I’m beginning to get over it by now, but a week ago I was nearly assaulting everyone I met with stories about going to my high school reunion. I probably wouldn’t have had such a bad case of motor mouth if I had stayed the whole weekend, but I wanted to get back for new members in worship last Sunday, so I took a late connecting flight from St. Louis through Charlotte, arriving in Philadelphia around midnight on Saturday.
Just an observation that won’t sound strange to frequent air travelers among us – even on a Saturday at midnight with clear skies overhead the plane still had to circle a while before touching down in Philadelphia. At least I didn’t check baggage. I had an 8:00 a.m. service to make last Sunday morning, and you don’t want to tempt our baggage handlers any time day or night.
So I think I was wired after the trip and couldn’t resist talking about so many things that had happened over the previous thirty six hours. Part of me really hadn’t wanted to go, but this was a milestone of sorts. Having been a member of the class of 1959 means that this was the 50th anniversary of my high school graduation. At least at this reunion – I surmised correctly – we could let go of any jockeying for positions of prominence that might have characterized earlier reunions when some might have been trying to impress others in carving out their unique destinies.
This time I found instead a much more communal feeling. We soon discovered that most all of us had had our knocks of varying degrees of seriousness. The master of ceremonies asked how many had new knees, and a number of hands went up. There were cancer survivors and parents who had endured heartache over their children. I went to a small high school with less than two hundred in our graduating class. Twenty one of us are no longer living. We observed a moment of silence, and I was asked to offer a prayer in remembrance. That had to do with the vocation to which my life had taken me. One of my classmates told me that I had told him in sixth grade that I would be a minister one day. I have no remembrance of that at all. If I actually said that back then, then the words must have come through me from some other source. I had no conscious clue of what I wanted to be at such a young age.
But that bit of mystery fed into my whole experience last weekend. Since I had to leave a day early, I came a day early, rented a car, and just drove wherever the Spirit took me. And if you were to see my written text you would see that I’ve capitalized Spirit. I felt led all weekend, not having a plan but finding myself going to new places – like the new Busch Stadium in that baseball-crazed town – and to old places, like the cemetery where my parents and grandparents are buried. I looked down at the gravestones and got the dates of birth and death in my mind. It’s funny how you can forget details like that, though the memory of the day of death for each of them remains a vivid memory.
At the same time I didn’t have a terribly strong emotional reaction at the graveside. I know we buried their bodies there, but I’ve never thought that we left their essence there. That continues to live wherever I live, and move, and have my being. So often as I’ve encountered a warm memory or faced a difficult situation I’ve thought not of bodies buried back in a cemetery far away but of an immediate presence, as so many of you have said to me about those you miss who have gone the way of all flesh. The way we often say it is that those we miss especially are now “looking down on us.” After the death of those we have loved – for lack of better language to get it just right – we simply say that now they’re “looking down on us.”
Looking down from where? Is there a geographical place – a place we might be able to find out there in space now that we have the ability to go there – where our dear ones reside? And do they peer down on us with eyes like those they had when they gazed so lovingly on us as children and as lovers and as companions through the years? Well, I don’t know. Maybe you do. It’s more than most of us can fathom, I would think, though we use the words so easily. But it’s the only way we know how to say it, isn’t it? And though I don’t look upon the Bible as a reliable geography textbook, I’m so very glad it tells the story of our faith as nothing else can do.
Last Thursday was Ascension Day on our liturgical calendar. I suppose not many of us did anything special to observe it. Such a day sails by our modern consciousness with hardly a ripple in the stream. It’s sort of quaint, isn’t it? Jesus floating up into space enveloped in a cloud? And yet, perhaps partly because of digging into my roots last weekend, I’m finding myself really drawn this year to that image, even as it defies our modern way of thinking.
Such an image can work against the Christian faith for those who must have everything literal, rational, and scientifically verifiable. Thank God faith is not like that. Faith rests on mystery, on the unknowable and unfathomable. Faith isn’t for dummies; it’s for dreamers. Dreamers of the best kind. Dreamers who can dare to trust and hope and believe in a God who does the impossible.
Early Christians thought Ascension Day so important as to include it in their creeds. We’re most familiar with the words of the Apostles’ Creed, the words that go like this: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,/And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
The Nicene Creed makes the same assertions in similar language. I believe what the creeds say. I don’t know how God did it all, but I believe it all came to pass. And in what has come to pass is our life and our hope.
You know the connection between the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, don’t you? The connection is that both books were written by the same person or persons. When the Book of Acts begins with a reference to the “first book,” it means Luke. The two go together even though they were not placed next to each other in the biblical canon. The fourth Gospel – John – stands between them. But the story is unbroken. In fact, there’s a slight redundancy. Luke ends with a depiction of the Ascension as Acts begins with its own version. Even though it’s the same author, there is this difference in the two accounts: in Luke the Ascension seems to happen on the evening of Easter after Jesus has appeared to his disciples in the room where they have retreated out of fear. In Acts the Ascension happens forty days after Easter, after Jesus has had a number of opportunities to complete his teaching and to assure his disciples that he will, in effect, continue to look down on them even though they will no longer experience him in his flesh. His Spirit presence, nonetheless, will be with them. And in that presence will be their life. And ours.
Sometimes the phrase “looking down” can carry a negative meaning. That is, if some people are said to “look down” on others the phrase might imply a patronizing or diminishing view. But precisely the opposite is meant when Jesus promises to be with his disciples by looking down on them from heaven. From that exalted vantage point Jesus promises to stay with all who follow him through all their days: through struggle and triumph, through persecution and joy. In John’s Gospel – in the passage we could have used this morning – Jesus prays to his Father to protect us in the world. It’s a lovely image and a powerfully reassuring thought.
So let’s sum up a few thoughts about Ascension Day as we might comprehend it over two thousand years since the time of its report. On one hand, we might say that Ascension Day is all about Jesus. It’s about his miraculous and mysterious departure from this world. Jesus had come to earth from heaven, and now he returns to reign at the right hand of God. But the means of Jesus’ leaving are as inexplicable as the way of his coming.
On the other hand, this story of Jesus’ Ascension is all about the disciples. The Ascension of Jesus is the event that shifts the focus of Christ’s work and ministry from Jesus himself to those who follow him. Jesus is no longer here to preach good news, heal the sick, and feed the hungry. That mission now falls to us. Such a challenge could be overwhelming were it not for Jesus’ promise to continue looking down on us with protecting and energizing love.
But maybe that’s why the disciples initially can’t take their eyes off Jesus as he floats away from them. How will they be able to do all that he has challenged them to do? But then those two men in dazzling white jolt them back into reality with that piercing question: “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.” Do you imagine that those two men in dazzling white robes might be the same two in the Gospel of Luke who greeted the women on Easter morning at the empty tomb? They had a piercing question, too: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? [Jesus] is not here, but has risen.”
Celebration of Ascension Day reminds us that ours is a call to go from the place where we gaze into the clouds to the places in our world that need Christ. We are called to be the hands, feet, eyes, and voice of Christ to the ends of the earth. Those of deepest faith have always understood that this call lies at the center of our faith. And perhaps it has never been more succinctly expressed than in a brief prayer uttered by Teresa of Avila five hundred years ago:
God of love, help us to remember
that Christ has no body now on earth but ours,
no hands but ours, no feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world.
Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now.
Ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good.