Sermon 5/20/07
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Have you ever tried to recapture a perfect moment or event or experience? Have you ever tried to get back to a time or place or feeling you had? Maybe you had the perfect family vacation, and you return to the place again, do the same things, hoping that you will have the same great time. Or maybe you try to gather the same group of people together for a dinner, hoping for the same amazing conversation. Sometimes we have such good experiences that we just want to have these experiences again.
But, and I don’t know about you, but in my experience, you can never really recreate or recapture that experience you’re looking for. You can have different good experiences, make different good memories, but you can never get back to that same place again, figuratively speaking. I remember the anticipation my friend Sharon and I felt when I was a sophomore in high school and we decided to go back and visit our junior high school for the first time, which was a seventh through ninth grade school. We went to Staley Junior High and found our favorite teachers, teachers who, of course, had loved us, and we visited the rehearsal for the school play, which had been the center of our life in junior high. And it wasn’t the same. As it turns out, the junior high and its students and teachers were not just anxiously waiting for us to recreate our time there. They had moved on. They had new students and a new play and even some new teachers. We may have been visiting the same physical location, but on deeper levels, the place we went to junior high no longer existed. That was a hard thing for me to accept – the first time I really had to come to terms with the way life changes like that, the first time I had to accept that growing up would also mean moving on and letting go of other things to embrace what lay ahead.
Today we celebrate Ascension Sunday. I’ll tell you that Ascension Sunday is never one of my favorites – the focus is on Jesus returning to God – and in our texts, we read about Jesus literally ascending into the clouds. These images just seem too unreal to me following after a life of such real teaching and preaching from Jesus. And after a death and resurrection, how Jesus returns to God is never something I’ve thought of as particularly important. But this year, likely because of where we are as pastor and congregation, I’ve been reading the text differently, in ways that make more sense to me.
We’re drawing to the close of the season of Easter – the Fifty Great Days of Easter that span from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, which is next week. And these fifty days represent the time that Jesus remained with the disciples following his resurrection. Sometimes I think we forget about this time, about how long Jesus stayed with them after the resurrection. We think of Jesus being raised, and then maybe about his scene with “Doubting Thomas,” but what was Jesus doing for these other forty-nine days? The scriptures don’t tell us much. In Luke’s gospel, we read that Jesus open the minds of the disciples so that they understand all the scriptures, but we don’t get any details. In Acts, Luke writes that Jesus had been showing himself to the disciples, proving that he was alive, and speaking to them about the Kingdom of God. But again, we don’t get much detail. But I suspect, that after more than a month with Jesus after the resurrection, the disciples nourished a secret hope that everything had simply returned to normal again. After all, they’d been eating meals with Jesus again, they’d been fishing with him again, and Jesus was talking about the Kingdom of God again, just like old times. Couldn't it just go on like this? Now they understood more about what Jesus had been talking about before his death and resurrection. They were ready now, and with Jesus back, the disciples could surely begin their own ministries - just like before, only perhaps even better because of what they'd been through together.
But it isn't the same as before, really. Jesus is about to leave them again, and though Jesus' victory of life over death is certainly wonderful, now when Jesus leaves them he really won't be coming back - not in the same way, not to walk with them on the beach, not to share meals with them, not to fish with them, not to explain to them again about the Kingdom of God. This is really it, and in some ways, Jesus' returning to God is more permanent than the loss they felt at his death. Jesus tells them to stay in Jerusalem and to wait for the promise of God to come to them. "This," he says, "is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." The disciples ask if Jesus is going to restore the kingdom now, a question they've been asking him since the beginning of their time together. Jesus tells them, one last time, that he's got something different on his mind. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you," he says. "You will be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth." He tells them that their task is to preach repentance and forgiveness in his name to all nations, and in both Luke and Acts, reminds them that the Holy Spirit is a promise to them from God. And with these words, the disciples see Jesus taken into heaven, taken to God.
What will they do now? What will they do next? In Acts, suddenly two messengers of God appear to them, finding the disciples standing looking up toward the sky. "Men of Galilee," the messengers ask, "why do you stand looking up toward heaven?" Beyond the close of today's reading, the disciples finally spring into motion. They stay in Jerusalem as Jesus instructed, and they devote themselves to prayer and begin to make desicions about how they will be in ministry now, in this new place they find themselves in. They can't go back. Things aren't the same. They can't get back to that same place with Jesus again. But they are in a different place, a new place, and it is a place with promise - truly with promise, since Jesus has reminded them more than once that God's promise will come to them. The disciples can't just stand still, staring off into the heavens. So how do they get from where they've been, what they know, to where they're going?
These days it seems like we are in a perpetual election cycle. The midterm elections took up a lot of time and media attention, and now with the upcoming presidential election, there are so many contenders and so many debates already that you’d think the election was this fall and not next fall. And in the midst of the election chaos, we occasionally hear the term “lame duck” – a “lame duck” Congress or “lame duck” president – those who are still in office for a short period of time but who already know their days in power are limited. In the United States, our leaders often use this time to pass through list minute measures and laws and pardons that they know their successor won’t support. Then, when a new person comes into office, they have to immediately start on undoing the last deeds of their predecessor. But the term “lame duck” implies that the person in office for this last bit of time can’t be very effective, and doesn’t have much left that they can do or impact in a meaningful way. And it is tempting then, for leaders and those under their authority to feel like it is a time to do nothing, a time to coast through, a time when nothing can be accomplished.
I think we could certainly feel that way as pastor and congregation. I could see myself as a “lame duck” pastor, and you could even see yourselves as a “lame duck” congregation. After all, summer is coming anyway, and who has the energy to do anything new and exciting during the summer? Who has the energy, knowing that such a big change will be coming our way September 1st? But as I read these passages for Ascension Sunday, and as I think about Jesus and his ministry, and I think about what he's trying to tell them, I am sure that there is no such thing as “lame duck” ministry. There’s no such thing as “lame duck” disciples.
We can't stay where we are. Life doesn't stand still, and we can't stand still in it. But how do we move forward? Jesus tells the disciples that they aren't without help in this chaotic time in their journeys - they have the promise of God coming to them, the Holy Spirit, that will, as we read last week, remind them of what Jesus has said, teach them again what they'v been learning, and be their helper, comforter, and advocate. They have to be ready to move, ready to begin a new phase, ready to keep working. Actually, they have to be ready to work harder, give even more than they've been giving, and lead in ways they haven't been leading before. Jesus isn't asking less of them at this juncture, he's asking even more of them, calling for a deeper discipleship then they've yet known was possible. We have the benefit of knowing what those disciples chose. They chose to trust in the promises of God. They chose to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit, believing that it would be the help to them that Jesus said it would. They chose to continue even though they didn't know what this new discipleship, without Jesus literally by their side, would be like. And we also know that it was hard for them. More was required of them from this point on, not less. They struggled and suffered more, not less. But they trusted in God's promise, and gave thanks for God's continual blessings on them. They became teachers and preachers themselves. They were ministers and missionaries. And of course, they were still disciples, still being formed and molded by their relationship with Christ, their love of God, their obedience to God's calling.
We have some questions to ask ourselves about our life together. What will we make of this time that we have? I can't say that things aren't changing, and I can't tell you how things will change. But I can tell you that things are always changing, and that standing still doesn't stop change from coming. The promises made to the disciples are promises made to us. Jesus is not abandoning the disciples - Jesus is carried with them, and the Holy Spirit transforms them. God's promises are for us, too. The Holy Spirit is coming, and God's Spirit can fill us, inspire us, change us, transform us, energize us, strengthen us, move us. Will we trust in God's promise? Will we become the teachers and preachers and ministers and missionaries. Will we continue the path of discipleship? Will we still listen for God's call? Times of change are upon us, but they are also times of hope and times of promise. In this in between time, let's not stand staring into the heavens. We don't need to look for answers there, because we already carry God and God's promises in our hearts. Let's live like we know it. Amen.