Acts
1:6-14
You know how you have a scene from a
movie in your head and you can see it clearly, but cannot figure out what movie
it’s from? That’s the spot I’m in on
this one. It was either in a Marx
Brothers movie or it’s from the Three Stooges.
It takes place in New York in the days of black and white film. A man visits a doctor, and at the end of the
exam, the doctor tilts the patient’s head back and tells him to hold that
position for fifteen minutes, then sees him to the door. The next thing we see, the man is leaving the
building and stops for a traffic light at the corner. As he stands there with his neck craned back,
people begin to look up to see what he’s watching, and the more people are
looking up, the bigger the crowd that gathers.
You hear them murmuring, and some are pointing at something way up
toward the top of the building, and they are just beginning to get agitated,
with police joining them, as the light changes and the man walks away, unaware
of much at all.
It’s
not a very pious thought, I confess, but that’s how I picture how the disciples
must have looked after Jesus had ascended to heaven and left them looking up
into the clouds. If you saw somebody
suddenly start to levitate and then fade away into who knows where, don’t you
think you would stare? Wouldn’t you,
honestly, question whether you were going crazy, especially if the
disappearance were followed by seeing and hearing someone who hadn’t been there
before the other guy vanished?
“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.”
In
other words, “Expect more of this.” That
really clears things up.
We call this event Jesus’
ascension. We might as well call it the
disciples’ confusion. Part of me,
wonders, too, if that isn’t part of the way that Jesus intentionally keeps his
followers off-balance, maybe with a little sense of humor about it.
As he was on his way, Jesus told the
people he knew would be staring into heaven that their job was to pay attention
to earth. They were to wait for the Holy
Spirit, which would give them new marching orders and send them off in every
direction.
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon
you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and
to the ends of the earth.”
Ever
since then, Jesus’ followers have been left to live with these tensions. We’re supposed to be practical, sensible
people who also believe in miracles. We’re
left with one foot in heaven and one on the ground.
The theologian Karl Barth referred
to this state as “living between the times”.
We live on the cosmic scale and the scale of daily life, between
eternity and time, with Jesus being our link to eternity. God and his ways are unknowable, but we do
know Jesus, who is Emmanuel, God-with-us.
“Jesus defines an historical occurrence and marks the point where the
unknown world cuts the known world . . . as Christ Jesus is the plane which
lies beyond our comprehension. The plane which is known to us, He intersects
vertically, from above.”[1]
I like the
way that Barth pictures all of that in the shape of a cross. Jesus has come into the world, he has done
the work of redemption that nobody else could do.
But then we are left to see how God’s redemption of the world unfolds around
us. In some ways, it even depends on
us. It takes a whole lot of people
willing to say,
“Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,”
to bring the
kingdom. We want to have Jesus do it all
for us, but he won’t even answer the question “When?”
“‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to
Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not
for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own
authority.’” [Acts 1:6-7]
Again, it
puts it back on us to live with the tension and excitement of the waiting, of
the living in the between-times.
We live in a time of imperfection, but look to a time of
perfection. We live in a time of
sadness, but we see those who mourn being comforted. We live in a time of poverty, sometimes of
spirit and sometimes physical poverty – most often of both together – but we
are moving toward a time when we see that they shall be satisfied and the
kingdom of God itself will be theirs. We
live in the between-times. That is
inevitably awkward. The prophet Isaiah [11:6]
looked to a time when
“The
lion and the lamb shall lay down together.”
Woody Allen
adjusted that to: “The lion and the lamb shall lay down together, but the lamb
shall not get much sleep.”
That’s where it becomes so very
important that we bear witness, as Jesus told us, to the coming kingdom,
because unless we are ready to do that then all that is left in this world is
the vision of things as they are and not as they – I almost said, “might be”
but should say “are becoming”. Jesus has
shown us the way that he is changing the world already and understands the
position that puts us in. Yet John tells
us that as he prepared for his death he prayed for his followers, and said,
“I have given them your word, and the
world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not
belong to the world. I am not asking you
to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” [John 17:14-15]
The poet Malcolm Guite, who is also
chaplain to Girton College in Cambridge, wrote about how knowing that Jesus
watches over us from eternity gives us confidence to live the in-between life,
and I’ll finish this morning with his words:
“We saw his
light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we ourselves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.”[2]
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we ourselves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.”[2]
[1]
Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans 29, cited at https://swap.stanford.edu/20141218230446/http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/kingweb/publications/papers/vol2/520102-Karl_Barth%27s_Conception_of_God.htm
[2]
Malcolm Guite, “A Sonnet for Ascension Day” at https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/a-sonnet-for-ascension-day/
No comments:
Post a Comment