Ascension 2022 – The Valley of Pain
With little time to process the targeted killing of 10
people in a Buffalo, NY supermarket, suddenly we are immersed in the killing of
19 young elementary school children and two adults in Uvalde, TX. In both
cases, the shooters purchased AR-15 style automatic weapons legally at age 18
from Federally licensed dealers. A photo from what looks like a church or
school yard in Macedonia, OH shows 21 chairs lined up outside in front of the
building: 19 child-size chairs, with an adult-size chair on either end – a
photo summarizing more than 1,000 words of pain, grief, anger and sorrow.
Meanwhile, we are reminded with horrendous images from the eastern Ukraine
Donbas region almost daily where at least 4,000 non-combatant citizens have
been killed by the Russian invaders.
One afternoon in May of 2012, I returned to St. Peter’s
Episcopal Church, Ellicott City, MD, to find that my two closest colleagues in
ministry, Brenda Brewington and The Reverend Mary Marguerite Kohn, had been
shot execution style in the church office by a young man with a gun who took
his own life in the woods nearby. Each time one of these mass shooting events
takes place, there are countless numbers of people throughout the country and
throughout the world who have memories of similar events in their own lives
brought back as if it were happening again, over and over again. Right here.
Right now.
It's easy to overlook what lies at the heart of storyteller
Luke’s two versions of what the church remembers as The Ascension of our Lord
Jesus Christ. In his two-volume work, Luke-Acts, beginning with the events of
what we call Holy Week, the 120 men and women Luke tells us who were in
Jerusalem with Jesus had witnessed the brutality of the Roman Empire’s use of
crucifixion not only of their Lord and companion, but of others, all others,
whom the Empire considered a threat to what the Empire deemed law and order of
its authoritarian regime. Both Luke and John describe the 120 as hiding in fear
of who among them may be next. Children and teachers throughout these United
States know this kind of fear as they practice “active shooter” drills just to
be able to go to school each day.
A colleague I have never met reminds us that Richard Rohr, a
Franciscan friar and priest, has said, “All great spirituality is about what
we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to
those around us.” [i]
All week at our Live-Stream Noonday Prayer I have been
reminded that the Ascension, which Luke describes twice, once at the end of the
gospel and again at the opening of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles,[ii]
is not really about Jesus finally, forty days after Easter, forty days having
returned from the tomb to appear among his followers, finally returning from
whence we all come and to where we will all one day return. It is about us, the
survivors, and what we are to do, as Jesus modeled over and over again - what
we need to do to transform our pain, our grief, our anger and what often feels
like paralyzing, numbing sorrow.
Both accounts of the Ascension in Luke-Acts depict Jesus’s
departure as a teachable moment. Jesus is giving instructions that must have
sounded dangerous if not outright insane: remain in the city, stay in Jerusalem
as “my witnesses” – witnesses as to how we are to live even in the midst of the
terror and pain of our present circumstances as an occupied people. Like those
120 men and women disciples, we are to remember that Christ is already Lord of
a Kingdom like none we have ever seen or experienced in human history. A
Kingdom, a world, in which spears are to be turned into pruning hooks, and guns
melted down to become gardening tools.[iii]
As the 120 men and women gaze up into the sky at the departing
Christ, two men in white robes suddenly appear nearby. We have seen them
before. The women immediately recognize them as the two men robed in white who
greeted them at the empty tomb.[iv]
“Why do you stand looking up into heaven?’ they now say. Translation: Did you
not hear the man? You are to be his witnesses back in the city of Jerusalem,
and in Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth! You have been called by him to
live God’s peaceful tomorrow today! Get going! He has promised to send his
Spirit, his Power, his Love, his Compassion to clothe you from on high as his
witnesses, his ambassadors to all the peoples of the world. Get back to the
city. Get to work! There is much work to be done to transform the pain, grief,
anger and sorrows of the world into a joyful and peaceful tomorrow today!
Yet, the deeper truth of the Ascension is that Jesus never
really leaves us. Whenever we gather to share the bread and the wine, his body,
his blood, he is here. Whenever we reach out to feed the hungry, heal those in
dis-ease, welcome the stranger, care for the poor, the discarded, the
outsiders, he is here. Whenever we sing the glory of these Great Fifty Days of
Easter, and pray the Psalms, he is here. Whenever we pray the final words of
Holy Scripture, “Come, Lord Jesus, come,” he is here. He is with us in our
pain, in our grief, in our anger and in our sorrow. Alleluia, alleluia he is
here! Reminding us to stop gazing into heaven and get to work living God’s
peaceful tomorrow today! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment