A Meeting at the Margins

When I was studying theology back in Canada, one of my professors asked a question I’ve never quite been able to shake. But it’s a question that kept rearing its head the longer I sat with our Luke reading today. He said something to the effect of, “God loves us… but does God like us?”

It sounds simple, even cheeky, but it forced me to think of how God sees us. Because “love,” in the way we often throw it around, can make us feel unseen. And I think it’s because the word love has become so overused and over-romanticized that we’ve become desensitized to what love often requires from us.
“I love you,” said an ex-boyfriend who I’d barely been seeing for a month.
“I love my footy team,” we say — which is only proof that love can make us delusional.

But at its worst, love can be twisted as an excuse to do untold violence onto one another, particularly in the church.
In the name of love, Christians ripped Indigenous children away from their families.
In the name of love, queer folk have been pushed out of the church, condemned, or told to hide their true selves.
In the name of love, women have been told to stay silent and cover themselves for thousands of years.
“Quiet, Piggy,” some men still say.

And yet, in order to be truly loved, we have to be liked. And to be liked, we have to be accepted. And to be accepted, we have to be truly seen — the awkward bits, the tender bits, the different bits, the uncomfortable bits, the parts we’d rather hide, the parts society tells us to hide. And that is terrifying.
Because what if people don’t like what they see?
What if God doesn’t like what God sees?
Or worse yet, what if I don’t like what I see?

And this is where the ego comes rushing in. The part of us designed to protect our true selves — the part that armours up, defends, hides, curates, spins a better version of ourselves so we never have to risk exposure. The ego thrives on being in control, in putting others down so we don’t become the victims ourselves. The ego is terrified of being seen. Because if we are truly seen, the ego has nowhere to hide.

And yet, there’s something about this kind of seeing — this divine seeing — that shimmers all throughout Jesus’ ministry. The way he sees the woman at the well. The way he shows us how the father sees the prodigal son. The way he sees the overlooked, the shamed, the ones who don’t fit in, time and time again. And on Christ the King Sunday, the power of this seeing stands at the centre of the gospel — not from a throne, not from a crown looking down, but from a cross, looking right at us, face to face.

Admittedly, it’s a strange scripture to find ourselves in at the end of our Pentecost season before we begin anticipating Jesus’ birth. But perhaps it’s precisely the kind of strangeness we need in order to understand a God who chooses to reveal God’s self in an unmarried Jewish teenager’s womb.

And so we find ourselves at Golgotha, the Skull, where the Roman officials are hurling hurt upon hurt — not just through the physical pain of crucifixion, but through their egos. “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the Chosen One!” they say, while an inscription of mockery hovers over him: “This is the King of the Jews.” But Jesus looks past their insults — past the ego-driven sarcasm to scapegoat, scavenge, and scorn. It is as if he sees them for who they truly are, prompting Jesus to respond: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Meanwhile, one of the criminals joins in with the crowd, speaking to Jesus from the same grasping ego: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself — and us!”
But the other… the other sees something different.

In Jesus — stripped, bleeding, humiliated, utterly vulnerable and utterly visible — he sees the naked truth: that this crucified one is the king. A king unlike any Caesar he has ever known. And yet there’s something about this exposed, crucified one who doesn’t turn away from suffering but shares in it, that is strangely powerful. A paradox the Roman officials and the first criminal miss completely because they’re still thinking about earthly kings, earthly messiahs, and earthly rulers.

To the second criminal, it’s the nearness — the unguarded visibility — that makes his honesty possible, allowing him to make one of the most vulnerable requests we hear in Luke:
“Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.”
Not “save me.”
Not “fix this.”
Not “prove yourself.”
Not “forgive me.”
Not “remember a different version of me.”
But remember me, just as I am, when you come into your kingdom.

And Jesus responds not with theological explanation or grand declaration, but with the kind of nearness that only comes from someone who genuinely delights in you:
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

And this is interesting: he doesn’t use the criminal’s word kingdom. He uses the Greek word paradeisos: the garden — the place of original intimacy, where Adam and Eve could truly be themselves before the slippery, slithering ego told them they were unworthy, unfit, unlovable, and should hide. The place where humanity was unashamed and utterly seen, perhaps for the first and only time.

And it’s striking that nowhere else does Jesus use paradeisos except in this text. It’s almost as if it culminates everything he has been saying throughout his ministry:
Where the Kingdom of God is a feast where all are welcome;
where the last shall be first;
and where the rich are sent away empty.

But here, in Jesus’ last breaths, he breaks open what this kingdom truly looks like: a paradise that is personal, intimate, and vulnerable.

In Jesus’ eyes, the second criminal is not the “criminal” the state reduced him to. As he is laid bare and unguarded, he is seen for who he truly is: beloved and holy.

Even though I grew up in the Church, it wasn’t until I was at a Christian camp — lost in the waves of music with 100 other kids my age — that I experienced God for the first time. The evening held a series of gentle invitations to open our hearts and let God be present in us. And before I knew it, I found myself on my knees in ecstatic tears, feeling for the first time the very tangible presence of this holy one.

But now, as I look back, I think God’s presence is less about God coming upon us whenever the stars align, and more about letting God see all of us. Because that experience was not only about encountering God, but about letting God encounter me. Once I let go of my defences, pretences, and posturing — once my ego had nowhere else to hide — I could feel the invitation to take on the same lens with which God saw me. A lens that searches out the edges, the margins, the vulnerabilities, and sees their holiness.

Because when I came home from that camp, I had changed. I felt seen — and I wanted to see others, truly, for the first time. It was there that God placed within me a desire not just to care for those on the margins, but to see them the way God saw me. To witness their dignity, their wholeness, their vulnerability in a world full of fear, shame, judgment, and condemnation — and to speak the name God had already placed upon them: beloved and holy.

This is why I found myself working with people with disabilities and in aged care. Why I still feel led to Pride Marches. Why I listen to the people who hold the oldest continuing story on this land. And why, eventually, I found myself as a minister in the Uniting Church — a church that aims to align itself with those on the margins but, more than this, a church I wasn’t rejected from. A church where I could let my vulnerability and my marginality shine without fear, shame, judgment, or condemnation.
Although far from perfect, it is a church that orients itself toward this way of seeing — aiming to be Jesus’ eyes in a world bent on seeing red.

And this is the power of the Jesus story — particularly the power of Jesus reigning and ruling from the cross, not from a throne, not from a crown looking down. This power of presence, from the place of vulnerability and marginality, is one that changes hearts. It invites us to live without the fear, shame, judgment, and condemnation society throws at us — and, more often than not, that we throw at ourselves.

Because sometimes, if not most of the time, we are our own worst enemies, cursing ourselves more than we curse others. And yet we are invited to turn back to the boldness and faith of the second criminal — or rather, the second person. By seeing the exposed and vulnerable Christ, he is able to truly see himself: his worth, his belovedness, despite the body he inhabits on the cross and a state that names him criminal, condemned, and corrupt.

And so he reaches for his true place in God’s world — God’s kingdom, or rather, God’s paradise. And this invitation is not for tomorrow. It is imminent. And it is for everyone. A paradise where the cross does not have the last word, but where God’s truth does — a truth that shows us that God not only loves us, not only likes us, not only accepts us, but truly sees us: beloved and holy.

But like the second person on the cross, we have to let ourselves be seen. We have to let down our defences — the parts that armour up, defend, hide, curate, spin, and control. We have to believe that who we truly are is worthy of being seen — and worthy of living without fear, shame, judgment, and condemnation.

Because on Christ the King Sunday, the power of this seeing stands at the centre of the Gospel — not from a throne, not from a crown looking down, but from a cross that looks right at us, face to face, daring us to see as God sees us: beloved, holy, and utterly worthy of paradise now.