Left Behind. When I was an undergraduate my roommates and I sometimes invited faculty members

Transcription

1 Seventh Sunday in Eastertide/Feast of the Ascension Church of the Savior Orange City, Iowa Donald H. Wacome, Lay Preacher 1 June 2014 Left Behind When I was an undergraduate my roommates and I sometimes invited faculty members to our dorm to preside over Bible studies. One of these I vividly remember. The professor, sitting on a lower bunk, read from the Gospels something Jesus said and then said, Jesus said many strange things. Without further comment he went on to the next quotation, again following it with, Jesus said many strange things, and so on, for the next fifteen minutes. That was the Bible study. It was a formative experience. Too ready to say what we thought Jesus meant, professor Heie showed us that sometimes what we need to do is just listen, and to ask questions we can t answer right away. Years later, Karen and I visited St. Mary s church in Scarborough, New York. During the homily the rector said something about the Holy Spirit and then, deviating from his text, under his breath said, Whatever that means... Another important moment in my life, to find myself in a place where faith is not necessarily a matter of having the answers, but asking the questions and then going on without the answers that might be a long time coming. Today is both the Seventh Sunday of Easter and the Sunday after Ascension Day, which was last Thursday. The Ascension leaves us with some of those questions we cannot readily answer, like, Where is Jesus? Prior to modern times, when everyone 1

2 believed that the Earth was near the bottom of the cosmos, and that far above us, beyond the highest heaven, was the abode of God, it made sense to envision Jesus literally ascending to God the Father. After early modern science makes it untenable to identify the heavens with Heaven, the Ascension begins to become an embarrassment. If Jesus was bodily resurrected, yet no longer walking around here with us, then he his body must be somewhere. Yet it seems implausible that he is now up there, that is, out there in space, in some intergalactic locale, some place in the universe contiguous with, even if very far from, us. Thus the pressure mounted to downplay, and eventually dispense with, the flesh and blood Ascension, and to spiritualize it, so that what returns to the inner life of God is not the fully human embodied Jesus, but the eternal divine logos. With this, everything unravels. If the flesh and blood Jesus did not ascend to the Father, and he s not still here, then how can he have been resurrected in the first place? So that too gets spiritualized; the crazily real resurrection gets downgraded to a metaphor for some plausible spiritual truth. That s fine, but it s not going to get me up on a Sunday morning. I can t let go of the question: where is Jesus? Luke tells us how Jesus leaves; twice, first at the end of his Gospel and then in Acts, in today s reading. Jesus brings the disciples to a hill called the Mount of Olives in Bethany, a village just outside Jerusalem. From there, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight (1.9). Left behind, the disciples stand there, gawking upwards. It reminds me of the first launch of the space shuttle (Karen and I had a pass to be there for it): the crowd of thousands standing there stunned, awestruck, speechless, the mountainous column of smoke and flame brighter than the sun beginning to dissipate, the bone-shaking sound of the engines and the waves of sonic 2

3 booms gradually fading, the spacecraft so massive on the launchpad now a speck far above us. Of course the disciples stand there staring upwards. What else would they be doing? But suddenly two men appear and ask, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? Who are the two men? Maybe they re the two men that Luke says were at the empty tomb Sunday morning when the women arrived with spices to anoint Jesus corpse. Another possibility is that they are Moses and Elijah, and the Ascension somehow connects to the Transfiguration. Recall that as Jesus descended from the mountain with James, John, and Peter he told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until after he was resurrected. Now Jesus is resurrected, and we see what might be a recapitulation of that event, except that now the disciples must descend without Jesus. (It s worth noting that while Matthew gives no account of the Ascension per se, he ends with Jesus giving his disciples the great commission on an unnamed mountain in Galilee, which is the traditional location of the Transfiguration.) Whoever the two men are, their question is rhetorical. They re asking, Why are you hanging around here, instead of doing what Jesus told you to do? Why are they still on the hill top, looking up toward Jesus who is no longer in view, rather than heading back to the city, readying themselves to go out as Jesus witnesses, first to Jerusalem, then to Judea and Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth? The two men are telling them to get moving. There s no time to hang around looking up at where Jesus was; look to his work to be done down here. The same urgency appears in the first encounter with the resurrected Jesus. A few weeks ago we were talking about John s account of Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus at 3

4 the tomb. Overcome with emotion, the woman is trying to bow to and to embrace Jesus at the same time. Here s one of the many strange things that Jesus said: Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father! (John 20.17). He tells her to let go, and go tell the men my brothers that he is ascending to his Father. Leaving aside the fact that this comes across a bit cold-hearted and sexist, it s puzzling. Why is the fact that Jesus will ascend to the Father a reason for her to let go of him right now? He can t get off the ground with her hanging on, the extra weight impeding lift-off? Or he doesn t want her hanging on as he floats upward, lest she lose her grip and drop disastrously from the stratosphere? That s absurd. And, in any event, despite what it sounds like here, the Ascension is not imminent. In Luke s Gospel, it doesn t happen for another week, and in his account in Acts, it s forty days after the resurrection. Mary won t hang on that long. And it can t be that there s some problem with physical contact. A week later, Jesus, still not ascended, doesn t hesitate to invite Thomas to touch his wounds. So how are we to hear Jesus strange words? Here, as with the disciples now apostles in Bethany, Jesus command is to leave and to set out on a mission. He sends Mary to bring the news to the disciples, as he will later send them to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. No time to hang on to the resurrected Jesus. No time to stand around looking up. It s time to be about the work Jesus gives them to do. Mary s demonstrative affection, her tactile hold of Jesus, stands in for all of us and our desire to have Jesus himself with us, in view and accessible, beyond question. Blatantly resurrected. God incontrovertibly with us. Vindicated. Triumphant. Glorious. This is what the apostles are looking for: Lord, is this the time when you will restore the 4

5 kingdom to Israel? (Acts 1.6). Jesus tells them that it is not for them to know the times, but what becomes clear is that this is not the time. Jesus work is completed. Jesus is glorified: already and not yet. They and us are left behind, left between the times. Earlier in Acts Luke writes that Jesus presented himself to the apostles as alive by many convincing proofs (1.3). Yet whatever was convincing was not simply obvious. The resurrected Lord is known only as he chooses to make himself known. He is mistaken for a gardener, a ghost, a clueless traveler on the Emmaus road, a stranger on the beach. He suddenly appears and disappears; he is incognito and then recognized. Walls and doors, days and hours, don t confine him. Genuinely embodied in our space and time, yet freely, no longer constrained by it. He is not palpably present to everyone. Every knee shall bow. But not yet. I mentioned that Matthew s Gospel concludes with Jesus on that unnamed mountain in Galilee, sending his apostles into the world to baptize and to make disciples. Matthew does not say that Jesus ascends. Indeed, the book closes not with Jesus leaving them, but promising them, I am with you always, to the end of the age (28.20). How does this fit with Luke? Jesus leaves and he doesn t leave. He remains with us, and he leaves us behind. He is with us because his Spirit is with us, but his Spirit is with us to comfort us in his absence. He is with us always, but it s a strange way to be with us. In a way, we re left holding the bag, commissioned to announce his resurrection to the world, and then having to explain, and go on with his work despite, his apparent absence. Like the disciples, we might well wish for the triumph of the crucified, the glory of God made plain to all, or at least a sensible response to the Where is he? question, but, as the 5

6 great Anglo-Welsh poet R. S. Thomas wrote, often we must leave our questions neatly folded in the empty tomb. Somehow in all this we see the glory of God. This morning s lesson from John, a fragment of Jesus long prayer on the eve of his arrest and crucifixion, is all about the glory, not, at least not overtly, about the departed Jesus, the waiting, the unanswered questions. The Son glorifies the Father, who glorifies the Son, who is glorified in us. This talk of glory is, to modern ears, off-putting. In his wonderful essay, The Weight of Glory, which is about God glorifying us, C. S. Lewis confesses: Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one appears wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the first, since to be famous means to be better known than other people, the desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and therefore of hell rather than heaven. As for the second, who wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb? We often hear that God does what he does for his own glory. This might suggest that God is some sort of cosmic egomaniac, obsessed with being well thought of and praised at all costs. But that s the opposite of the truth. The glory of God is nothing less than God becoming known as he truly is. The glory of God is God giving himself to us. Who God is is made clear already to the eyes of faith but not yet to all in the infinite humility of the incarnation and the cross. The God who became human flesh as Jesus is, as Robert Jenson tells us, the hidden God, not because of his remote, ineffable transcendence, inaccessible to the meager human mind, but precisely by his offensive availability in our world (Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 233.). 6

7 We are left waiting for, and bearing witness to, this God who was not content just to make himself known by making our weakness, humiliation, and condemnation his own, but now, though vindicated by resurrection, by choosing to be with us by being hidden. We are left to explain why our crucified but resurrected God is not yet the manifest Lord of all. Why this strange delay, one which seems so long to us, but which God seems to regard as a mere parenthesis, treating it with urgency, as though the time is short, so that like Mary Magdalen and the apostles on the Mount of Olives, we better not linger, longing for our absent Lord, but get on with the work at hand in this little space between Jesus departure and return? Jacques Pohier, one of those 1960 s post-vatican II priests who was always in hot water with Rome, once pointed out, God is God, so God is not everything. God makes space and time for those who are not God, for us. He does not overwhelm, but stands back and makes room for lives other than his own. But he invites us to take part in his life. We are called to share the life of Jesus. Jesus lived an ordinary human life, like us having to trust in a God unseen, a God not tangible but grasped only in faith. And we are called in our small ways to share in Jesus s death. On the cross, Jesus calls out in desolation, to all appearances forgotten, foolish, left behind. Where is your God now, king of the Jews?! Where is your God now, you disciples of the crucified?! Where is this supposedly resurrected Jesus? Ascended to God the Father, and seated at his right hand whatever that means, as our rector at St. Mary s might have said. In another poem, R. S. Thomas, who served most of his life as priest for a remote rural parish in Wales, in his empty church reflects: 7

8 Often I try To analyze the quality Of its silences. Is this where God hides From my searching? I have stopped to listen, After the few people have gone, To the air recomposing itself For vigil. It has waited like this Since the stones grouped themselves about it. These are the hard ribs Of a body that our prayers have failed To animate. Shadows advance From their corners to take possession Of places the light held For an hour. The bats resume Their business. The uneasiness of the pews Ceases. There is no other sound In the darkness but the sound of a man Breathing, testing his faith On emptiness, nailing his questions One by one to an untenanted cross. Faith in Jesus is not untroubled certitude but perseverance in the questions and obediently acting without the answers. It is our precarious life as his church, coming to the table where he is at once present and not present in the wine and the bread, coming to this holy ambiguity with whatever we happen to have: belief, hope, doubt, questions not answered. Amen 8