That Sinking Feeling - A Sermon

Happy Ascension Sunday. Ascension was actually on Thursday, but how many of you remembered to celebrate it? That's what I thought. Ascension used to be a big Feast Day in the Church. Don’t tell your kids, but people used to get out of school in order to celebrate it. It was Christmas and Easter big.

No more.

Why? Well, Jesus ascending just doesn’t have the same punch that birth and resurrection have. Not even the same as Pentecost. With those three, someone’s arriving. Jesus is born. Jesus comes back from the dead. The Holy Spirit arrives. Yea!

But with the Ascension, Jesus goes away. What’s to celebrate?

This is probably truer than we might think. Because here we have the disciples who had thought they’d lost Jesus at his crucifixion, only to get him back and breathe a sigh of relief. Now they’ve had him for forty days, and it just might have started feeling like it did before all that unpleasantness in Jerusalem. The disciples might just be thinking, “Ah, we can get back to the way things were.”

Then he leaves. Again.

And with Luke’s dramatic images of the ascension – rising up in a cloud – it’d be hard for anyone to imagine he’s coming back.

So, the Ascension did not bring them up to the pinnacles of joy. Rather, it had to leave the disciples with a sinking feeling. As in, “Now, we’re really alone.”

Granted, Jesus left them with a promise. In the Gospel, it’s a little vague, but in Acts, he says clearly they will receive the power of the Holy Spirit. But do they understand what that means? Do we? They will just have to wait.

I hate waiting.

More than that, I hate feeling alone and confused, like I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Like them, I would probably have preferred for Jesus to stay. And at the same time felt angry with him for not staying, for ruining that wonderful reunion they’d had, and the return to old times.

But Jesus knew better. He knew they needed him to leave so they could take wing, as it were. He knew they could not become the church until they found their own way.

Fortunately for them, Jesus left them with two things – or at least Luke left US with two things. One is the promise of the Holy Spirit’s power. They could not understand the significance of that, but they did trust Jesus enough to wait.

The other thing that Luke left us was a subtle hint at what the disciples could do while they were waiting. They could go back to the beginning, review Jesus’ ministry and see what they could learn. Jesus left them at the temple in Jerusalem. He also began his ministry in a temple – reading from the prophet Isaiah. The very beginning of his ministry began with these words:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

As they waited to see what sort of power Jesus would send them, they needed these ten days to ponder what that would look like. And if, as Luke suggests by bringing us full circle, they remember theirs is to proclaim good news and release and recovery and freedom, then the power of Pentecost would be good power indeed.

Sadly, the church has often abused its power.

You can think how: forced conversions, pogroms, religious wars, religious executions, oppression of minorities, ostracizing those who sin, abuse of the vulnerable. It goes on.

Perhaps that’s because we forgot what the disciples had time to remember – we are not here to create a powerful church but to employ the gift of God’s power to share God’s love. To bring good news to the poor, release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and freedom to the oppressed. Perhaps, from time to time, we need to remind ourselves that THAT’S who we are to be. And only then will we be ready for the power of Pentecost.

Let us, then, sink with the disciples, just a bit – for maybe 10 days or so – in order to remember what it is that we are to rise toward. Amen.

Becoming Ourselves - A Sermon

Back in the days of BC -- that's Before Children -- I got the notion to take flying lessons.  Flying in a small plane in beautiful.  You're at 5,000 feet, your instructor's at your side.  You're making the plane do what you want...  One day, we finished a lesson, and I had made a really good three-point landing.  When I stopped the plane, my instructor, Nick told me not to cut the engine, then he hopped out.

"What're you doing?" I shouted over the engine.  

"It's time," he said.  "You're soloing."

"Now?"

"Now."

In case you hadn't guessed, soloing means piloting a plane for the first time all alone -- with nobody else in the plane.  My heart stopped.  I wasn't ready.  What if I did something wrong?  What if I crashed?  Nick shut the door, smiled, and waved.  I taxied back to the runway, cursing Nick all the way for leaving me alone in this death trap.  Then -- for better or worse -- I took off.

I only flew around the airport and made a couple of what they call touch-and-go landings -- you land and take right off again.  But after the first landing, Nick's voice came over my headset:  "You might want to retract your flaps."  I don't want go into what flaps do, but NOT retracting them would have been bad.

At the end of it all, I got out of the plane, shaking like a leaf, and there was Nick, a big smile on his face.  "Great job!" he said.  "Now you're a pilot."

That's an experience most of us have in some way or other.  When you learn how to ride a bike, eventually Mom or Dad lets go, and you're soloing.  When you graduate from High School -- as several of our young folks are doing this year -- you leave home for the first time and venture out.  

Or when you're a disciple, and Jesus says, "you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now," and then leaves -- takes off into the sky and disappears.

It says they just stared up into the sky, but I bet they were screaming in their heads, "Wait!  You can't leave!  We're not ready!  Why are you leaving us?"

Why indeed?  Why DID Jesus leave the disciples just forty days after his glorious resurrection?  After all, he had proven his point.  He had already defeated death, shown his divinity, changed forever the way we relate with God.  Why not stay with his disciples and help them get the church going properly?  I mean, forty days isn't a lot of time.

On the other hand, if he had not left, would they have ever said they were ready?  Would they have ever quit looking to him, asking, "Is this how we do it, Lord?"  Can you imagine a child learning to ride the bike -- and the parent NEVER let go?  There might not be any cut knees or bruised shins, but the child would never really ride the bike.

Nobody can truly become themselves until they are cut loose, with all the risks involved.

So, what was it that the disciples were becoming?  Nothing less that the Body of Christ.  As Jesus told them, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."  The Body of Christ, the Church, the followers who live out Christ's love and share it with a broken world.

After Jesus ascended to heaven, the disciples were left staring up at the sky.  The angels who came asked, "What're you looking up there for?  Jesus is gone."  They were saying, "It's time to become who you were meant to be.  NOW you are true disciples."

Jesus had to leave so they could grow up.  And they did.  They left rejoicing, ready to face the new world ahead.  To be the Body of Christ.

Today, WE are Christ's Body.  If we want, we can stare up at the sky, too, waiting to see Christ coming down again, never doing anything because we don't know if it we'll mess up.  OR, we fly.  We can take the risk of acting like Christ, of being his witnesses in a frightened world.   And we do so knowing that right here we will find enough guidance and grace and support to keep us in the air.

Remember how I made that first landing and forgot to retract the flaps?  But that voice came over the headphones and reminded me.  Even more than that, the voice told me that I wasn't as alone as I thought I was.  Someone was still watching me.

Jesus told the disciples that he would not leave them alone, either.  The Holy Spirit would come and give them strength.  Not the same as the instructor being in the seat next to you, perhaps, but everything we need to fully become ourselves.  Amen.