A New Day Dawning

 

Easter 7C; John 17:20-26; St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC; 5/08/2016

Jim Melnyk: “A New Day Dawning”

Over the centuries there have been many depictions on the ascension of Jesus – whether in paintings, icons, or stained glass.  Most usually have a few angels scattered about, along with a few puffy white clouds, for effect.  Some show the full figure of Jesus floating above the earth and some even show nothing but his ankles poking from the clouds.

One Sunday following the Feast of the Ascension a Sunday School teacher was talking about the lessons with his class.  They were talking not just about the day’s lessons, but about the story of Jesus ascending to heaven – a story usually told on the Thursday before.  A youngster in his class raised her hand.  “Teacher,” she asked, “what would have happened if the disciples had grabbed hold of Jesus’ feet when he ascended?”  “That’s a very good question,” the teacher reportedly told the youngster.  “Why don’t we save that one for you to ask the Rector?”

Now I realize our Gospel for today isn’t about the Ascension – which we celebrated at noon this past Thursday.  But as I thought about today’s Gospel this old story came back to me.  Mostly because it’s difficult to not have Ascension Day on the mind as a preacher at this time of the season, but also because the Gospel of the day invites us into a between time – a time between Easter Day, the Ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  It’s hard to imagine the Disciples listening to Jesus speak the words of what has been called his Priestly High Prayer in that Upper Room in Jerusalem – with all that talk about leaving his friends behind and going to be with God – and not wonder if at least a couple of them were thinking the same thing that youngster in Sunday School was thinking, “what if we just grab hold of him by the ankles and keep him here with us?”

Isn’t that part of our struggle of faith?  Knowing that we now share in an experience of God’s Holy Spirit – which is both theologically ethereal and experientially vague at times – rather than having flesh and blood Jesus physically among us to answer our all our questions?  What do we do next, Jesus? How do we experience the Risen Christ and find ourselves at one with one another? How do we experience the presence of God in our lives – how do we experience the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives – in ways that are tangible, life-changing, transformational, and real – and once experienced, keep that reality with us?  Perhaps the Priestly High Prayer of Jesus in John’s Gospel is meant to give us a clue.

Jesus’ prayer begins with a desire that Jesus’ life and death would glorify God, and that his disciples would find both protection and unity in God.  His prayer is on behalf of his disciples and friends to be sure – but the prayer is also offered “on behalf of those who will believe in [Jesus] through [his disciples’] word” – and that’s all of us down through the ages (17:20).

Beyond that, Jesus prays that his disciples will become a community bound together in the love of God – that the unity Jesus shares with Abba, the Father, will be known to them – and known to us – as well.  Jesus prays that his glory will be their glory – will be our glory – his gift to them and to us as well.  And Jesus affirms that he will continue to be present in the lives of his disciples just as God is present with and in Jesus – that through Jesus, and through the Holy Spirit he speaks about earlier in the Gospel – we “may become completely one,” so that the world will know the love of God (v. 23).

We don’t have to metaphorically grab Jesus by the ankles at the Ascension because in the deepest meaning of presence, Jesus never leaves.  The Advocate – the Holy Spirit binds us together with the love of God made known in the Risen Christ. 

Long ago – too long ago for us to remember exactly when, a rabbi asked his disciples, “When can you tell that the night has ended and a new day has dawned?”  One disciple asked, “Is it when you can look off into the distance and see a tree and know if it’s an olive tree or a fig tree?”  “No,” replied the rabbi.  Another disciple asked, “Is it when you can look in the distance and see an animal and know if it’s a sheep or a dog?”  Again the rabbi replied, “No, that’s not correct.”  “Then tell us plainly,” begged his disciples, “When can you tell that the night has ended and a new day has dawned?”  The rabbi replied, “When you can look into the eyes of the one standing beside you and recognize that person as your sister or brother, the new day has dawned.  Until you can do that it is still night.”  There’s a bit of what Bishop Desmond Tutu calls “Ubuntu theology” at work there – meaning our humanity is made real in the oneness that comes when we clearly see and acknowledge the fullness of humanity in others.

Orthodox priest, Kallistos Ware put it another way: “The whole person is a person who is on the one side open to God, and on the other side open to other human persons” (Synthesis Today, May 6, 2016). Our humanity is fulfilled in and through relationships with one another, as well as our relationship with God.

The Jesus we meet in John’s Gospel distills everything down to the unity of his followers bound by the immeasurable love God has for creation.  “For God so loved the world” – the world – that God gave us God’s only begotten Son – God’s beloved – for the life of the world.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (15:12).

One argument, then, might be that the way we show ourselves to be completely one with each other and with God is how we love one another.  It certainly isn’t about how we agree or disagree with one another.  People of faith from the beginning of time have disagreed – sometimes rather vehemently and even violently – and often go their separate ways – yet somehow the Gospel continues to go on.

Jesus prayed, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22-23).

So, as one Biblical scholar wrote years ago, “if anyone asks you what the Ascension is about, it is not about the mysterious disappearance of Jesus into the heavens, ankles and all; [it’s] about the evolving responsibility upon us for being Jesus in the world.  We are Christ-bearers in the world” (quoted in Synthesis, 5/5/2016).  The Christ of God in Jesus becomes Christ of God in the community of faith – and we become Christ in and for the world.  “God in us as God is in Jesus, Jesus in us as Jesus is in God, that we all may be one – [so] that we may be in the world as Jesus was in the world” (The Very Rev. Todd Donatelli, The Cathedral of All Souls).

No one needed to grab Jesus by the ankles that Ascension Day so long ago – because through the gift of the Holy Spirit Jesus has never left us alone – we were not left behind – nor shall we ever be left behind.  Neither did Jesus define how we are to love one another beyond the self-giving sacrificial love of one who is willing to lay down one’s life for the other. 

When we can look one another in the eye – when we can look both our neighbor and the stranger in the eye, even with all our diversity – even with all our differences – whether they are differences of race, or creed, or color, whether differences of gender, or social standing, or orientation – even differences of political persuasion in the midst of an election cycle fraught with cynicism and bickering – when we can look one another in the eye and see our sister or brother looking back at us, then a new day has dawned, and we, as the Body of Christ, are one.