The Sunday after the Ascension
May 12, 2024
John 17.6-19
+ I am very excited about a new film coming out.
The film is called Wildcat, and directed by actor Ethan Hawke and starring his daughter, Maya
Hawke
The film is about the life and stories of Flannery O’Connor, someone I mention
regularly in my sermons and in regular conversation.
O’Connor was a writer from Georgia, a devour
Roman Catholic, who wrote about religious fanatics in a particularly grotesque
style.
All the buzz about Wildcat made me revisit
another film based on O’Connor’s writing, a film called Wiseblood.
This novel and film were typical O’Connor,
though I don’t think it was her best writing (her short stories were her particular
forte).
Wiseblood is about Hazel Motes, a World War
II vet who comes home to his small Tennessee town as an atheist. He then proceeds to found
his own anti-religious Church, the Church without Christ, in which he preaches
that Jesus was a liar, that that all men are
“clean,” and there is no such thing as sin or redemption
The film was directed by the great John Huston.
Huston, in case you didn’t know, was a
hard-living guy.
He was an alcoholic, a womanizer and….an
atheist.
And he took on this film because he wanted to
expose religious fanaticism and the futility of religion.
However, what he failed to realize, was that
those goals were not what O’Connor intended when she wrote her novel.
In her novel she showed that despite Motes and
his Church without Christ, religious truth actually does triumph.
Huston struggled while he directed this film
because he realized it was not going the way he wanted it to.
Finally, in the end, at a meeting he had with
the crew, he, in frustration had to admit failure.
“Jesus wins,” Huston said.
Well, I felt kind of like Hazel Motes this week.
This past week I had a parishioner—I won’t say
who (it was Stephanie Garcia)—tell me a story about how they were talking to a
friend of there’s about her amazing priest (me).
Well, she my not have used the word, “amazing.”
(I fill in the blanks)
But I came up in a conversation.
In that conversation she happened to mention
that her “amazing” priest does not believe in hell, and preaches about that on a
regular basis.
Her friend, a former Roman Catholic, responded by
saying, “well, he’s not a real priest then. . . “
I had to laugh.
And, as hard as it for most of you believe, it’s
not the first time someone has said that about me.
In fact, I’ve been called much, much worse.
But sometimes—sometimes—while doing this weird
thing called following Jesus and trying to live out the Gospel in the world, we
run the risk of coming across as heretical to people who were raised in circumstances
in which priests often felt they could not preach what they believed or who
genuinely believed things without question.
I’m not judging them, mind you.
I even kind of understand that thinking.
But, I am not that kind of a priest.
I have never been that priest.
And I don’t think that’s the kind of follower
Jesus was honestly seeking.
In our gospel reading for today, we find the first followers of Jesus were in a strange place just after Jesus
ascended to heaven.
They too were being seen as heretical and disingenuous.
They were telling people that Jesus, who
everyone knew had been crucified, was now alive and appearing to them.
And not just appearing to them, but earing with
them.
And not only that, but he had ascended to heaven
right before their eyes.
That was not a popular message to be spreading.
And so, they were in fear.
But while they huddled there in fear, something amazing
was happening to them.
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 so much more.
He is more than just a regular prophet.
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.
He is the divine Son of God.
At his ascension, we find that he is, in a sense, anointed,
crowned and ordained.
He does not just ascend back to heaven and then is kind of
dissolved into the great unknown.
He ascends, then assumes a place at God’s right hand.
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 the 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 cloud-covered mountain, not in visions.
But God is with us and speaks in us. We are God’s prophets
now.
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.
Next week, we will celebrate God’s Spirit descending upon us and
staying with us, on the Feast of Pentecost.
For the moment, we are in this plateau, caught in between those
two events—the Ascension and Pentecost—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 seem to be in a plateau of sorts.
A plateau offers us a time 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.
In this time when our proclamation of Christ’s Good News may seem
almost heretical.
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.
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 resurrected and ascended Christ to others.
And we must go out and live out this commission in the world.
When we do, the resurrected and ascended Christ is very much
acting in the world.
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, Jesus 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.”
You know what?
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 to 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 our proclamation of the resurrected and ascended
Christ 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 dirty hands.
But above us—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, in that place of glory, Jesus triumphs—and we with him.
Above us, Jesus wins.
(And as he all know, even poor John Huston, Jesus always wins in
the end)
Above us, God’s Spirit is about to rain down upon us as flames of
fire.
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 saved. 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 what 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 the ascension of Jesus.
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. Amen.
