Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La., Easter 7/Ascensiontide
The story of Jesus’ ascension is told near the end of Luke and at the beginning of Acts. Both accounts were thus likely written by the same person since scholars widely believe the two books have a single author.
Although there are several differences between the accounts, neither tells us when it happened. Nevertheless, the feast day for the ascension is always on a Thursday—the Thursday exactly 40 days after Easter, which is, of course, always on a Sunday.
It’s a bit odd since most churches don’t have a service Thursdays. But… of course, it must be 40 days after Easter to match the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began his ministry. And why? Because that’s how the church does things, that’s why!
So… today is officially the 7th Sunday after Easter, but I prefer to think of it as the only Sunday during Ascensiontide! And since you most likely did not go to church Thursday, well, today, is our celebration of Ascensiontide, that extraordinary moment between Jesus’ departure from Earth and the coming of the Holy Spirit—to be celebrated next Sunday—Pentecost Sunday.
And it is a moment, so to speak. It is just 10 days between Jesus ascending and the Holy Spirit raining fire on the heads of Jesus’s followers. And this is the only Sunday within that 10 days, thus our main opportunity for thinking a bit about what that time must have been like for the disciples and IS like for us today.
The disciples had been on quite a roller coaster ride. Jesus had been crucified. It seemed to have all been over. Their hopes for a new kingdom were dashed. They went fishing.
Then Jesus began to appear to them. At first they weren’t sure but he kept showing up. They moved from disbelief to belief. Could it be they had him back again? They hung on his every word. This time when he said he was going away but would send this mysterious presence that would be with them always, I suspect they were readier to believe, but…, did they have any idea what to expect?
You know that I always love to look at artist renditions of the Bible stories. The vast majority of paintings of the Ascension show Jesus in voluminous robes and rising, arms outstretched. The focus is all on the glorification of Jesus. The disciples, if they appear at all, tend to be highly stylized hands and faces.
But there are a few that only show Jesus’ feet and maybe the hem of his robe dangling down from the top of the frame. In these, the focus tends to be on the disciples and their reactions, and their faces are not always calm! I saw one, in particular, that showed faces contorted by surprise, of course, but also fear and anxiety.
It is hard to be in an in-between time! What next? After all we’ve been through, what next?! Here we are alone again, and Jesus says something big is going to happen, but… what is this new thing going to be like?
It seems the disciples were kind of frozen in the moment—and wouldn’t we all be?! So the next thing that happens—and my fave thing about this story—is that two men dressed all in white appear. Angels, presumably. And they shock the poor, already stunned disciples out of their reverie.
Wake up guys, they say. What are you doing standing there with your mouths hanging open? You’ve got work to do—like “change the whole world” work to do. Better get cracking. Go back to Jerusalem and get ready.
So Ascensiontide is a little bitty—10 day, to be exact—in-between time when the disciples prayed and prepared for something to come, they were not sure exactly what or how, but they prepared in faith with prayer and praise, and lo and behold, something wondrous did happen, and they did go out and change the world.
But you have most likely noticed… you surely have noticed…the world.. still.. needs changing! Christianity brought some wonderful teachings to the world, and I’ll come back to that momentarily. But some of what Christianity brought was cruel and inhumane, and most assuredly not from God. Christianity brought the Inquisitions and the Crusades and the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny that supported our ancestors in decimating indigenous people and culture in this country.
Some Christians used passages in the bible to justify slavery. And then other Christians came along and used the Hebrew Scripture to preach that all humans are created equal and in the likeness and image of God. Christianity has always been a mixed bag and even though the disciples of Jesus changed the world… we have much to do today!
Our central teachings--love of God first and foremost then love your neighbor as self—are sorely needed in our still violent and evil world. We have a long way to go and our work cut out for us.
So we still need two men in white—or maybe any random priest or deacon—to show up every so often and say, “people of Christ Church, St. Joseph, why do you stand here gazing into heaven? You’ve got work to do! Get cracking.”
We too live in an in-between time, not a little bitty one like Ascensiontide but an enormous, ongoing one that stretches from the first Easter until that glorious day when God’s kingdom comes, fully and gloriously, and Divine Love and Perfect Unity rule everything.
What we do with our in-between time matters. What we focus on matters, as we play out our lives working toward the coming of that Kingdom. Here’s a gem I found on FB of all places, in the past couple of weeks. The author framed it as…
A reminder in these dark times…
We must call out the darkness, The unspeakable injustice and evil in this world. But we must never *focus* on it.
Make sure your focus is *always* on the Light. And remember that no matter how great the darkness gets, the Light will always be greater.
Yasmin Mogahed, Muslim woman
Our Gospel lesson today is Jesus the Christ’s prayer for his disciples, and us, as he departs this earth. It is a prayer for love and unity. But we will never achieve God’s kingdom of Love and Unity by striving for conformity and uniformity. It always sounds nice! If we could just get rid of our differences, we could all live in harmony, right? Except that what every human who ever thought that had in mind was the rest of the world conforming to THEIR beliefs, values and way of seeing! BE like me, then we can all get along, right!
Our only possible unity is in learning to live with and love in all our variation. That’s Divine Love and that’s the Light—the only Light that can guide us.
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.
