Between noon and three

…spare us in the youngest day when all are shaken awake, facts are facts, (and I shall know exactly what happened today between noon and three); that we too may come to the picnic with nothing to hide, join the dance as it moves in perichoresis, turns about the abiding tree. — W.H. Auden, "Compline"

Tag: Ascension

May 13, 2018

The Ascension

This sermon was preached at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, on May 13, 2018: it was the Seventh Sunday of Easter, which we kept as the Ascension (in addition to a smaller celebration on the day itself the previous Thursday).

Collect: 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. Amen.

Readings: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26, 1 John 5:9-13, John 17:6-19

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Deep in the County of Norfolk in the UK, there is a Church of England shrine in a village called Walsingham. If you want to know more about it just ask me at coffee hour and I’ll happily divulge! It’s a good and holy place, if also a little mad — as most good and holy things inevitably are.

But for the purpose of this morning, I only want to share that the Shrine church is ringed on the inside by a series of chapels, dedicated to various saints and events in Jesus’ life. One of them is dedicated to the Ascension, the feast we keep today. It’s a tiny chapel, and above the altar there is a lovely painting of Our Lady with the infant Christ. On the ceiling, however, directly over the altar, there is a gilded plaster sculpture of clouds, out of which poke two feet. Nothing is visible except two nail scars.

The suggestion is obvious: here at the altar we’ve caught a glimpse of Jesus himself in mid-whoosh on his way into heaven. It’s complete madness, but then it’s the chapel of the Ascension after all, and it does make a point! On one of my own visits there, the Shrine Administrator remarked to me that the really crazy thing is how many visitors see the chapel, and then rush upstairs to the gallery to see if the rest of Jesus is there waiting for them to say hello. They get disappointed and want to know, “Where’s the rest of him?” The Administrator has to tell them, “No, Jesus ascended into heaven, not into the balcony!”

I suppose it’s the obvious answer, Jesus has ascended into heaven and it’s useless to look for the rest of him. But is it so heartbreaking as that? Did Jesus just go away? Did he just leave his disciples to fend for themselves, while he got a one way ticket out of the mayhem and confusion? The calendar points us to Pentecost next Sunday as one answer: no, Jesus doesn’t just go away, he sends the Holy Spirit, which reveals the Church, and empowers the apostles to begin their ministry in the world, while leading them further into the knowledge and love of God.

But the Ascension does more than simply point downstream towards Pentecost. And while it is the occasion for Jesus to leave his disciples, it isn’t an escape route. When Jesus goes up to heaven, it’s Jesus who goes, body and all — resurrected and glorified, sure, but human nevertheless. The Jesus who sits at the right of God in heaven is the human Jesus, equally as much as he is the eternally begotten Son of God. And more, not just Jesus the human; but like the Ascension chapel at Walsingham points out, Jesus with scars in his feet, Jesus the wounded, Jesus the crucified and betrayed, as well as Jesus the resurrected.

In short, Jesus’ humanity goes with him into heaven, and in this way, Jesus does not escape this world in his Ascension but carries it with him. Jesus is not taken out of the world on his way to heaven; rather this world is taken with Jesus into heaven, where it is met with all the compassion, all the tenderness, all the beauty and majesty of God.

Which of course changes the way we view this world. If you and I ever find ourselves looking to heaven as the answer to our problems, then Jesus’ Ascension presents us with some very real difficulties. It is not an escape, but the occasion for a more profound encounter between God and humanity than ever before. It means, among other things, that people who feel far away from heaven whether by reason of injury, struggle, or sin, are actually the ones who are closest to God, because they are dearest to Jesus and share most profoundly in his own suffering. And it means also, that whatever transcendence the Christian religion offers, that transcendence begins here and now in the everyday muck and clutter of being human. And there is a lot of muck and clutter.

This is why the church continues to insist on its worship consisting of ordinary things: wine, bread, water, oil, words, voices. This is why the church continues to insist on sharing the peace, confessing and forgiving sins, reading the Scriptures, celebrating the same milestones and moments day after day in every successive life. Because in all of these mundane things and tasks the seeds of heaven are planted in us and among us. And not just in church either, but the small, humdrum moments of every day life, especially those moments that didn’t have to happen but did; moments where the gratuity of human interaction reveals something beautiful, something fitting about the world and our place in it. The seeds of heaven are planted there too, and begin to bear fruit.

The paradox is that the Ascension introduces us to an absolutely transcendent God, and a Savior who ascends far above all heavens but who carries the created order with him, and makes all the ordinary bits of life reflect the glory of heaven. The church’s job is to articulate and reveal just this paradox: that though Jesus has ascended far above all heavens, because of that ascension, heaven now fills all the earth. The chief marker of our mission is not primarily a concern for the faraway; not primarily a concern for abstractions of thought or doctrine or the esoterica of arcane subjects. No, the chief marker by which we know we’re on the same path as Jesus is a turning towards the ordinary, towards the things and people that are so much a part of the furniture of our lives that we’re usually tempted to ignore them or else take them for granted.

We’ll need help noticing they exist; it seems a human trait to be more conscious of our hopes and goals and even daydreams than we are of the very real people around us on whom we depend and in whom our life consists. But by recognizing them and caring for them, the Ascension of Jesus into heaven invites us to a happiness, a confidence, a fullness of life here and now, as both distinctly possible and distinctly Christian pursuits.

The ordinary and the necessary around us, even the pain and suffering, are revealed as seeds and mirrors of heaven and the scarred Savior who ascended there. This is a vision which transfigures life as we know it, while it also makes room for what cannot be seen or touched or possessed: an expanding universe, in which there is always more to uncover in the ordinary stuff of our lives, more to love in the people around us, more to forgive and more forgiveness to ask, more thanks to offer for beauties and joys no matter how small.

So on this Sunday of the Ascension, we celebrate together Jesus ascending into heaven where he takes his seat at the right hand of God. We also celebrate that what he carries with him is the whole range and matrix of our lives in this world, making them even now reflect the glory of heaven. And we pray for the grace to turn away from staring up into heaven looking for where Jesus has gone, to regarding our neighbors, the humdrum, and even the madness of our lives, with the same wonder and amazement: witnessing in them the splendor of heaven welcoming earth home.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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May 15, 2017

“That where I am, there you may be also.”

On Sunday, May 14, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, the Rev. John Hartnett, of St. Elizabeth’s in Ridgewood, NJ, was our guest preacher at the 9:15 service; his excellent sermon can be heard here. This sermon was preached at the others.

Collect: O Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Acts 7:55-60, 1 Peter 2:2-10, John 14:1-14

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

“That where I am, there you may be also.”

This phrase is often overlooked as Christians meditate on the more famous sections of this passage: “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” Or, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.” Or, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” But I am certain that there is no concept more central to the Gospel than this: “That where I am, there you may be also.”

We read this passage from John on this Sunday, the fifth Sunday of Easter, as we prepare to celebrate the Ascension in another week and a half. We’re getting ourselves ready to mark the day when Jesus ascended into heaven and left his disciples on their own, aided and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, to carry on the work of the Church. And this passage, from the Last Supper the night before Jesus’ Crucifixion helps prepare us just as it helped prepare the disciples for getting on with the work of the Gospel in a world where Jesus is not physically, personally present with his people anymore in the familiar way he had been.

“That where I am, there you may be also.” It’s a word of comfort to the disciples, as their Lord is about to be taken from them: first to Calvary, and then to the right hand of God in heaven, that he will take them to himself; that their life in this world, that our life in this world is not the end, that there is more for us beyond the veil of death, above the sphere of this mortal world, that our true home is with him in glory, and we will not be at home here on this earth our whole lives through; that we will not be at home until we meet God face to face in heaven.

It’s tempting to regard this world as the end, and even Christians get embroiled in it: we fight, we worry, we are desperately concerned with the success or failure of the mighty work with which we are entrusted, with the way the church seems to be going (whichever way you think that is), with the way our lives seem to be turning out. 

It’s tempting to regard this world as the end, because it’s what we’ve got to work with, because it’s hard to see past the all-consuming day-to-day tasks of managing our lives in this world. And yet Jesus here at the Last Supper tells his disciples that he goes to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house. This place where Jesus goes is our home, and he goes so that “Where I am there you may be also.”

If we feel as though this world can’t continue, or that our lives can’t continue as they are; if we feel uneasy with “the way things work” or that we simply aren’t at rest, it’s because this world is not our home; and our home is where Jesus has gone. In large measure the greatest challenge of our lives as Christians is to behave here as if we were already at home there, to make this world, our lives, reflect as much of that world, of that life as we are given the strength and the grace to achieve; but at the same time, if the work never seems to be finished, not to despair, because this world is not the end. Christ goes on ahead of us, “so that where I am, there you may be also.”

At the same time, our first lesson from Acts recounts the martyrdom of Stephen: Stephen the Protomartyr he’s called, because he is the first and the prototype of all Christian martyrs after him. It’s always remarkable to me that Stephen’s death mimics so closely the events of Jesus’s own. Stephen faces a mock trial before the Sanhedrin, he speaks almost the same words Jesus did from the cross, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And finally he forgives his persecutors even as they stone him to death. Before he goes to his death he sees Heaven opened, and Christ himself standing at the right hand of God.

Jesus says to his disciples, that he leaves them in order “That where I am, there you may be also.” Stephen lives the promise more fully than nearly anyone else in Scripture. Christ is certainly enthroned in glory, and we worship him as King of Heaven. But in this life, in this world, he suffered injustice and crucifixion. That is where Stephen found him, and saw him most clearly: in Stephen’s own moment of suffering, in his own unjust execution, there he encounters Christ most profoundly, there he found him strong to save. 

Yes our Lord has gone ahead of us into heaven. But he goes in order that “Where I am, there you may be also.” It’s a promise and a challenge both. This world is not our home. And while we work to make it reflect what we know of heaven, the irony is that the clearest reflection of heaven can’t be found in the halls of power or glory, but rather in humiliation and defeat; in forgiveness rather than vindication; in death, in resurrection, rather than in any kind of earthly victory. These are the places where Christians will find Jesus most clearly present, most mighty to save. These are the places which are the seedbeds of the kingdom of God.

I don’t mean somehow to glorify suffering, or sin, or death, but only to point out that these are the places where Redemption happens, these are the places where we begin to see and know the goodness of God. If you know music at all, you’ll recognize that there is a dissonance at work here, whose resolution we will not hear in our lifetime. And yet the more we lean into that dissonance, the more we are people of prayer and mercy and love even in its midst, the sweeter the resolution will finally be, the more richly will the full vision be revealed to us, the more clearly we will know the love of God in our lives and in all things.

“That where I am, there you may be also.” Our challenge this Easter is to long for the fulfillment of our Easter hope with Jesus in his Father’s house in heaven. But even as we long for that world, we strive to live the life Jesus lived in this world: going to the places where he himself went, doing the kinds of things which he himself did, not being distracted by whatever difficulties we face, not being afraid of darkness or pain, but following him even to ignominy and death if need be.

Like Stephen, let our own moments of fear and struggle be occasions to offer forgiveness, unasked for and undeserved — so that, with Jesus in his cross and passion, we might share with him the glory of his resurrection.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

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