Where Do We Start?

Easter 7A; Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11 St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC 5/28/17

Jim Melnyk: “Where Do We Start?”

It’s tough living between times.  Between the hard work of an interview and hopefully a job offer.  Between an argument with someone you love and respect and an opportunity to make up.  Between finding out you’re going to be a parent and actually learning the reality of it all.  Between the proverbial rock and a hard place….  It can be tough living in between times. 

The Seventh Sunday of Easter is all about between times.  Just a few days ago the Church celebrated the Feast of the Ascension – Jesus ascending to be at the right hand of God in all his glory.  Today’s lesson from Acts is sort of a carry-over for those who didn’t have the opportunity to mark that occasion liturgically.  But on the other hand, our gospel lesson pulls us back to the upper room prior to the betrayal and arrest of Jesus – prior to his death and resurrection.  It brings us to a place where Jesus tries to prepare his disciples for living in the between times of their faith.

It’s easy to simply skip over the Ascension – to see it as one more instance of our faith tradition being so outside the box of our normal experience that it doesn’t make sense.  Ascended?  Really?  Up through the clouds and all? The Ascension, as we’ve received it through Scripture and the traditions of the church, is not just difficult to understand, but it is difficult to picture – since much of our ancient artwork was created with a three-tiered universe in mind.  Heaven, and God, was seen to be “up there” somewhere.  We still use that language about God, don’t we?  We’ve looked to the heavens and seen their beauty through the gaze of the Hubble telescope and more – but we don’t see heaven anywhere in the skies. 

But the Ascension, even with its metaphorical “up there,” does solve a problem for us. “Where is the body of this man, who was bodily raised from the grave?” asks one commentator (Jayson Byassee, Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, 5/28/2017).  The implied answer is that Jesus has in some way left our experiential plain of reality. “And,” the writer continues, [the Ascension] “makes a promise. Jesus will [return just] like that—as weirdly and as physically as he left (Acts 1:11).”  And so, there’s one of those crazy, hard to figure, hard to live out, between times.  The time between Christ’s resurrection from the dead and his coming again in glory to bring to fulfillment the kingdom of God on earth.

In the meantime, there is work to do.  In the between time of the resurrection and the return of Christ there is work to do – there is Good News to proclaim – there is the hope and promise of resurrection power to claim, to live out in this world, and to share.  “The gospel has to go to all the world: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. That is, as endless sermons have explored, your home (Jerusalem), your nearest relations and friends (Judea), your enemies (Samaria), and everybody else” (Byassee).  However, Jesus doesn’t leave us on our own to carry out the work of the gospel.  Jesus promises his disciples that his Spirit – the Holy Spirit of God –

will clothe them from on high, giving them the wisdom and the power to proclaim Good News.  So we have another between-time for the disciples according to Luke – the time spent waiting for the promised Spirit of God to arrive – the promise that is Pentecost.

The idea of God’s Holy Spirit coming upon them had to be a jaw-dropping promise – an astounding promise! “And [in response to that incredulous possibility] the disciples [run home and] ... pray. That’s it. They don’t gear up, study other languages, or prepare to take over the world in God’s name. They gather in a dining room and pray…. Here they’ve been charged to remake the world God’s way and they rush out and ... [they pray]” (Byassee).  Now, praying may not sound like much to many of us, but centering one’s self in presence of God has a way of empowering us – even if all we do is rest for a moment in the goodness of God.

And although today’s gospel lesson skips back to the evening before Jesus is arrested, this portion of what the Church has come to know as the “High Priestly Prayer” of Jesus is really no different than what he had taught throughout his ministry, and no different than what the post resurrection prayers and teachings offered as well. It is the very prayer Jesus offers for us today – that we all might be one with him as he is one with God.

So, where do we start?  How do we live as resurrection people, we who live in the between-time, that time of waiting and longing for Christ’s return – waiting and longing, as we so often pray, for the fulfillment of God’s kingdom here on earth: Thy kingdom come, here on earth, as it is in heaven – sound familiar?  Where and how do we start?  Well, it seems prayer is a good place – at least that’s where Jesus and his followers start.  Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has called for Anglicans around the world to make a conscientious decision to pray between now and Pentecost for the coming of God’s kingdom here on earth. On Ascension Day Presiding Bishop Michael Curry kicked off ten days of video presentations on prayer as a part of the Archbishop’s call.  The video can be seen on our Facebook page or one the Diocesan website (at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/thy-kingdom-come).

In his video Bishop Curry tells us, “Prayer alters the chemistry of the moment – changes the equation of history and life – sometimes in ways that we can see – sometimes in ways that we cannot.  Prayer changes things.”  He goes on to say that when we pray, there is “silence in heaven because God is listening…”listening to our cries – to the cries of those in pain, sorrow, and need – and listening to the cries of thanksgiving from those in the midst of joy.  “If you want things to stay the same,” says Bishop Curry, “If you want things to stay the same, don’t bother to pray.  But if you want to change – if you want the world to change – pray.”  God came among us in the person of Jesus to show us the way – to change the world – and to be changed. 

But prayer not only changes our relationship with God – prayer changes us as well.  Prayer – resting in God’s love – yearning for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth – changes us as well.  Prayer is a good place to start living the resurrection life during the between times.  And I don’t know about you, but if you’re at all like me, I suspect we can all do a better job of praying faithfully on a daily basis.  But there’s more to it than praying – we have to live as if the kingdom of heaven has already arrived – we have to live our lives as kingdom people – asking ourselves if what we’re thinking, saying, or doing, truly reflects the kingdom of heaven.

Our good friend, the Rev. Dr. Otis Hamm writes, “Humanity, in every sense, is here to be the embodiment of Christ” (Incarnation Life, not yet in print).  I know that can seem daunting – me? me becoming Christ to and for this world?  But as the 16th century mystic, Teresa of Ávila, wrote: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.  Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

The Incarnation of Jesus, that is, his life, death, and resurrection, along with the gift of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives – are all meant to help us become the embodiment of Christ; and prayer is a starting point to help us come to recognize and nurture the presence of God within us.  And while I will be the first to admit that embodying Christ in our lives is challenging, God in Christ is present with us to help make that happen.  We will take wrong turns along the journey from time to time.  We may even lose ground on occasion.  We are, after all, not what we eventually shall be – but we are growing toward it – enfolded and enfleshed in the mystery that is Christ.