May 4, 2008

The Sunday of the Ascension

Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47, Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

Sometimes it seems to me that the Christian year is made up of long periods of preparation, separated by - or tied together by - some intense moments of encounter.

And the "moments of encounter" are with the Holy, with the Sacred, with God.

So it is that we've spend months carefully thinking and planning - first for Christmas, then Easter. We've been to Bethlehem, then to Galilee, finally to Jerusalem. We've walked with Jesus and his disciples.

And we've even spent more than just a little time in two of those moments of encounter - the time of the Nativity, and the Holy Week-Easter cycles - with Easter its 40 days of encounter - and then we reach the Ascension.

The Ascension - the feast we celebrate today - is different. This is not a feast, a celebration that we want to prepare for....because its about parting.

Now - in an instant, it seems - Jesus is gone. Following the events of that Dark Friday known as "Good" he reappears just long enough to say 'goodbye' to those who cared for him and he for them - just a few times according to the Synoptic Gospels, which we stretch over 40 days - and its over.

And don't you think that even those moments are a little out of sync? Jesus has an almost wraith-like presence, and the encounters are dream-like.

What, now is left behind? What's left behind as proof that Jesus was even here? No family, no wife, no children, no estate, nothing written down (at the time), no markers, no rocks in the river of history ....... except the impression left by the Synoptic Gospels - Mark, Luke, and Matthew, the feeling that these resurrection appearances of Jesus were real and that his absence was only temporary.

So the important part of this moment is to recognize not what the Ascension was or Is, but what the Ascension marks: ".....the moment when we pass from Jesus' time into our own."

And "our own" time? Our own time is from that moment to this. Down the ages, I think, we see Christians again and again echoing an uncanny feeling that Jesus was just here, that he must have just stepped out for a moment, that we just missed him.

So I think the feeling of this moment is always a mixed one - joy and grief, doubt and near certainty.

Our modern Newtonian world calls this all into doubt, of course - the physics are a puzzle.

But we have absolutely no trouble understanding the Ascension emotionally. We know because we've all had experiences of loss - we know only too well the lexicon of suffering that this loss is taken from.

We know that story both personally, and as a community - we know because each of us has experienced the loss of someone we love, some family member or friend, a beloved animal companion. We've all experienced - or will experience - that moment of opening a door and expecting that person, that companion, to be there, to come and greet us in their own special way, and then remember that it won't happen ever again in this life. We've had that experience - or will have it - that uncanny feeling that they were just here, that they must have just stepped out for a moment, that we just missed them.

We know it every time we celebrate the life of one of our members at their deaths - most recently of Clarence Noyer, for instance.

And we see that experience in Luke's description of location of Jesus' departure: Bethany.

Bethany was the home of Martha and Mary and Lazarus. It's clear from the gospels that these three were very important to Jesus - not only disciples but personal friends.

I think we can all imagine what that encounter might have looked like, because it's recounted earlier in the gospels: Perhaps they ran to meet Jesus, threw their arms round him, shouted in amazement. "Mary probably had no more tears to wet his feet. Perhaps he sat at their table and let Martha wait on him again.

Watching that experience from the outside, as the disciples must have done, would bring home in a very real sense not the what or the how of Jesus' resurrection, but why he had risen, why he'd come back here, what it meant.

Luke is telling us, in recounting this story, that what lies at the center of it all is love. When endings are done well they are encounters with divine love. Read this way, the Gospel version of the Ascension is a story about love.

Being willing to recognize the reality of our lives and live within them, being willing to say, "this will end, is ending; I, we, will die" - being willing to recognize this and then respond to it in the sorts of ways that Luke describes is - this story tells us - as much of a faithful response to the person of Jesus as is following him during our lives.

So the story of the Ascension is a story of love, and how love survives loss, and it shows us how we can survive loss in our own lives.

And, Luke says in his other Ascension story, we are not comfortless. Like Elisha picking up the mantle of Elijah, we're given a gift, a double-measure of faith. We're being invited not to worry too much about Jesus' absence, in part because of what we look forward to next week, to the gift of His Spirit, so alive and present to us and in us.

All of which is a reminder to us that Jesus may have risen, may have, in Luke's language, "ascended", but in another sense he remains on the ground. He has become his disciples. They have become him....he has become us, is in us, and we in him.

Now we know through the story of resurrection and ascension that "Jesus' life is as indestructible as God's life....he is alive and ahead of us" (Rowan Williams). Now there can be no looking back, only looking forward - that is what Luke tells us. "Christian faith does not look back to a great teacher and example but forward to where Jesus leads, to that ultimate being-at-home with God that he has brought to life in the history of our world." (Ibid).

So feel the ambiguity of this moment, just for a breath or so, but then rejoice. Remember the moments of loss, but then let them go - take the pain and make it bless you, and then let it go, let it go.

For as the two men in white robes reminded the disciples so they remind us - its time to move on.       Amen.