Scriptures: Isaiah 55:1-9
John 7:32-44
Quick now: what was the religious holy day we celebrated last Thursday? No, it wasn’t May Day…tho I did think maybe I saw some of you dancing around a Maypole. But the traffic wasn’t particularly lighter on the 95 or the 15 on Thursday, was it? Can’t come up with it? (Possibly you could have if you’d read my column in the Clarion carefully.) It was Ascension Day, which traditionally occurs 40 days after Easter each year, and it is thus always on a Thursday.
Falling between Easter and Pentecost as it does, Ascension Day is usually given short shrift by most Protestant churches. The period of 40 days was chosen partly because the book of Acts reports Jesus as having appeared for 40 days following his resurrection. However, it is also a highly symbolic number. As John Middleton Murry says, “Forty days is the period of a timeless spiritual happening. And such a timeless spiritual happening is what is indicated…by the forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. It is the period in which it was recognized that Jesus had become a necessary part of the true idea of God.” It is not just a movement in time, but it becomes the crucial preliminary step before Pentecost, which we will celebrate next Sunday: Christ had to ascend to his glory as a prelude for our ascending into glory with him before the church could begin its essential work, which is what it starts to do on that day of Pentecost.
But what’s really going on here? Our 21st century scientific mind balks at the image of being carried up into heaven in some sort of cloud. This is truly a mind-boggling act if we were to take it literally. It certainly flies in the face or ordinary and acceptable physics. Besides, following the resurrection, this event comes as something of an anticlimax. Here is how the book of Acts in the first chapter depicts the Ascension: “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.’” (1:9-11)
Can you imagine a contemporary movie-maker trying to get away with a scene like that? Even a Spielberg or a Lucas wouldn’t try it in, say, the new “Raiders of the Lost Ark” that’s about to open or any of the many (far too many) “Star Wars” episodes.
No, this ascension story really does use images and ideas from another time and culture. Part of the problem here is thinking of God and heaven as “up there” – somewhere out of this world – which keeps us from realizing and accepting the God who is a part of and concerned with this world.
What this story does express for us is a truth about the relationship between God and God’s world. Like the creation story and so many others in the Bible, the Ascension witnesses not so much to the literal way things happened but to an internal and in-depth truth which is experienced by each of us much more than it is expressed by words or images. The importance of the Ascension lies in what it tells each of us about our relationship with God, and here is where we find its relevance for our 21st century day.
The story of the Ascension tells us several things we need to know in order to live our lives as Christians. For one thing, fairly obviously, it tells us that Jesus is no longer physically with us. For a time after the resurrection Christians expected Christ to come back very soon – before the first generation of Christians would pass away. But as the hope of this “second coming” faded, the next generation of Christians held onto the idea of Ascension which told the believers that while Christ had indeed gone the beginning of his realm on earth had been present in what he had done and been. In the scripture we read from the gospel of John the gospel writer quotes Jesus’ rather strange words: “’I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.’” (7:33-34) Huh? These words puzzled those who were listening to him, and they puzzle us. Does this mean we can’t follow Jesus in his Ascension?
In one sense these words from Jesus in John are a corrective for us to a too easy acceptance of the promise of heaven. Our task here on earth is to follow the crucified one: to be, as the United Church of Christ’s Statement of Faith puts it, “his servants in the struggle for justice and peace.” Jesus is the one who has bridged that gap between the human and the divine, not us. The paradox for us is that we are called upon to accept the way of service and suffering – that is, the way of the cross – without thought about the promise of heaven. In this way we discover our own meaningful existence through obedience to the Christ, and the promise of heaven will take care of itself.
Discovering our meaningful existence as humans in service to the Christ leads us to the second truth that the Ascension story reveals: Christ does not just leave us flat and on our own resources, but rather as he ascends the Holy Spirit descends. We spoke about this last week when I mentioned having talked
with Samantha and Amanda in confirmation class about how the Holy Spirit was God’s way of being with us always. God’s Spirit was (and is) something that can be called upon in every situation. This symbolism was previewed at the time of Jesus’ baptism when John the Baptist says, “’I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove.’” (John 1:32)
Maybe the problem with all of this for our modern minds is this imagery of ascending and descending – going “up” and “down”. So, let’s change the image from a vertical one to a horizontal one – going “sideways” for a moment. Imagine yourself walking toward a distant body of water. The Master has shown us which road to take and has even walked with us for a little way. But now he has gone on before us, and we despair of ever reaching that body of water by our own efforts. Yet, from the direction where we believe the water to be comes a Spirit who stands ready to assist, to pick us up when we stumble, to point out when we go off onto side paths. This kind of symbolic imagery is especially helpful when we think about how the symbol of water is closely tied in with the Holy Spirit, as in baptism, or as when Noah released a dove (a symbol for the Holy Spirit) over the waters which covered the earth.
In our text from John Jesus picks up on the theme he used with the woman at the well when he talks again about “living water”. In fact, he quotes Isaiah: “’Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” John adds, in order to make this quite clear: “Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” What flows from the heart of one who believes in the Christ is an existence which has meaning, integrity, authenticity, wholeness – an existence, in other words, which is directed by the Holy Spirit – that is what is meant by “living water”. This is the real promise of the Ascension – not a promise of other-worldly being but a promise of meaningful existence in the very real here and now. It is a promise already foreseen by Isaiah when he said, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters…..” The wonderful images that follow this invitation from Isaiah: “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…..” are reflective of the heavenly banquet (and sound even better to us as milk and gas prices soar higher and higher – I’m tempted here to use a line I heard at Pinochle Friday night: beer is now cheaper than gasoline…so drink and don’t drive!). Isaiah is issuing a call to abundant life, which is based on the covenant between God and God’s people and on the ever-available mercy of God: “…let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” The person who feels that the living out of his or her life is senseless and fruitless finds a meaningful existence in the waters of the Holy Spirit.
But even with the promise that the Holy Spirit is coming toward us – whether “up”, “down”, or “sideways” – there is a warning which is the third truth of the story of the Ascension. To stay with our “sideways” image of the road to the water: we who are on that road must continually be seeking out the One who has gone before us. Christ’s rather dark and negative words, “’You will search for me, but you will not find me…,’” sound a note of urgency about this whole business of shaping our meaningful existence. Isaiah sounds the same note: “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near…..” Now, these warnings are not to imply that Christ or God will ever abandon us. But they are saying that we may be too far back along that road to the water to see the Spirit as the Spirit comes toward us. Our seeking and our finding, similarly to Christ’s ascending and the Spirit’s descending, are pulsating movements, part of the never-ending process of discerning the will of our Lord.
Karen Minnich-Sadler puts it this way: “Nothing about these events is haphazard. God’s amazing, creating, saving grace has been at work through every page of this saga. Jesus has completed the work given by God. Now it is time for Jesus to physically exit this particular chapter of the story, so that the Holy Spirit can come and be God’s presence with us.
“By physically leaving, Jesus shows us what our purpose is in this world: we are to be witnesses for Jesus. [That’s what I was talking about with the kids a few moments ago.] The One who is no longer present in a way the world can see, becomes visible in the church when we live and speak the glory of God’s love and amazing grace – when we make the compassion and mercy of God real by how we relate to one another and this world.”
The story of the Ascension, I believe, holds a truth that is particularly relevant for today’s world. The Spirit of God has come down that road toward us; or, if you prefer, it has descended. But whatever metaphor we choose, the truth is that the Spirit is in the world (sometimes in the most unlikely places), and it is the source for our own authentic lives. No, this story of the Ascension is no minor addition to the Easter message, but, as you can see, it helps us to realize that Christ is Lord over the whole world as well as being the individual Christian’s best hope for having a meaningful existence. By demonstrating Christ’s leaving (thus ending his beginning work), by demonstrating the Holy Spirit’s coming (thus giving us our spiritual guide in this world), and by demonstrating the importance of our seeking (thus underlining the urgency of our service) this story of the Ascension indeed provides the basis for the Christian church. Next week we shall see how the day of Pentecost used the truth of the Ascension to provide all of us with our hope and our task as continuing members of Christ’s church, as we come together in a service of confirmation.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, UCC
Las Vegas, NV
May 4, 2008