This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 11/23/25, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Jeremiah 23:1-6 & Colossians 1:11-20 & Luke 23:33-43.
It’s not easy to be a grown-up. Don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of hard things about being a kid. In a many ways, children are totally out of control, and that is something that most of us adults want to avoid at all costs.
But at least for children who live in healthy families, so much is taken care of for them. They have a lot less to worry about than your average grown-up. Assuming a stable family situation, most kids don’t have to worry about what they’re going to eat and what they’re going to wear and where they’re going to live and what they’re going to do tomorrow. They can pretty much assume that the adults in their lives are taking care of that.
As adults, however, most of us have to really think about these things and plan how we’re going to pay the bills and make rent and how we’re going to get and keep a job.
In addition to that, a lot of us are not just taking care of ourselves. Many of us have dependents: our children, sometimes our parents. Many of us are in leadership positions in our communities – at work, or at church, or in our friendship circles. We have a lot of responsibilities. People are counting on us.
This responsibility becomes even heavier when we realize we can’t always count on other people. In recent decades and years, it’s become increasingly difficult to trust that we can rely on the people who make the most important decisions in our society – our governmental and civic leadership. Our institutions are in such disarray that it seems like everything is up for grabs and nothing can be counted on. We can only watch out for ourselves.
It’s no wonder that we’re all feeling a little bit stressed out these days.
It may be comforting to know that this experience of social dislocation and chaos is not a new experience to human beings. In fact, it has happened many times in many places before. One of these times and places was in the Kingdom of Judah in the time of Jeremiah before the Babylonian exile.
God raised Jeremiah up as a prophet to denounce the selfish and destructive leadership of Judah at that time. Speaking the word of the Lord, Jeremiah spoke woe against the shepherds who destroyed and scattered the sheep of God’s pasture. Jeremiah let the wicked rulers of his day know that God was going to scatter them, just as they had scattered the people through their violence and greed and self-centeredness.
Jeremiah promised that in the days to come, after the Babylonian captivity, God would raise up new shepherds over the people, righteous shepherds who would care for and guide the people. The people would no longer live in fear and chaos and dislocation, and none would be lost.
God promised that the days were surely coming that he would raise up for David a righteous branch who would reign as king and deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness in the land.
That sounds pretty good right about now, doesn’t it? It would be nice if God would raise up a righteous branch to lead our country and deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness in the land. That would be pretty good.
As it turns out, Jeremiah’s prophecy came true. God did in fact send this righteous branch to rule in justice and righteousness, to shepherd his people and guide us in the way of peace and wholeness.
We hear about him in Paul’s letter to the Colossians. He describes this righteous branch as the “image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Paul tells us that in Jesus all things in heaven and on earth were created through him and for him. He says that in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
This is a big surprise, of course, because in the book of Jeremiah we read about a righteous branch who will be raised up as a successor to King David. But as we know, David was famously a warrior, and the kings that followed in his line were often quite engaged in warfare and power games that upheld the dominance of the king, coercively, over the people.
So what is this about Jesus – who is the righteous branch raised up for David – what is this about him “making peace through the blood of his cross”? A Roman cross. A cross of shame and degradation and public humiliation. A cross of death and helplessness before the military might of the greatest empire that the world had ever known. Not God’s empire. Caesar’s empire.
What does it mean for the Messiah to die on this cross and endure that shame?
In our reading from the Gospel of Luke, it says that everyone mocked Jesus when he was nailed to the cross at Golgotha. The Roman soldiers mocked him, of course, because that was their job. But the Jewish leadership mocked him, too. It even says that one of the other criminals who was being executed beside Jesus mocked him.
There was one person who wasn’t mocking him, and that was another criminal who was nailed to a cross just beside Jesus. And it says that that criminal rebuked the other for mocking Jesus. He said, “You know, you and I have been condemned justly, and we’re getting what we deserve for what we’ve done. But this man Jesus has done nothing wrong.”
And having said this, the man turned to Jesus and said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
What are we to make of that? How could this man have said such a thing? It made absolutely no sense. Only the Holy Spirit could have inspired this man to say this, because it was in no way evident that Jesus was in any way a king and in any way coming into a kingdom.
This was not the scenario that the religious people expected. They thought that the Messiah, the righteous branch of David, would be one who came to conquer.
It’s not complicated, right? King David and the other kings like him were military rulers. They were conquerors. They were strongmen. The way they maintained their power was through the force of arms and a dash of charisma. So how could it be that Jesus, scourged by the Romans, mocked by the people, and dying on a cross, could be the king of Israel?
Even more amazing, Jesus confirms who he is by responding to the man asking that Jesus remember him when he comes into his kingdom by saying, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
This word “paradise” is really interesting because in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament – which was what the Jews at the time mostly were reading when they read the Bible – in that translation, the word “garden” in the first part of the book of Genesis is “paradise.” The Paradise of Eden.
So I think it’s a fair reading to say that Jesus was telling this man that today he would be together with him in the new creation. I’ve preached about recently that we don’t really know what the resurrection is. The resurrection is mysterious; we can’t fully comprehend it. But whatever the resurrection is, Jesus was saying to this man, “Today you’re going to join me in that reality.”
That resurrection life, that power of God surging through Jesus, seems to be the kingdom that Jeremiah taught his people to expect.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, which we read a part of this morning, Paul tells the Colossians that God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus rescued the man beside him on the cross from the power of darkness and transferred him into the kingdom, the garden, the paradise of God, the new creation in which all things are made new. The agony of death and humiliation on a cross turns out to be merely the birthpangs of a whole new reality that we are being born into.
This is really good news for us who are just trying to be adults in a world that feels like it’s flying apart. This is good news for us who are living in a society in chaos, where no one seems to be in charge. The good news of the kingdom is for us who are watching in dismay as the false shepherds destroy and scatter the sheep of God’s pasture.
God has indeed raised up a righteous branch for David, and he is here to teach his people himself. He is gathering the remnant of God’s flock out of all the lands where we have been driven. We are being brought back into our fold where we will be fruitful and multiply.
And this part is important: God says that he will raise up shepherds over our people who will shepherd us, “and we will no longer fear or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing,” says the Lord.
Who are these shepherds?
Because God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son, we now participate in Christ’s shepherding work. United to him in his death and resurrection, we exercise his authority in our actual lives—caring for neighbors, binding up the wounded and brokenhearted, letting the oppressed go free, declaring the year of the Lord’s favor.
This is our path to becoming real grown-ups: Becoming under-shepherds of the sheep to the chief shepherd, Jesus. We can be secure in the work that he gives us – healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and caring for our neighbors – because God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. In this new kingdom, Jesus reigns and we reign with him.
You can see how this is a different posture than the beleaguered, burnt out, fearful life that this world has conditioned us to. Knowing that we are called to be shepherds under Jesus’ authority changes everything about what we do, everything about how we see the world and how we interact in it.
We don’t have to be in dread. We don’t have to be in despair. Because we have been rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved son. We have been promised that today we will be with him in the garden. We will be with him in paradise. We will be with him in the new Eden, the new creation, the kingdom of God, where every tear will be wiped away and we will become instruments of his peace.
Now you may say to me, “Micah, that’s crazy. I know as Christians this is something we’re supposed to believe, but look around you. Look at what’s really happening. Darkness is growing. Institutions are crumbling. Nothing makes any sense.”
To that I would say you are absolutely right, and that is exactly what Jesus faced in his own ministry, leading up to and including his suffering and death on the cross.
And yet, in the midst of all that, against all odds and all explanations, one man beside him on the cross was clearly filled with the Holy Spirit and given eyes to see what no one else could see. He saw that Jesus was coming into his kingdom. And in reaching out for it he found himself immersed in it.
That’s what we’re invited to. Not to safety, not to guarantees, not to empirical evidence that we can point to and say, “Look, this is obviously how things are.” Rather, we are invited into a reality that we can sense with our hearts and trust with our lives despite all appearances: that we are being rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved son.
The Lord is our righteousness. In a world full of greed and self-centeredness and violence, the Lord is our righteousness. He is our peace. He is our safety. He is the reality in which the cosmos was formed and coheres. All things were created through him and for him and in him. Through the blood of his cross, all things will be redeemed and brought into the power and kingdom of God.