entry into the space program…until we realized our feet were burning. Actually, the whole field was burning from the ignition of our rocket! We stomped our feet to put out the flames, but there was too much wind and not enough feet! The fire quickly spread across the field, racing toward the houses on Beverly Road. That’s when Dennis and I decided that it was time for us to get out of town! So we ran all the way home! He ran into his house. I ran into mine, and straight up to my bedroom where I put my head under the pillow to shut out the sounds of the fire truck sirens now echoing through the neighborhood. Well, they saved Beverly Road. But Dennis and I spent the next couple of months worrying about whether they had found the rocket body, and if the FBI had lifted fingerprints from it, and were coming to take us away.

Guilt. As Tim Meadows says, “Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.”

Are there things from your past that haunt your present? Mistakes you made, bad decisions, sins of omission or commission, things you did that you wish you hadn’t done? All of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s standards. All of us carry with us the sins of our past.

But today, you will be with me in Paradise!

You are forgiven! Jesus has forgiven you! The slate has been wiped clean! You can have a new start!

Today is a NEW day! So give thanks, for today!

But today is not only a GOOD day, and a NEW day. Today is the MOST IMPORTANT day of your life. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not come. Today is the only day you have to live life fully and make a difference in the world!

My fiends Dot and Conrad found this out firsthand one Sunday at the old First Congregational Church. A man came to worship that day, a stranger to me, and new to our church. He came in and sat by himself. Dot, who was sitting in the back of the church, thought he looked familiar. When it came time for Passing the Peace and folks were invited to greet each other, Dot walked down the aisle to where the man was sitting. Sure enough, it was a fellow she’d worked with years ago. Dot motioned for Conrad to join her, and after a friendly introduction, they sat down with the man and all three worshiped together.

Afterwards, Dot introduced me to her friend. He told me he’d not been in a church for a long time, that he had been through some problems and drifted away from God. But lately, he’d been feeling like he wanted to make peace with God. So he came to our church that morning looking for God, and Dot and Conrad made him feel welcomed.

The next day, Dot called me. “Do you remember the man from yesterday?” she asked. “Sure, I remember him.” “Well, his daughter just called to tell me he died last night. She said he had called her yesterday afternoon to tell about coming to church, and how we welcomed him, and that he had finally made peace with God. He had written down our name and phone number on the back of the worship folder. She called because she wanted to say thanks.”

When they woke up that Sunday morning long ago, Dot and Conrad had no idea how important that day would be to that man, or how powerfully God would use them to find and lead home a lost child of our heavenly Father.

Today, you will be with me in Paradise, Jesus said. Today is the MOST IMPORTANT day of your life.

And this very moment is important, too. Right here in this congregation there is someone who is lonely, and needs a friend; there is someone who is searching, and needs a guide; there’s someone who’s hurting and needs a healing touch; there’s someone who is shackled by guilt and needs to find forgiveness.

And what about you?

What do you need TODAY?

The story of Jesus and the thief on the cross contains a promise that we sometimes miss. Paradise. Jesus says, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

“Paradise” is the word the biblical writers used to describe the Garden of Eden before it was messed up by sin. Paradise is where God and his children know each other personally and intimately. Paradise is where people are joined together in healthy relationship. Paradise is where life is good, where there are new beginnings to be found, and where every day – every moment – is overflowing with purpose and importance.

“Today, you will be with me in Paradise,” Jesus says.

And all the thief on the cross could do was to trust that Jesus would make it happen.

Will you trust Jesus TODAY?