Chaplain Mel
Baars
May 20, 2012
Luke 24:44-53
“Ascension”
When I was very
small, and church consisted almost solely of coloring the children’s bulletin
and sneaking Trident gum from my grandmother’s purse, back when it was only the
original flavor, my favorite place to
sit in the pews was on the inner aisle. Those were the most coveted seats in
the house, as far as I was concerned. It was the best place to see all that was
going on throughout the service and the best position to be in for a quick
escape from church and certain arrival at the cookie trays before my father had
a chance to tell me, “No.” Even when I wasn’t on the aisle during worship, I
somehow, stealthily, found a way to wiggle my way there by the end of the last
hymn.
Sugar was
always at the forefront of my mind. But, Sunday after Sunday, holding my breath
as the priest spoke his final words of blessing, I began to look forward to the
blessing almost as much as I longed for an opportunity to crash the coffee
hour. In my Episcopal church the words were short and simple. “Go in
peace to love and serve the Lord,” the priest would say. And, as he moved out
into the afternoon sunlight, the congregation would exhale, almost as one.
This moment of
blessing was our tipping point, where we would be transformed from a people
facing inward unto ourselves into a people turned inside out, facing the world
with arms ready to embrace whatever came next. At this point, there was no
going back. This blessing was the moment that solidified all that had come
before in our worship, the praise and prayer, the reading and learning from the
Bible. These few words were our reminder that our worship was shaping, molding,
and preparing us to go out into the world, ready to be the hands and feet of Christ,
ready to witness the Good News. We were ready to go in peace to love and serve
the Lord, or at least that is what it felt like in those first moments as we
filed out of the sanctuary.
If you didn’t
notice the front of your bulletin this morning, this is the Sunday that we
celebrate the Ascension, the day that
Jesus rose up into heaven, to, as one of our earliest creeds puts it, sit at
the right hand of God. As a church, we have mostly struggled with what to make
of this feast day. Even artists have struggled to express this moment in our
history, often depicting Jesus shooting up into the sky like a rocket or even painting
Jesus’ feet dangling from the clouds as the disciples look up in wonder. Recently,
a pastor friend from home reminded me of a few of her favorite depictions of
the Ascension. One, found in the
Church of the Ascension in Jerusalem, is, according to legend, Jesus’ last
footprint on earth, an indentation in the stone floor which the church was
later built around. Pilgrims come from around the world to see and touch this
stone. Perhaps, placing their hand into this “footprint” is a palpable way to
remember that once upon a time, Jesus walked the earth.
Our struggle to
wrap our heads around the Ascension
should not be altogether surprising. The story of the Ascension begs a few important questions, particularly for a modern
audience. We know what comes after the clouds, and even after the earth’s
atmosphere, far beyond what our eyes can see. It’s not the “heaven” with which
we are familiar from our scripture. But, it’s space and another planet’s
gravitational forces and then eventually another solar system and galaxy, ever
expanding, or so the really smart
people tell us. So, my question is this: just how far did Jesus have to go to
get to God’s right hand? To the very edge of the universe? It’s hard not to
have visions of God and Jesus, as his right hand guy, on the bridge of the USS
Enterprise, on the final frontier, going boldly where no one has gone before.
For this
reason, I am grateful that the Ascension is
really about so much more than what we gain from any literalistic
interpretation. It is clear, as we read our gospel for this morning, that we
are at a point of transition, quite similar to that moment in the end of
worship when the minister raises hands and says, in so many words, “Go in peace
to love and serve the Lord.” For three years, the disciples had been with
Jesus, experiencing the day to day, learning from him about the scriptures,
being shown through his example what a life of faithfulness looks like. In this
moment, there is a cosmic shift. After a time of training with Jesus, they
stand on the precipice of a new season. What comes next is the birth of the
church, a time for disciples, present and to come, to go out into the world
proclaiming repentance and forgiveness to all nations, loving and serving God
as they go. These are the chapters which follow, beginning with the Acts of the
Apostles and continuing even to this day.
As much as I
absolutely dread Saturday night and the blank page which always seems to be
waiting for me, no matter how hard I try to get a jump start on my sermon
earlier in the week, I am often reminded that if I wasn’t tasked with
preaching, I would never spend enough time with the text. I would never uncover
the little pearls tucked away in a single, solitary verse. This week was a
perfect example. I have been a diligent churchgoer my entire life, so excluding
both my youngest years when I was focused on coloring and my teen years when I
was a little distracted by looking at some of the cute boys in my youth group,
I have heard the Ascension story preached at least twenty times. And, never in
all these occasions, not to mention the times that I have simply read the story,
have I noticed a detail which is paramount to the story-- the fact that Jesus
was blessing the disciples as he rose to heaven and that he never stopped
blessing them. “While he was blessing them... he was carried up into heaven
(v.51).” In his last moment on earth, Jesus is pronouncing a blessing, his
final benediction.
When I was in
Hebrew class, my favorite word was barak,
meaning “to bless.” The word appears thousands of times in the Hebrew Bible
and then carries over into the Greek Testament. My interest was peeked when we
were reading through the book of Job. Though the first lexiconical entry for barak is the expected translation, “to
bless,” one of the later entries is, surprisingly, “to curse.” And, while many
of the translations that we read, like the New International Version which we
read today, for instance, have Job and Job’s wife “cursing God” in some
moments, the King James Version actually has Job “blessing God,” instead.
I have always
found it fascinating that one word can encapsulate such divergent meanings. We
all know that there is a chiasmic difference between a blessing and a curse.
Somehow, though, the meaning of this little word in Hebrew gestures to
something much bigger, much more hopeful. The life that unfolds around us is
waiting to be received and responded to. Whether we receive a blessing or a
curse has much to do with our own attitudes, our own ability to trust that God
is steadfast to his promises, making something good out of the ashes we hold on
to after enduring tragedy, loss, or disappointment. Even when it is too dark to
see the ways that we are blessed by God, the blessing still endures.
If the story is
any indication, Jesus doesn’t ever stop blessing us, even as he disappears into
the heavens. He is physically gone. We can no longer see him or touch him. But,
the gift that he gives us as he goes, keeps on giving. Despite losing Jesus to
heaven, the disciples worship him still and they even take it one step further.
They go back to Jerusalem filled with joy, and they were continually in the
temple, blessing God. As one writer puts it, “Blessing begets blessing.”[1]
Because Jesus’ blessing lives in us and is re-gifted to others, in a way, he
isn’t really gone. And, this is how Luke’s gospel ends-- Jesus blessing the disciples
and the disciples, filled with joy, sharing his blessing, prepared to witness
the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world.
In a way,
though, we can’t forget what I might call the shadow side of the Ascension, which is Jesus’ departure. He
may have blessed them, but he also left them. We can’t overlook their sense
of loss and dismay, not so much in those immediate days when they believed his
return was imminent, but in the long, sometimes deadly days which followed,
days that are still unfolding, even now. Next Sunday, we will celebrate
Pentecost, when the fire of the Holy Spirit covers the earth, empowering us all
to continue the witness, to spread the blessing to the ends of the earth. This
is the spirit which Jesus promises to send to us as our Advocate. Nonetheless,
we are still waiting for Jesus,
sometimes still looking into the
heavens, wondering where exactly he has gone off too and when he will be back with
us again.
Perhaps this is
why Jesus’ perpetual blessing is so significant. Jesus knew what they, and we, could not know then, that his
blessing would be manna in the wilderness, that the seasons which would pass
before his coming would not be without suffering and hardship. His blessing
would sustain them, and us, when the
sight of God’s kingdom had been lost. His blessing would renew them, and us, when strength was all but lost.
His blessing would be their reminder, and
ours, that because of what Jesus has done, revealing himself, opening minds to
understand the scriptures, they, and
we, have a job to do.
What we
remember in the Ascension, watching
as Jesus rises into the heavens and receiving his never-ending blessing,
letting it wash over us, is that, from that place and from this place, too,
from every place where we praise and pray and give thanks to God, we go out into
the world in peace, ready to love and serve the Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen
Very interesting.... Amen
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