May 17, 2015
John 17.6-19
+ I don’t know if you notice it, but I sure have. In fact, James and I
were talking about this last week. Occasionally in the life of a church, we
find surges, we find losses, and we find plateaus. I was certain—absolutely
certain—that beginning about a year ago and going at least to few months ago,
we had hit a plateau here at St. Stephen’s. After several years of outstanding
growth, we just balanced into place. That’s a good thing.
Plateaus can be interesting and meaningful and important in the life of
a congregation.
But then, growth started again. Fairly recently. New members. New active ministries. And we
find, not a plateau, but a resurgence. And
that’s always incredible. When these things happen, I always say: look, at the
Spirit of God moving in our midst.
We find ourselves moving into a place, yet again, that is very similar
to place those first followers of Jesus were in right about now in their
following of Jesus. They are being
prepared for the movement of the Spirit of God in their lives. This week, in
our scripture readings, we move slowly away from the Easter season toward
Pentecost. For the last several weeks, we have been basking in the afterglow of
the resurrected Jesus.
In our Gospel readings, this
resurrected Jesus has walked with us, has talked with us, has eaten with us and
has led the way for us. Now, he has been
taken up. We find a transformation of sorts happening. With his ascension, our perception of Jesus
has changed. No longer is he the wise
sage, the misunderstood rebel, the religious renegade that he seemed to be when
he walked around, performing miracles and upsetting the religious and political
powers that be. He is now something much
more. He is more than just a regular
prophet. He is the Prophet
extraordinaire. He is the fulfillment of
all prophecies. He is more than just a
king—a despotic monarch of some sort like Caesar or Herod. He is truly the Messiah.
At his ascension, we find that he
is, in a sense, anointed, crowned and ordained. At his ascension, we find that what we are
gazing at is something we could not comprehend before. He has helped us to see that
God has truly come among us. He has reminded us that God has taken a step
toward us. He has showed us that God loves us and cares for us. He has shown us
that hold death held on us is now broken. He has reminded us that God speaks to
us not from a pillar of cloud or fire, not on some shroud-covered mountain, not
in visions.
But God is with us and speaks in us,
God’s prophets. The puzzle pieces are falling into place. What seemed so confusing and unreal is
starting to come together. God truly does
love us and know us. And next week, one
more puzzle piece falls into place when Jesus, in a sense, returns. Next week,
we will celebrate God’s Spirit descending upon and staying with us.
For the moment, we are in this
plateau, caught in between those two events, trying to make sense of what has
happened and trying to prepare ourselves for what is about to happen. But things are about to really change. Man, are things about to change! We are caught
between Jesus’ ascent into heaven and the Spirit’s descent to us.
See, plateaus are not bad things. A plateau offers us a time for us to pause, to
ponder who we are and where are in this place—in this time in which everything
seems so spiritually topsy-turvy, in this time before the Spirit moves and
stirs up something incredible.
This week, smack dab in the middle
of the twelve days between the Ascension and Pentecost, we find ourselves
examining the impact of this event of God in our lives. And God has made an impact in our lives. We, those of us who are fortunate enough to
experience the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, at least liturgically, in
our Sunday readings and in our liturgy, find ourselves constantly confronted
with the meaning of these events from God. We are faced with the reality of them and what
we should do to make sense of them.
I’m not certain there is a way we
can make sense of the Ascension, but I can say this: if we only see the
ascension as some kind of mystical event and don’t see it as a mirror for
ourselves, we’ve missed the point. The commission
that the ascended Jesus gave to the apostles, is still very much our commission
as well. We must love—fully and
completely. Because in loving, we are
living. In loving, we are living fully
and completely. In loving, we are
bringing the ascended Christ to others.
And we must go out and live out this
commission in the world. When we do, the
ascended Christ is very much acting in the world. When we think about what
those first followers went through in a fairly short period of time—Jesus’
betrayal and murder, his resurrection and his ascension—we realize it was a
life altering experience. Their
lives—their faith, their whole sense of being—was changed forever. They would never be who they were again. Oftentimes, when those experiences happen to
us, we find ourselves reeling from them.
We find ourselves simply moving
through the life-altering events with bated breath. Only later, when everything
has settled down, do we have the opportunity to examine what had just happened
to us. And it is then that we realize
the enormity of these changes in our lives.
For those first followers of Jesus,
it seems like they didn’t have much of a change to ponder their life-altering
experiences. As soon as one life-altering experience happened, another one came
along. Just when they had experienced
Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, they encountered this outpouring of God’s
Spirit in their lives. The waters, it
seemed, were kept perpetually stirred. Nothing
was allowed to settle. That is what our ministry is often like.
One day, very early in my career, I
came to that realization myself. Ministry
is perpetually on-going. There is never an ending to it. It’s always something. One week brings another set of opportunities,
set-backs, trip-ups, tediums, frustrations, joys, celebrations.
Ministry truly is a never-ending
roller-coaster ride of emotions and feelings. In the course of a week, one can go from last
rites and burials to weddings and baptisms—and everything in between. And some of what comes in between are days
when nothing much happens. In between,
there are meetings, there are lonely nights or sleepless nights or angry
nights. More often than night, there are
nights just like the nights before. There
are nights when one follows the same rituals one has followed. And one does what one has done before without
thinking, without pondering.
In between those moments of great
energy, there are frustrations or boredom. There are moments when it all seems to be
useless and pointless. There are moments
when one is, quite simply, frightened. There
are moments when one feels so overwhelmed by the fact that one is simply not
qualified to be doing the work.
These are things those first
followers of Jesus no doubt struggled with. Yet we, like them, are sustained. We, like
them, are upheld. We, like them, are
supported by the God who welcomed the ascended Jesus, whose work we are doing
in this world. In those moments when our
works seems useless, when it seems like we have done no good work, the God who
brought Jesus back still triumphs.
We all remember that song by the
Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby.” I remember how
sad I used to feel when I heard them sing about Father Mackenzie, how he
“…wipes the dirt from his hands as
he walks from the grave.
No one was saved.”
It feels like that sometimes. But those moments are moments of
self-centeredness. Those moments are
moments when we think it all depends on us. On ME.
Our job, in this time between Jesus’
departure from us and the return of the Holy Spirit to us, is simply let God do
what God needs to do in this interim. We
need to let the Holy Spirit work in us and through us. We need to let the God who brought Jesus to
heaven be the end result of our work. When
we wipe our hands as we walk from the grave, lamenting the fact that it seems
no one was saved, we need to realize that, of course, it seems that way as we
gaze downward at our hands. But above
us, the Ascension is happening. Above
us, Jesus is triumphant—as Prophet of prophets, of King of Kings, as the High
Priest of all priests. Above us, Jesus
triumphs—and we with him.
All we have to do is look up. All we
have to do is stop gazing at our dirty, callused, over-worked hands—all we have
to do is turn from our self-centeredness—and look up. And there we will see the triumph. And as we do, we will realize that more were
saved than we initially thought. Someone
was save—we were saved.
Jesus has ascended. And we have—or
will—ascend with him as well. He prays
in today’s Gospel that we “may have [his] joy made complete in [ourselves].” That joy comes when we let the Holy Spirit be
reflected in we do in this world.
So, let this Spirit of joy be made
complete in you. Let the Spirit of joy
live in you and through you and be reflected to others by you. When we do, we
will be, as Jesus promises us, “sanctified in truth.”
We will be sanctified in the truth
of knowing and living out our lives in the light of ascension. We will be sanctified by the fact that we have
looked up and seen the truth happened above us in beauty and light and joy .
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