Where is Jesus?
A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 21, 2013
The Rev. Robin Teasley
When the apostles had come together, they asked Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers. Acts 1:6-14
Also, see John 17:1-11
Have you ever thought about the way we describe things on a vertical plane or axis, that is, up or down? We prefer our grades to go up, we are worried about our investments going down. We take medication to lower our bad cholesterol and keep our blood pressure from getting too high.
In the church, success is sometimes determined by average Sunday attendance, or ASA. Every year on the parochial report it is one of two things the national church wants to know. What is your ASA and what is your annual pledge amount. And the expectation is that these two numbers go up every year. I would argue that numbers are not what Jesus focused on, but I digress.
We inherited this way of directional thinking from earlier civilizations. Their understanding of a three-tiered universe is evident throughout the scriptures and in other writings from the ancient world. Earth, the middle tier, was flat. God lived in heaven above on the top floor, and the underworld, which we mistakenly believe to be hell, was in the basement.
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus looked up to heaven, and in our first lesson from Acts, Jesus was lifted up into heaven. In the late second century, Christians began confessing the Ascension in the Apostles' Creed: "He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father." And in our Eucharistic Prayer the priest calls “lift up your hearts” and the people respond, “we lift them to the Lord.”
In our creeds and confessions, and architecture, from ancient manuscripts to icons, to fine art through the ages, Christians have professed their belief in the Ascension. There is even a chapel in Walsingham, England that has the feet of Jesus hanging down from the ceiling! Sculptured feet literally poking through the ceiling!
Jesus went up because up was where God was believed to be. That’s why we still use the flat-earth language of God up top sending Jesus down to earth to be born in a manger, then taking him up in order that the Spirit might come down in order that believers might be able to go up. Are you experiencing vertigo yet? A dear priest friend of mine always referred to this season in the Church as “elevator season” with all of this up and down! How do we make sense of it in light of our 21st century scientific knowledge?
In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning the apostles are talking with Jesus; the resurrected but not yet ascended Jesus. He has been appearing and disappearing all over the place for forty days since his resurrection at Easter. His followers have almost gotten used to Jesus in this new “now you see me now you don’t” form of being, and are again becoming comfortable, and thinking just maybe this is going to work after all. They ask him, “Lord is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Perhaps we can imagine Jesus rolling his eyes at this question because they are still not understanding the bigger picture, they are still focusing on their own personal desires, still hoping things will return to the way they had been before Jesus was crucified.
They are weary and anxious. They want life to be good again, and they are tired of waiting in uncertainty. And I’m guessing that the answer Jesus gave them was not exactly what they wanted to hear, and mostly because they could not envision how it would play out. “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
And the next thing they knew, Jesus was disappearing again, only this time they sensed it was different, that he was truly leaving them to return to his Father. They had to trust that Jesus would send the Holy Spirit. As if to confirm that, two men in white robes suddenly stood by them, and seeing their incomprehension of all that they had just seen and heard, the men in white said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Haven’t we all found ourselves in such an incomprehensible place? Life gets crazy, chaotic, and unmanageable. Whether it’s a personal crisis, the loss of a loved one, or a pandemic, we find ourselves looking up to heaven wondering what on earth we are supposed to do next, wondering how we will even take the next step when it seems so daunting, so uncertain.
Yes, I think we do know something of what those first followers of Jesus were feeling that day. Right now, we may be wondering who will be our next rector, and when we will find our next organist/choir director. We might not hear exactly what we want to hear, or anything at all just yet. We might not be able to envision how it’s all going to play out.
If we can allow those first century followers the grace of their circumstances, we can acknowledge that they were expressing the most inexpressible mystery of the presence of God in the only language they knew, a prescientific language. We have the advantage of knowing that the world is not flat or constructed in three tiers.
Today we think about space in three dimensions of length, width, and height. To these we may also add the fourth dimension of time. What if we think about the mystery of the Ascension in the fourth dimension? Jesus is with us and at the same time has gone before us into the future, a future we cannot yet see or comprehend. To continue reading in Acts is to see the ways Jesus was with his followers, even when things did not go as they had planned.
William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 20th century, offered a way to help us better understand the theology of the Ascension, to see its application in our lives when he wrote, “The ascension of Christ is his liberation from all restrictions of time and space. It does not represent his removal from the earth, but his constant presence everywhere.”
Jesus has gone before us into the future, ahead of each one of us to a future we cannot yet see or comprehend. And yet, Jesus is still with us, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, to help us discern and wrestle with our questions over time. Jesus is, even now, sending the Advocate to our discernment committee as they receive applications for the position of rector. Even now, Jesus is sending the Advocate to help us navigate worship without an organist, by providing supply musicians.
As we follow Jesus, who goes before us into the future, things will be different, they will be uncertain, and at times unknown. It is not for us to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” The good news is that, like those first followers, we too are given grace in our circumstances.
So, where is Jesus? And are we still standing in the same place where we last saw Jesus? We are called to look around for where Jesus is going next. We can stand around looking up and get a crick in our neck, or we can follow Jesus.
Comments
Post a Comment