The Book of Common Prayer’s Gospel reading for November 25, 2007 is Luke 23:35-43. It’s a great text but, for me, it just doesn’t seem to fit for this Sunday, does it? Last Sunday maybe, but not today, Christ the King Sunday. On this day don’t you think we should be focusing on king stuff and not cross stuff. Yet, there we find the King, in all His capitol K glory, hanging on a cross being killed by His own creation.

Jesus is a different kind of king, however, so maybe He would be pleased for this text to be the text of the day. He was so absent of arrogance and so filled with humility and so loving and forgiving, maybe that is what we most need to see about Him on this last Sunday of Christian year.

Besides that, wouldn’t you know it, even in His dying moments He isn’t isolated but is so present as to bring the grace of God into the life of a man dying beside Him. In a few moments He will die saying, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit” (Luke 23:46). Before this, however, He prays “Father, into your hands I commit the spirit of this man beside me. His actions and decisions over the years have brought Him to this cross, Father, but today I’ve told him that he will be with me in Paradise. So, I give him to you, Father. Take him home.”

In the midst of all the sneering and mocking and abuse Jesus finds it in His heart to touch one more human being before He goes back to heaven. You know what? I think this unnamed criminal made it to paradise that day, not because of who he was but because of who Jesus is.

What a great story. What a wonderful moment in time. What a momentous act of forgiveness. More than these, though, what a Savior. What a KING.

It used to bother me that I didn’t have a better awareness of prophecies about the future. I just never could get the time frames down and the flow charts together or an exact understanding of what all those weird looking creatures in Biblical visions and dreams were all about. I felt like a failure that I couldn’t, with a sense of confident assurance, tell people exactly and precisely what was barreling down the pike toward them. Then one day I started reading the Bible a bit more closely.

Did you know Jesus Himself didn’t even know when He was coming back for His Church? In Mark 13:32 He said, “Of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” As if that isn’t enough, just prior to His giving the gift of the Holy Spirit to His Church He said, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts. 1:7). Sounds like dates and timetables and charts weren’t on His agenda.

What was on Jesus’ agenda was the fact that He was coming back, that the world was moving toward a day of judgment, and that as those days approached His people were to know that those days would “lead to an opportunity for your testimony” (Luke 21:13). In that light Jesus said two important things: (1) “See to it that you are not misled” (Luke 21:8), and (2) “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:19).

Instead of His people being preoccupied with “times and epochs” Jesus called them to know that they would “receive power when the Holy Spirit” had come upon them, and that in that remarkable power they would be His witnesses ”to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:7-8).

Spirit-filled power. Now that’s something worth sinking your teeth into.

W.C. Fields was not known for having a heart for the Bible, but one day he was caught reading the Bible, and he was asked why. His response was, “I’m looking for loopholes.”

Mr. Fields seems to have many friends all around the world who are doing the same thing-- looking for loopholes. One’s worldview drives this kind of looking-for-loopholds thinking. Some folk’s philosophy of life is so settled for them that anything not embraced by their belief system is challenged. Particularly, when it comes to Jesus it seems that some people will do just about whatever they need to do to trip Him up or trap Him so that they can win the “Gotcha” game.

In Luke chapter 20 we are told that the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection so, of course, they had issues with Jesus who profoundly believed in resurrection. In order to stump Him and make Him look bad, I suppose, they came up with an outrageous story about a woman whose husbands kept dying. In that culture it was the responsibility of a brother to take care of a widow when her husband died. This woman started going through husbands like you wouldn’t believe -- seven of them; and the Sadducees wanted to know whose wife of the seven brothers she would be in heaven.

Jesus said they had missed the whole point. In heaven it’s not about marrying. It’s about being in the presence of God who changes an old order of things for a brand new sinless order. Besides that, Jesus said, God isn’t the God of the dead. That’s a “gotcha” question. God is the God of the living. This sounds like there may be a lot of stuff you and I need to work out long before we see who's marrying who in heaven, or what it means to be like an angel.

We really do need to stick with the real questions; questions that matter for all eternity. Do you believe in resurrection? If you do it wouldn’t be a bad idea to prepare for it. What we believe about resurrection is a pretty serious deal. Playing “Gotcha” games with God probably isn’t the best use of our time.

Long ago there was a hated Jewish tax collector by the name of Zaccheus, who was small in stature but still had a way about him that enabled him to do his job so well that he was rich. He worked for Rome and made his money off the backs of his fellow Jews who very much disliked him. In fact, his job, a long with every tax collector working for Rome had gained him the title, "Sinner." Needless to say, in a very real way he was a man without a country.

I suppose we all have our stories don’t' we? Through choices we've made, attitudes we've held, poor decisions that have disconnected us from family and friends, we find ourselves making it, but not really. We're okay but not really. Everything's fine, but not really.

Then Jesus came to town one day and Zaccheus wanted a look at the show. The only problem is that Jesus isn't much into show and before he knew what hit him, Jesus had invited himself to Zaccheus' house.

Exactly what happened over the next few moments is unclear. We just know that something profound and life changing took place in this tax collector. Suddenly he was making great promises and incredibly generous statements about how he was going to change his ways. He was going to give up to half his possessions to the poor and to those he had defrauded he was going to return to them four times as much as he had taken from them.

Apparently his response wasn't just words and empty promises. At least Jesus believed him and said, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham" (Luke 19:9).

This one man who was lost found God and it changed his life. I wonder if there are others like him around us. We really need to bring Jesus to them because Jesus said that He came "to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).

He found you one day and me, too. I wonder if there’s anybody else in our town like us who also needs to be found by God?