I wonder about this
story of farewell and promise: Jesus is taken up into heaven
into a cloud, and his community is left with the promise of the
Spirit. What does this mean? Does it offer hope for our
lives? Does it offer healing for the world?
Taken literally this gospel seems bewildering. Approached poetically
this story can sing a liberation song. I find it helps
to put the Ascension story into a language that makes sense to
me. So I think about this image of Jesus rising into the
heavens as the shaping and infusing of the archetype of humanness.
The way that Jesus lived was a break-through, something new was
created for us as humans. As Jesus is taken into God, the pattern
of spirit and matter dancing gracefully together in human form
becomes available across time, culture, languages, place. Instead
of ending with the crucifixion, the power of his loving life
magnifies and spreads in the human psyche as a living potential,
personally for each of us and for the human species. The
Resurrection has been a local event with appearances to his closest
friends. Now as they let him go, the Ascension prepares the way
for the extension of his life as a gift to all humanity.
Let’s take time to explore some of the strands of wisdom
woven into the story. What does it say about how to live a human
life? As we go we will be testing this with our own experience. Does
this ring true? If not, we should talk about it.
The first wisdom strand tells us that we will be disillusioned
and need to let go. These friends, his disciples, have
known Jesus in person, following him and living intimately with
him. They have known him in the forty days of resurrection
appearances that are now coming to an end. It is clear
that they longed for a triumphant, victorious messiah. They
wanted the Romans kicked out and everything restored but that
hasn’t happened. They wanted to be his assistants, sharing
in his success and glory. Instead they experienced humiliation
and suffering and now they must carry on his work without his
physical presence, finding the power together.
Frankly I don’t blame them at all. On some days
(if not most) don’t we too wish God would show up and make
everything okay in a miraculous instant with minimal cost to
us? In addition there is a human tendency to see things in a
win-lose way: There is triumph and success OR defeat and
failure. To me this is a story for our lives when we are disillusioned,
when Life didn’t turn out as expected and we have to let
go of naïve expectations and fantasy. It points to the possibilities
that are like unexpected seeds sprouting in broken hearts.
In his book Sabbath Wayne Muller tells of a greening
that happened after a devastating fire at Lama Mountain in northern
New Mexico. “Everywhere we looked we saw the color of charcoal,
silver-gray-black, reflecting the light of the sun that filtered
through charred and twisted branches. Just three weeks
earlier, this was an inferno. But on this day there spread
out before us a sea of green. Small oak seedlings, six
to ten inches high, blanketed the forest floor. Without
any human effort to clear or seed, already the earth was pushing
out life. Creation creates life at every revolution; it
is incapable of doing otherwise.”
In this gospel story Creation is creating new life. From
the beautiful life of Jesus cut-short, from the wound of his
community’s devastation, Creation is greening humanity,
growing seedlings in struggling, grieving hearts then and now. The
first strand of wisdom invites us to let go of the past. They
can’t undo the fire in New Mexico and Jesus’ disciples
couldn’t undo the crucifixion near Jerusalem. There
is much in our own lives and in our world that can’t be
undone. Yet we can go with the seedlings that are always
sprouting. We aren’t trapped in failure and defeat
but find an opening there into our humanity that is coming into
being.
The second wisdom strand invites us to live with vulnerability
and hope. The Ascension story is a powerful bridge. When
we can’t undo or go back to the way things were, we receive
the knowledge of our vulnerability. It is a gift both terrible
and wonderful. The knowing raises fears on a deep level
that seem unbearable. When we look at “the color
of charcoal, silver-gray-black” whatever that is in our
own lives, our sense of safety is wiped away. When we look
at the “sea of green”—the small seedlings—hope
is sustained in our own hearts. Somehow when we see both together
and live in this creative tension, we can open to new life. In
vulnerability we can find connection and belonging with others
that isn’t possible otherwise. With hope we discover
meaning, gratitude and generosity. Of course it is much
easier to talk about than to live out. Living with vulnerability
and hope often calls us to wrestle with our fears and cling to
our hope.
The third wisdom strand invites surrender and trust. Today’s
Collect written by Janet Morley speaks of entering “the
cloud where you are hidden” and surrendering “all
our certainty to the darkness of faith.” When we have let
go of illusions and moved to acceptance. Life is changed. Vulnerability
chases away false securities and we are left to uncover a trust
in God that is different from where we began with our childish
longing for the God who makes everything okay without our struggle
and growing. There is both a letting go of the past and
a letting go into the present and future. We surrender
into God’s wisdom which sees in ways that we can’t. We
allow ourselves to be guided in the darkness of faith.
We can infer from Thomas Merton’s prayer that we can never
know for sure that we have done God’s work but we can have
a deep trust that God honors our desire to follow and to live
faithfully. Here is some writing by Pierre de Chardin that
complements Merton’s words very well and speaks to the
trust that Ascension calls forth:
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything we do
To reach the end without delay;
We should like to skip the intermediate stages;
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something
new.
And yet, it is in the law of all progress that it is made
by passing through
some stages of instability;
And that may take a very long time;
And so it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let
them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste;
Don’t
force them on as though you could be on time;
Only God can say what this new spirit gradually forming
within you
will be.
Give God the benefit of believing that God’s
hand is leading you surely,
Through the absurdity and the becoming.
And, accept for the love of God, the anxiety of feeling
yourself in suspense
and incomplete.
And above all, trust in the slow work of God.
Ascension honors that time in life of “feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete,” of experiencing “absurdity
and the becoming.” Ascension is a necessary prerequisite
to the empowering of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost which we celebrate
next Sunday. Then the Spirit is received with wind and
fire and power fills the people. We know it’s coming but
it’s not here yet. The story yields a fourth strand
of wisdom about living in this in-between time of waiting. Luke
tells us that Jesus blessed them and that they returned to Jerusalem
with joy. While they waited they praised God in the temple.
Waiting for the power of the clarity and power of the Spirit
can be a very anxious even powerless time. Blessing and
praising God in community can make it bearable and fruitful.
Henri Nouwen writes that blessing means saying good things about
someone. He’s not talking about superficial compliments
but about words that call forth belovedness in each of us. In
Scripture one name for the Devil is “the Accuser.” It
isn’t necessary to believe in a personified devil to recognize
the reality of inner voices that undermine our essential being
as well as our doing. This inner critical voice doesn’t
come from God. I am not talking about fruitful self-knowledge
based in love but a mean-spirited self-judging that destroys
belovedness. This fourth strand of wisdom calls us to the
discipline of blessing. We can choose to live in ways so that
we can hear God’s loving voice in prayer and through others. We
can choose to discredit the negative voice which betrays us.
Nouwen writes, “Not claiming your blessedness will lead
you quickly to the land of the cursed. There is little
or no neutral territory between the land of the blessed and the
land of the cursed. You have to choose where it is you
want to live, and that choice is one that you have to keep making
from moment to moment.”
Claiming our blessedness goes hand-in-hand with praising God
in the liturgy. There we are connected with the God
who calls us beloved. Walter Wink writes that the “struggle
to be human in the face of suprahuman Powers requires [prayer].
The act of praying is itself one of the indispensable means by
which we engage the Powers. It is, in fact, that engagement
at its most fundamental level, where their secret spell over
us is broken and we are reestablished in a bit more freedom which
is our birthright and potential.” For me this prayer includes
singing and dancing, receiving bread and wine, passing the Peace. Our
liturgy is intended to root us in belovedness which gives us
strength when we are waiting on God to act and to show us the
way in our lives.
Even after the Spirit comes in the Church Year
there are still times and days where we need all the strands
of wisdom found in the Ascension story. Whenever we are living
through a waiting time, a time when our vulnerability opens
us to fear and anxiety seek refuge, as the Buddhists would say,
in the Ascension story.
O God, give us the gifts of Ascension: letting go, vulnerability
and hope, surrender and trust. Give us your blessing and
help us to claim our blessedness daily. May we trust in “the
slow work of God” and in your compassion and affection. Amen
______________________________
O God,
you withdraw from our sight
that you may be known by our love;
help us to enter the cloud
where you are hidden,
and surrender all our certainty
to the darkness of faith
in Jesus Christ, Amen (Janet Morley, All Desires Known)
Second Reading:
MY GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road
ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know
myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that
the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I
have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never
do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing
about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem
to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for
you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my
perils alone.
– Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"
The Gospel for the Ascension:
Luke 24:44-53
Then Jesus said
to them, “remember the words I spoke when
I was still with you: everything written about me in the
Law of Moses and the Prophets and the psalms had to be fulfilled.”
Then Jesus opened their minds to the understanding of the scriptures,
saying, “That is why the scriptures say that the Messiah
must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. In
the Messiah’s name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins
will be preached to all nations, beginnng at Jerusalem. You
are witnesses of all this.
Take note: I am sending forth what Abba God has promised to
you. Remain here in the city until you are clothed with the power
from on high.”
Then Jesus took them to the outskirts of Bethany, and with upraised
hands blessed the disciples. While blessing them, the savior
left them and was carried up to heaven. The disciples worshiped
the risen Christ and returned to Jerusalem full of joy. They
were found in the temple constantly, speaking the praises of
God. |
