| ||||
|
On Thursday, Ascension Day, Jesus departed this world for good and ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father in glory. And he’s not here. That’s what the Ascension is all about. The Ascension is the way we express the doctrine of the Real Absence of Jesus. At Jesus’ ascension, Luke says, his disciples were standing around on the earth gazing up into the sky, and two men in white appeared and asked, “Why are you standing around here looking up into the sky?” It’s as if the disciples were wondering, “What are we going to do now? Jesus, who had kept us together and helped us through so many things these past three years and who had given us so much hope, is gone. Now what are we going to do?” An ending had happened. No longer would the disciples be able to look Jesus in the eye to ask a question, or to receive a loving rebuke or see a “thumbs up.” Jesus would not be there by the campfire to talk about the Kingdom mysteries. He wouldn’t be on hand to save a wedding celebration, or to calm the waters or cast out demons. What were they to do now? After Jesus’ ascension the disciples found themselves, as we all find ourselves at some point, living in a time “in between,” in an odd “middle ground” between a goodbye and whatever unknown life is coming next. The death of a loved one is like that. Moving is like that. So is experiencing a divorce or having a baby or hearing the diagnosis of a disease or changing jobs or retirement. The former life is gone and what lies ahead remains to be seen. And we find ourselves standing around gazing up into the sky, or off into the distance, and wondering, “Now what are we going to do?” The disciples did know one thing about their future. They remembered how Jesus had blessed them before he left, and they remembered what he had promised – that he would not leave them comfortless, that he would, when he left, send his Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, to walk beside them in the days ahead. And just before he died Jesus prayed for his disciples, and for all who would follow them, for us: “Father, I am leaving my disciples and I am coming to you, to live with you in glory. But I have given my disciples the glory you gave to me. I’ve shown them what you are like, so that they might be one, just as you and I are one.” Note that! Don’t let it slide easily off the top of your mind! Before he died and was raised and ascended into heaven to live with the Father in glory, Jesus gave us his glory. We prayed for that just a few moments ago: “O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting.” One’s glory – doxa in the New Testament Greek – is the reflection of who he really is, the reflection of one’s substance, the image of his essential being or character, the reflection of what it is, deep down, that really makes him tick. That is one’s glory. And in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John on this Seventh Sunday of Easter we hear Jesus tell his Father that he has shared his glory with us, so that we, too, might reveal his glory in the world, might live in the world with God as Jesus has lived in the world with God. It is, in effect, the reading of Jesus’ will, the granting of our inheritance. Whatever Jesus’ glory is, which he received from his Father, Jesus now asks his Father to leave to us, so that we, with the help of the One who will walk beside us in his absence, might show forth the same glory that he showed forth while he walked his way on earth. For Luke, Jesus’ ascension was not only the climax of his life on earth, it was also the beginning of new life for the community of Jesus’ followers as the bearers of his glory in the world. William Willimon tells about a small church that was being served by a seminary student as pastor. After the sermon on Sundays, their custom, like ours, was to have a time of prayer for others, a time of intercessory prayer. Only theirs was a little less formal than ours, more down to earth. “Are there any concerns today that need to be brought before the congregation?” asked the student pastor. “I don’t know what’s going to become of us,” said a young woman in the back of the church. “John left us last week. I don’t know what the girls and I are going to do now.” There was a gasp from the congregation, and then silence. And then one of the older members of the parish spoke up. Looking back at the young mother, she said, “I know what you’ll do. You’ll reach out to the rest of us here for help. When my husband left me, I felt just like you do now. But I recovered, and so can you.” Then someone else said, “I’ll be glad to help. I’ve been looking for someone to help out in my office.” “We can help with the girls,” added another. And the young pastor said, “Well, I don’t think we need to ask God to help Amy at this point. It looks like God has enabled the people in his church to do his work for Amy right now.” A number of years ago, on an Ascension Day, I was standing around like the disciples, wondering what to do next. Jesus had left, and he had left me without a clue what to say the next Sunday. Or so it seemed. I had just returned from a week away and hadn’t even started Sunday’s sermon. It was a Thursday, as Ascension Day is always a Thursday, and later that day, just like the disciples, I was staring off into the distance wondering what to do next when someone appeared and said, “Dayle, why are you standing there gazing out into space? There’s work to do here. There is comfort and strength to be shared, which is the glory of God you inherited from Jesus. Go share it.” That was essentially what happened, but the way it happened was this: It had been a hectic morning, the kind of day I don’t deal with very well. Aware that I still had a sermon to write, I was ready to scream if I got another interruption. Then, about eleven o’clock, as I was trying to get away for lunch with the diocesan clergy, I got a telephone call. It was from the chaplain at St. Francis Hospital. A 76-year-old man from New Jersey had come to Colorado Springs for his grandson’s graduation from the Air Force Academy. He had had a heart attack and was not expected to live. Would I come to the hospital and administer the last rites of the Church? Of course. So I went to the hospital. When I arrived, I found that the family had left. They had had to go to Denver to meet a plane. The man, Harold Cooper, was clearly very sick. He had suffered lung failure and a heart attack and had suffered severe damage to his brain. He was on a respirator and was not responsive. I administered last rites, left the family a note with my telephone number, and then went on to my lunch appointment. When I returned to church after lunch, I found another message from Harold Cooper’s family. Could I come back to the hospital at six o’clock to be with them when, as had been decided, they would remove Mr. Cooper from the respirator? So I returned to the hospital at six. The family there at the time were Mr. Cooper’s son and daughter-in-law. We prayed the prayers for one who is nearing death; the doctor came in; we all talked for a while. The doctor thoughtfully and kindly explained what we might expect, an aide made sure Mr. Cooper would be receiving the same amount of oxygen when he was off the respirator as he was receiving on it, and then he turned the respirator off. It was, I recall clearly, a sudden, loud, definite click – a finality – leaving Mr. Cooper to do the work of breathing on his own. We all stood around the bed and waited. But as the doctor had explained might happen, Mr. Cooper didn’t die immediately. Despite his weakness, he continued to breath on his own. After a while, the doctor excused himself. He had some things he needed to do, he said, but he would be back. A few minutes later the nurses also went to other duties, and Mr. Cooper’s son and daughter-in-law and I were left alone in the room with Mr. Cooper. What do you say and do in such a time of loss, such a time of goodbye, such a time of departure and transition? What do you say and do after all the words you know to say have been said and all the things you know to do have been done? We stood in silence for a while, just watching and waiting. The younger Mr. Cooper was holding his father’s hand. And then it just came out. I don’t know why I said it, it just came out. I said, “I’ll bet that’s the hand he used to teach you how to throw a baseball.” And his son said, “Yes. Yes, it is.” And then the words just came gushing out. There was nothing that could stop him from talking after that – about how his dad had played third base, and about how his dad was called “Garbage Can Cooper” because he scooped up everything that came his way, and about how his dad couldn't hit a lick, so he was always having to bunt to get on base, and about how fast he was, and about how his dad had given him a glove when he was a child, and about how his dad had taught him to throw a baseball from third to first and around the infield, but about how his dad hadn’t taught him to hit because his dad didn’t know how himself, and about how his dad had used the hand he was holding at that moment to teach him lots of other things as well, and about how his dad had loved him and held him by the hand when he was a boy. And he went on and on, for twenty or thirty minutes, or more, while Mr. Cooper continued to breath on his own. And I remember hoping at that moment that somehow, somehow through the grace and glory of God, I remember hoping that Mr. Cooper could hear, or somehow receive, the love that was being returned to him during that hour. Mercifully, Mr. Cooper did die that night, commended to Almighty God by his family and by the Church as a sinner redeemed by Christ. It was the Holy Spirit at work in the absence of Jesus. It was the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, offering the good news of the love of a father for his son and the love of a son for his father, the good news of the glory of sacrificial love, good news sacramentally conveyed to Mr. Cooper and to me through the words and tears of a young man in a hospital room, good news about how the Father loved his Son so much that he held his hand and shared his glory, his love, with his Son, and about how the Son has left that same glory to us, so that even after his departure we might share his glory and be able to live in it here, might be able to heal and to bless and to love even in his real absence. “Father, I have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one, that they may love each other as we have loved each other.” Later this morning we’re going to sing, “Crown Him with many crowns!” Crown him with crowns of glory, with crowns that reflect the substance and essence and character of God himself. Would you like to see what such a crown looks like? I mean in heaven. Would you like to see the Lord’s crown of glory in heaven, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father in glory? You can, you know. It’s the same crown he wore on the Cross, a crown of thorns, the crown of patience, the crown of passion, of suffering and love. As I watched Mr. Cooper’s son hold his dying father’s hand, and as I listened to him talk about how his father had held his hand as a boy, and how he had used that hand to teach him how to throw a baseball, and how to love and to bless, I couldn’t help but think that we have all been given hands for the same purpose. Use yours to reach up and hold the hand of Jesus as he is dying on the Cross. The hand of Jesus on the Cross is the hand of God, and it’s not any farther away than the hand of a young mother who has been left alone with two small children, no farther away than the hand of an old man dying in the hospital, no farther away than the hands of the grieving and the anxious and the poor and the lonely in every parish and every town and city. It is a calling, this holding of the hand of God in the hands of his people, that trumps every program and every agenda. What are we to do in the real absence of Jesus? The disciples stopped gazing up toward heaven, says Barbara Brown Taylor. “They looked at each other instead, and got on with the business of being church.... [And] surprising things began to happen. They began to say things that sounded like him, and they began to do things they had never seen anyone but him do before. They became brave, and capable, and wise.” Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the disciples stopped gazing toward heaven and started looking around them instead. They became apostles, holding the hands of those in transition from the experience of loss to God knows what, and witnessing to the glory of God around them here on earth. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |