Discipleship

Ascension: When We Become

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ascension

Originally posted on May 25, 2014 on this blog.

FIRST LESSON:  Acts 1: 1-11

To read the first lesson from this week’s Lectionary, click here

This passage begins with the first major issue:  Who will do it now?  Who will restore the Kingdom of Israel and restore God’s Kingdom?  But there is an underlying clear assumption that what Jesus began his successors will continue.  The assumption has nothing to do with duty or responsibility, but with sincere devotion to the truth that Jesus conveyed and the deepest desire for that truth to continue being spread throughout the world.  This assumption plays heavily into the way that the Book of Acts is constructed.  It has to do with the way the church and the people of the church pattern their lives after the life of Jesus Christ.

The phrases “through the Holy Spirit” and “the apostles whom Jesus had chosen” introduce that continuity and also introduces a partnership, a community if you will, that is being formed.  The Book of Acts begins with the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the Gospel of Christ and with Christ’s Passion, death, and Resurrection.  The Resurrection of Jesus is a theme of enormous importance for this book.  It testifies to Jesus’ faithfulness to God and confirms him as Lord and Christ.  Acts simply says that Jesus “appeared” to his disciples over an extended period of “forty days”.  There are differing opinions as to what these “forty days” represent.  It may have been a way to fill out the calendar between Easter and the Ascension.  In Old Testament writings, forty often refers to a period of preparation (such as forty years) during which God fully instructs people for their future work.  Essentially, Jesus gathers his followers after Easter to prepare them for their future without him.  His leaving is not abrupt; he has prepared them for his departure.

What we are told here is that waiting for God to act is an individual’s project, but it is also a community project.  Waiting with others is an act of solidarity.  They were joined together in a specific place to await God’s action.  But waiting on the Lord to act is not a passive activity.  They waited by praying, studying together.  Prayers are not offered to solicit God’s benefaction, which they have already experienced, nor to ensure that God would fulfill what is promised them.  Praying demonstrates the importance of unity and the resolve in accomplishing that to which God calls us to accomplish.

When we proclaim the Ascension as part of the Gospel, we are not, as Ronald Cole-Turner says in Feasting on the Word, saying that we believe that Jesus ended his earthly ministry with the equivalent of a rocket launch.  It is, rather, a belief that Jesus Christ ascended to glory.  It is inextricably linked with the Resurrection.  As Jurgen Moltmann put it, “Jesus is risen into the coming Kingdom of God.”  He is raised in power and in glory.  The Ascension is the gathering up of all who are in the Presence of God.  Our lives are suddenly swept into something larger than anything we can possibly imagine.  No longer is Jesus our personal teacher or our private tutor.  This is the moment when we enter into the Risen and Living Christ.  This is the moment that we begin to become.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  And through faith, we, too, are made whole.  The absence of the earthly Jesus leads us to search for a God who is present in the world.

So, then, why do we, too, continue to stand here gazing up into the heavens?  For what are we waiting?  Jesus is gone.  And yet, the whole world is filled with the Spirit that has been left behind.  We are the ones called to do the work of Christ in the world.  So why are you standing there gazing up, hoping that something will change.  Just do it.  Get busy. 

1)      What is your response to this passage?

2)      What does it mean to speak of the “absence” of Jesus and the idea that that leads us to search for God?

3)      Where do you find yourself in this story?

 

 NEW TESTAMENT:  Ephesians 1: 15-23

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

This passage and the verses that precede it begin with sort of a thanksgiving prayer report.  But lest we spend too much time breathing our collective sighs of relief and thanksgiving, the author (possibly, but not definitely Paul for most scholars) claims that all this would not be successful if the church does not become known to others as a place of faith and mutual love.

This is sort of interesting—the letter begs the question as to how our churches become known for their faith in Jesus.  Is it a matter of reputation or a matter of publicity?  The phrase “with the eyes of your heart enlightened” describes the result of wisdom.  During this time, baptism was typically described as “enlightenment”.  In essence, it is a way of seeing God’s light through the darkness of the world.  But the letter warns its readers not to return to that state of darkness.

The concluding section of this passage is often recognized as the development of a creedal formula.  The audience already knows that Christ serves to mediate God’s gracious blessings from heaven.  Ephesians treats this exaltation of Jesus rather than the cross as the focus of God’s saving and redemptive power.  Ephesians probably does this to drive home a more permanent victory in Christ.

This idea of enlightenment is an interesting one when we think about The Ascension.  Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tries to explain it in this way:  imagine what it is like when you first wake up in the morning.  When you put on the light, all you are conscious of is the brightness of the light itself.  Only gradually do your eyes adjust sufficiently to the light that you are able to make out other objects.  After a few moments, however, you cease to be conscious of the light itself, and start to see what else is in the room, as it is illumined by the light.  The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, says Williams, show him to have been like that initial morning light; at first Jesus’ resurrected self was so blinding that the disciples could be conscious only of him.  The ascension, however, is that moment when the light itself recedes into the background, so that Jesus becomes the one through whom we see the rest of the world.  (From Feasting on the Word, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds., 2009,“Ascension of the Lord: Ephesians 1: 15-23 Theological Perspective”,by Joseph H. Britton, p. 510-512.)

The whole Resurrection is a restatement of authority, a revisioning of power.  It changes everything.

1)      What meaning does this passage hold for you?

2)      What does the idea of “the eyes of your heart” being enlightened mean for you?

3)      What message do you think this holds not just for us as individuals but for our churches today?

GOSPEL: Luke 24: 44-53

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

In this passage, the verb for “opened” is the same that was used in the Emmaus story when their eyes were “opened” and the Scriptures were “opened” to them.  But the message of the Scriptures is, of course, not self-evident.  Here, Jesus opens their minds to understand the Scriptures.  Here, the proclamation of repentance and forgiveness of sins is opened to all—to all nations.  The mission, then, will begin in Jerusalem and extend to all nations. Jerusalem has up until now been the center and focus of the Gospel.

The Lukan Gospel is the only one that chronicles the departure of Jesus.  The Ascension both closes the period of Jesus’ ministry and opens the period of the church’s mission.  The final words of the Gospel lead us to an appropriate response to the gospel of the one who saves, sends, and blesses us.  The disciples received Jesus’ blessing with great joy, they worshiped him and praised God, and they began immediately to do what he had instructed them to do.  Here, then, is the completion of the Gospel drama, the narration of what God has done for us, the challenge of Jesus’ teachings, and the model of those who made a faithful and joyful response.  It is our new beginning.  It is our turn.  Essentially, Jesus has given us the “footprints” in which to walk.  It is not about legislation or rules or “what would Jesus do”; it is about incarnation, about becoming the embodiment of Christ.

Thomas R. Hawkins says it like this:

For forty days after the resurrection, Jesus remained among the disciples.  He taught, encouraged, and patiently prepared them for what was to come.  “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them.  While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.” (Luke 24: 50-51)  Suddenly, the disciples were without their guide, their teacher, and their leader.  They no longer had an authority figure in their midst to tell them what to do.  Someone “at the top” no longer could explain everything to them…

They experience an expansion of being, an empowerment.  This empowerment authorizes them for ministry and mission.  They preach the gospel to every race, nation, and tongue already assembled in Jerusalem for the pilgrim feast of Pentecost.  It is an empowerment sparked by acts of inclusion rather than exclusion…Mutuality rather than subordination is the mark of the spirit’s empowerment…

When I was about 13 or 14, my father asked me to ride along with him as he cultivated a field of corn.  It was a tricky job.  The sharp blades of the cultivator had to pass between the rows of corn.  If we had veered a few inches to the left or to the right, we would have plowed out four rows of tender young corn plants.  The John Deere Model 70 did not have power steering, so holding the tractor and cultivator in a straight path was not always easy. 

After a few rounds down the 20-acre field, my father asked me if I would like to try driving.  Reluctantly, I sat down behind the steering wheel, popped the clutch, and took off down the field.  Steering was harder than it looked.  Forty feet of corn, in a four-row swath, were plowed out before I had driven five minutes.  My father gently gave me a few suggestions as I went awkwardly—and destructively—down the field and back.  After a few more rounds, my father asked me to stop the tractor.  I thought he had endured all the pain he could.  The carnage in the corn field was overwhelming.  He would tell me to stop.  I obviously was not controlling the tractor and cultivator.

Instead, my father dropped to the ground and said he had some chores to do in the barn.  I was to finish the field and then come in for lunch.  All morning long, in my father’s absence, I plowed my way back and forth across the corn field.  Huge sections of corn were torn out, roots exposed to the drying sun, and stalks prematurely sliced down.  But by noon I learned to handled the tractor and the cultivator.

My father’s absence was a sign to me that he trusted himself and what he taught me.  It also signaled that he trusted me.  His absence was empowering rather than disabling.  It authorized me to trust myself and trust what he had taught me.  I would never have learned to cultivate corn had I worked anxiously under his critical eye, hanging on his every gesture and comment.

That is the meaning of Ascension and Pentecost.  Jesus’ withdrawal becomes an empowering absence.  It is a sign that he trusts what he has taught us enough to set us free.  He refuses to allow us to depend upon him.  We cannot cling to him but must learn to discover his authority among ourselves.  Thus, he tells Mary not to cling to him but to return to the community of his disciples. (John 20:17).  This sense of empowerment and authorization is exhilarating.  It is like tongues of fire.  We name that experience the Spirit of the Living God.

We honor Jesus’ absence when we refuse to become little authorities, trying to fill up Jesus’ absence.  We honor Jesus’ absence when we help others experience the Holy Spirit through mutual collaboration rather than by making them passive, dependent, or subservient to our authority. (From Building God’s People:  A Workbook for Empowering Servant Leaders, by Thomas R. Hawkins, (Nashville, TN:  Discipleship Resources, 1990), 7-9)

I think this is one of the best depictions of what Ascension and Pentecost really should mean for us.  This is our becoming.  This is the point at which we become more than followers.  Through the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to embody Christ in the world.  It’s like God is saying more than just “have faith”.  We’ve heard that all along.  Here, God is saying, “Have faith in the faith that I have in you.  I know you can do this.  Sometimes it will not go the way you want it to go.  Sometimes it will look like it is all for naught.  Sometimes it will look like we are moving backwards.  Just have faith in what I have given you.  I have faith that you can do this.  Have faith in the faith that I have in you.  And go into the world and BE my disciple.”

1)      What meaning does this passage hold for you?

2)      What does this “Holy Absence” mean for you?

3)      Why is that difficult for us to grasp? 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

The noblest prayer is when [one] who prays is inwardly transformed into what [one] kneels before. (Angelus Silesius, 17th century)

 The ultimate goal is to transform the world into the kind of world God had in mind when God created it. (Harold Kushner)

 As Annie Dillard once put it, “We’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build our wings on the way down.”…I don’t think transformation of any kind at all happens in this world of ours without some effort, some cost, and the willingness to leave something behind…But I think that when we begin to build our wings, it makes a difference in the world around us not because we seem dramatically other than who we once were, but because what we begin to offer back to the world is a little closer to what the world actually needs. (Kathleen McTigue, from “Build Your Wings on the Way Down”, 2006)

  

Closing

Let me bathe in your words.

Let me soak up your silence.

Let me hear your voice.

Let me enter your quiet.

Let me tell out your stories.

Let me enclose them within me.

Let me be the spaces between phrases where you make your home.

(Jan L. Richardson, In Wisdom’s Path, p. 96)

Epiphany 5B: Spending Time With God

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Spending time with godOLD TESTAMENT: Isaiah 40: 21-31

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

Many scholars claim that at Chapter 40 in the Book of Isaiah, we cross a significant boundary. The Babylonian victory over Judah and Jerusalem is now presupposed and Judah has shared in that defeat. This is now the time when the “former things have [truly] passed away.” The passage begins by appealing to what Israel already knows. It is a reminder of what the Creator God has been doing since the beginning of Creation. It is a basic notion in their understanding of God that God’s ongoing creative activity asserts that things are always moving, always headed toward the way they are supposed to be.

But the image of us as grasshoppers is not meant to denigrate us but rather to remind us that Creation is bigger than anything that we can possibly be or imagine. We are only a small part of the whole. So, for the writer, “who are we to question the vastness of God?” Even though Assyrian rule is probably firmly in place here, there is a reminder that no sooner do they put down roots against Israel that God will put them away with what can be conceived as terrifying power. We remember from earlier passages in Isaiah that an entire generation in Isaiah’s lifetime had their ears shut and their eyes closed. This is the beginning of a new generation and the writer appeals to them in the strongest possible terms: to listen and see and know again, for God’s word does not require assent to remain true and abiding. It stands forever. So, our faith allows us to live in two orders of Creation—the already and the not yet, but always strengthened by the master Creator of them both.

Now understand that it was not that the earlier generation did not have God present; it was that they failed to hear, receive, and heed the Word that God put forth. In other words, our ears must be opened to hear aright. Each generation must be taught to hear and see God. God is the only one capable of “flipping the switch”, so to speak on how the world works. We have to be open to what God does and be prepared to hear and see it.

As an aside, it might just be a play on words or images, but did you know that grasshoppers have five eyes? They are able to see everything in what could be described as panoramic view. That’s sort of interesting, given the comparison of humanity to grasshoppers, to insinuate that we have the capability, if not the sensibility, to see all there is within the perspective of where it is. Perhaps what most gets in the way is that we think we have already figured everything out.

And yet God continues to persevere, holding us when we need to be held, leading us when we need to be led, and perhaps waiting, oh so patiently, for us to notice it all. And when we open our eyes and open our hearts to all that God holds for us, our future is ours. But are we, too, patient enough to wait for it to come? In all truth, we live in a world order that is slipping away. Maybe not tomorrow; maybe not for centuries; maybe not even for eons, but slipping away nevertheless. We are fleeting. But the everlasting God has promised that if we just open our lives and our hearts and our eyes, we will see and know that an everlasting order waits for us. But it’s different; it’s not the one in which we live. And, really, hasn’t that been said from the beginning? What we have now is not ours. We’re not meant for it. But, oh, the future one that waits for us…it is ours. It is home. And nothing is impossible.

 

This story is taken from “The People Who Could Fly”, a sermon by Otis Moss, III, 12/31/2006, available at http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/moss_5012.htm:

 

There is a story that I am told has been passed from mouth to ear somewhere along the palmetto dunes of South Carolina, a story passed down from West Africa to the North Atlantic. It is the story, a unique story, of the people who could fly. Depending upon whom you’re talking to, it is a little bit different, depending upon who is telling the tale.

The story takes place in St. Johns Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, as Africans who had been mislabeled slaves are toiling in the hot sun. They are working so very hard to pick cotton. There is one young woman and beside her is her small boy, maybe six or seven. She’s working in the fields and she has such incredible dexterity that she is able to pick cotton with her right hand and caress the forehead of her child with the left. But eventually, exhausted by working so hard in the fields, she falls down from the weight and the pressure of being—in the words of Dubois—“problem and property.” Her boy attempts to wake her very quickly, knowing that if the slave drivers were to see her the punishment would be swift and hard.

He tries to shake his mother, and as he’s trying to shake her, an old man comes over to him. An old man that the Africans called Preacher and Prophet, but the slave drivers called Old Devil. He looks up at the old man and says, “Is it time? Is it time?”

The old man smiles and looks at the boy and says, “Yes!” And he bends down ands whispers into the ear of the woman who was now upon the ground and says these words: “Cooleebah! Cooleebah!”

At that moment the woman gets up with such incredible dignity. She stands as a queen and looks down at her son, grasps his hand and begins to look toward heaven. All of a sudden they begin to fly. The slave drivers rush over to this area where she has stopped work and they see this act of human flight and are completely confused. They do not know what to do! And during their confusion, the old man rushes around to all the other Africans and begins to tell them, “Cooleebah! Cooleebah!”

When they hear the word, they all begin to fly. Can you imagine? The dispossessed flying? Can you imagine the disempowered flying? Three fifths of a person flying? The diseased flying? The dislocated flying? They are all taking flight! And at that moment the slave drivers grab the old man and say, “Bring them back!”

They beat him, and with blood coming down his cheek, he just smiles at them. They say to him, “Please bring them back!” And he says, “I can’t.” They say, “Why not?” He said, “Because the word is already in them and since the word is already in them, it cannot be taken from them.” The old man had a word from West Africa, cooleebah, a word that means God. It had been placed into the heart of these displaced Africans and now they had dignity and they were flying.

 

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What parallels for our time do you see?
  3. What most stands in our way of “hearing” and “seeing”?
  4. How much more do you think we’re capable of hearing and seeing than we do?

 

NEW TESTAMENT: 1 Corinthians 9: 16-23

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

Well, in case it seems like we’re walking into the middle of a discussion, this passage is actually a continuation of the veritable “meat saga” that we read last week. Paul anticipates a possible misunderstanding in what he had said earlier and he counters by denying that he is only saying these things so that he benefits more from his position. Paul understands that he did not just “decide” to preach the gospel but rather that he is entrusted with a commission, or a calling. He does not take that to mean that he is due any wage or benefit. Paul sees himself as a “slave” to God, one who has been renewed and revitalized. He is in it solely for the purpose of spreading the gospel of grace.

Paul is not “giving up” his freedom or his free will but is rather choosing not to exercise them in certain circumstances. That is a very different understanding of freedom and is interesting given our understanding of the Gospel as “setting us free”. St. Augustine said this: In Christ’s slavery, there is freedom indeed. But it’s hard to get our heads around. Paul does all things and becomes all things for the sake of the Gospel, showing his understanding of the dynamics of community in the life of faith.

In Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr says that “we have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That’s not primal freedom. That’s a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances. That’s what great religion offers us. That what real prayer offers us. That’s why the saints could be imprisoned and not lose their souls. They could be put down and persecuted like Jesus and still not lose their joy, their heart, or their perspective. Secular freedom is having to do what you want to do. Religious freedom is wanting to do what you have to do.

Perhaps freedom is having the ability and the wherewithal to be who we are called to be by God. It is not the freedom to become enslaved to the things of this world, thereby giving up our freedom. The thing that we are called to do is the thing we HAVE to do. It is the thing that we must do to be who we are. That is the freedom God gives us—to be who we have to be and to empower others in the world to do the same. Therein is the hope of Christ.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What does Paul’s view of “freedom” mean to you?
  3. What does “freedom” mean in our society?
  4. How does that affect our notion of “reward”?

 

GOSPEL: Mark 1: 29-39

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

It is evident here that Jesus’ reputation is swiftly increasing. Right after they left the synagogue, the first healing episode occurs inside a house. Jesus cures the woman, who then serves him dinner. The next thing you know, all of a sudden the “whole city” (Really? A WHOLE city—like, ALL of Houston?) shows up begging to receive some of what Jesus is offering. You can imagine a hoard of townspeople crowding around the door of the house. And it says that he cured many—not the whole city, interestingly enough—but many.

But keep in mind that for the writer of the Markan Gospel, Jesus did not come to win the adulation of the crowds by working miracles but rather to claim the authority and identity of the Christ, which, for this writer, includes the cross itself. The crowds apparently begin to represent a problem for Jesus. He did not come to settle into the town as a local healer, but to preach the Gospel throughout the region. So he leaves Peter’s house in the darkness well before dawn, returning to a deserted place to pray. For the writer of this Gospel, it was clear that Jesus comes to do God’s will, not to seek his own advantage or popularity.

But, of course, Jesus is eventually “hunted down” by Simon and his companions. You can imagine it: “Come on, Jesus, everyone is looking for you, everyone needs you…what are you doing out here by yourself when there’s so much work to be done.” (OK, I think this is rather humorous!) Jesus’ answer? (Wait for it!) “OK, then let’s go somewhere else.” (GREAT answer!) Because after all, his mission was to spread the Gospel not get “bogged down” in answering every need of the town.   What a great lesson this could provide for us! Jesus did not feel the need or the compulsion to be “all things to all people”. He rather had what could be called a “big picture” view of what the Gospel meant. I mean, after all, the whole world order was changing, remember?

There’s a lot that this passage holds. It’s a lesson about Sabbath time; it’s a lesson about prayer; it’s a lesson about understanding others’ needs; it’s a lesson about who Jesus was. Or maybe it IS a call to see the “big picture”, to know in the deepest part of our being that even in the midst of chaos and disorderly fray, even in the midst of too many people expecting too much of us, even in the midst of those who misunderstand who we are, we, too, can be lifted up with wings like eagles and be taught how to fly. We just have to see it. The Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, is only partially about what Jesus can do for us. Mostly it’s about who we can become with Jesus by our side.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What does this say about answering God’s call?
  3. What does this say about the totality of the Gospel?
  4. What could we learn from Jesus’ reactions?
  5. What “big picture” scenes are you missing from your life?

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. (Susan B. Anthony)

We are what we repeatedly do. (Aristotle)

 

One of the saddest lines in the world is, ‘Oh come now—be realistic.’ The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were realistic. They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and gave them horses to ride. (Richard Nelson Bolles)

 

Closing

 

Holy God—in this precious hour, we pause and gather to hear your word—to do so, we break from our work responsibilities and from our play fantasies; we move from our fears that overwhelm and from our ambitions that are too strong. Free us in these moments from every distraction, that we may focus to listen, that we may hear, that we may change. Amen. (From Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, “That We May Change”, p. 61.)