Ascension

Acts 1:6-14
So when they had come together, they asked him, “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. 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.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “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.”

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.


Not long ago, one of my clergy brothers from another denomination wrote a sermon that was basically an apology to many of the people whom the church had abused, left out, or simply shown the door over the many years of our life together. He specifically addressed gay and lesbian folks, women who have had abortions, and couples who live together but are not married. He apologized on his own behalf, offering his regret for having judged his friends as well as people he did not know for doing things he considered to be incompatible with Christian teaching. Interestingly, he wasn’t actually stating that any kind of change had taken place in his beliefs; he simply wanted to say that the way he had gone about letting people know what those beliefs are he had now come to realize was hurtful, and he wanted to say he was sorry for that.

I found in intriguing and kind—that any of us would have the courage to stand up and say that the church just doesn’t treat everyone with the same regard, or furthermore that the church treats some people quite badly because of who they are or choices they make. Instead he wished to proclaim that Christ teaches love and that the sooner the church could get on board with that, the sooner we would stop declining in growth, especially in the generation of folks aged 18-28. Interesting.

In a sermon she wrote on the Ascension of Jesus, Barbara Brown Taylor says this: “I do not know why Christians act surprised when we read about our declining numbers in the newspaper. While we argue amongst ourselves about everything from what kind of music to sing in church to who may marry whom, the next generation walks right past our doors without even looking in. If they are searching at all, they are searching for more than we are offering them—for a place where they may sense the presence of God, among people who show some sign of having been changed by that presence. They are looking for a colony of heaven, and they are not finding it with us.”*

Do you ever wonder what the world outside of us thinks about the life we life inside here?

I have thought a little about what a “colony of heaven” might be like. As I think of Jesus and his life and teachings, his eternal presence with God on our behalf, and the unmistakable urging and voice of the Spirit that lives within us, it seems at first glance that building such a colony would not be very hard work at all. Using the gospel and the early church as our guide, we could easily find ways to practice our belief that Christ has come from God, died to save all people, rose from the grave, returned to God, and will come to us again; that God has created all things and called them good; that the Holy Spirit continues to be with us and help us to recognize God’s grace and God’s call to discipleship—a life lived in the way of Christ: practicing what he has preached, loving the way he loves, forgiving others and ourselves, being witnesses to Christ and his love for all the world.

It’s the same call that the eleven and the others received back in the day: to be witnesses for Christ, to tell the world about his extraordinary love and power to change lives for the better, to build a colony of heaven that would grow and grow until it encompassed the entire world. And they ask if Jesus will be wrapping things up anytime soon: is this the time? The time that everything will be made right and we’ll be able to all be happy again? Surely he wouldn’t leave them with more work to be done, right? Surely not. Surely he would leave us with everything in place for his next arrival so that we would not have to suffer in the mean time, right?

The truth is, my friends, that I don’t know how we do it. That may surprise you since I’m the one wearing the stole and standing up here before you. But a colony of heaven? If that job is left for me to manage, I’m afraid I’m going to do the same thing the eleven did at the beginning of the Book of Acts as we heard today. I’m going to run to Jesus and ask if it isn’t time yet for him to get himself back here on earth and whip the church into shape because surely he’ll be a whole lot better at it than I ever would. He knows what people need more than I do. He’s got the compassion and forgiveness things down pat—far more so than I. He truly does not judge people like I do when I say that I don’t or shouldn’t. And, let’s face it—he is God, and I am not.

But sometimes I wish I were. Don’t you? I wish I had been God at the time of the Crusades or the Inquisition way back when so that I could have just grabbed the perpetrators by the collar and told them they were being ridiculous and hateful to their fellow human beings and children of God. I wish I had been God on the day that hurricane Katrina hit the shores of the coastal Southeast so I could have just blown her in a different direction out to sea and away from human life. I wish I could have been God this past week in Fort Worth Texas when the United Methodist Church’s global gathering was working hard at trying to find a way to stay together in the midst of sharp and deep disagreements on issues like human sexuality. I would have shut the mouths of those calling themselves Christians while speaking messages of judgment, superiority, and sometimes downright hate toward their fellow human beings, their fellow children of God.

And yet, Christ says to me once again: It is not for me to know what God has done by God’s own authority and power. It is the Holy Spirit’s place to pass the power of he gospel on to me and then to urge me to get out there and let other people know about it—not about the politics of the church but about the saving, transforming, fulfilling, amazing love of God in Christ that has saved us from living a life eternally divided from God and offers us a life lived in full communion with God. I don’t have to be in charge of it for that to work out. It’s already been worked out. I just need to get up and start participating in it.

I need to recognize that there is a colony of heaven to be had in this life. There is a foretaste of glory, a glimpse of what it will be like when we live in the presence and sustaining love of God. And it is our job now to continue to build that colony up until it is the only way of life that people know here. It is home to everyone; it is the place where you can be the child of God you were made to be without having to have anyone’s permission, pass any litmus test, or wonder if what is proclaimed is really lived out.

I love the part of today’s passage in which the two men standing with the disciples as Jesus left this life to return to God’s side are surprised to see the disciples so engrossed with the sky, as if trying to see every last particle of matter that belongs to Jesus before it is all gone from plain view. The interpretation of the Bible called the Message phrases what the 2 men say like this: "You Galileans!—why do you just stand here looking up at an empty sky? This very Jesus who was taken up from among you to heaven will come as certainly—and mysteriously—as he left."

The fact is there is much about our faith that we cannot understand. We have a hard time getting our heads around one God in three persons. Although we believe it, we can hardly conceive of life after death and resurrection. We know the Holy Spirit is with us, but we cannot see it in plain view. And while we say we are a part of the church because we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and his life-transforming love is available to all, we often fail to act out that love in the things that we do to hurt one another in church, both on the global level and right here at home. I just don’t get why its going to take us at least another four years before we recognize that we are only hurting ourselves by keeping our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters at arm’s length when it comes to full inclusion in the life of the body of Christ. Why? I ask over and over.

Thank goodness I’m not God. Thank goodness that the work of saving the world is accomplished by hands greater than mine. But I’m not off the hook, either, and neither are you. We can’t just stand idly by and stare off into an empty sky thinking that if we just stay there long enough we’ll get what we’ve been seeking. People who stand around and look at the sky completely miss the world around them that is growing, hurting, questioning, looking. How can we be witness of Christ’s love to that world when we are constantly looking away from it?

This colony of heaven should probably take a cue from our brother in Sugar Hill and apologize for those times and places in which we have not done God’s will. And when we see God’s will being disrupted in other places and times, we should be witnesses for God’s love and forgiveness so that change can happen. We can’t give up, even when we want to, because to do so would be to simply stare at the clouds hoping for a fortune cookie to fall from the sky with the secret of life etched on a piece of paper on the inside. Instead, let us gather together where we know we feel the presence of Jesus, if no other place: around this table, in the sharing of his life—his body and blood made known to us in the bread and the cup. Let us confess what we need to confess and turn our lives away from idol sky-worship and toward the worship and knowledge of God and God’s Son and God’s Spirit.

And just maybe, as they search for the closest meeting of the colonies of heaven, they may just stop in here and find a place where the love of God for all of us that surpasses all the barriers we can throw in its way is alive and well. And that, friends, just may be about the time that Christ mysteriously comes to us.

And it will be about time. Amen.


* Home By Another Way. Barbara Brown Taylor. Cowley Publications, Boston. 1999. P. 137-138.