We Work From Home! Ascension 2024

 

We Work From Home   Ascension 2024 

The Feast of the Ascension –forty-days after Easter, when we celebrate, as some wag put it, “the day Jesus began work from home.” As true as that may be, it would also seem to miss the main point of Ascension as a Church Celebration. As we might note, storyteller Luke gives us two versions of the story, one at the end of the gospel, and the other as the opening of volume two, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. He does this, no doubt, so that we, you, me, any and all of us who are listening closely may notice that the story does not really have much if anything to do with Jesus’s departure from this fragile Earth our island home. It’s about those first disciples becoming apostles – those who are sent - to be witnesses as friends of Jesus. 

That is, they are to be witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and to be those friends of Jesus who continue to do the things he does, “and greater things than these”! So it is, that the end of Luke’s Gospel account begins with him reminding them “that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” He then proceeds to remind them what that means in practical terms: to love God, to love our neighbor as we love God, as God loves us and forgives us, and as we love ourselves. And oh yes! To love our enemies and those who don’t like us. Finally, they are to remain in the city, that is Jerusalem. 

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” [Luke 24:44-53] That is, they did what he asked them to do, while awaiting a further anointing by the Holy Spirit ten days later on the Israelite festival of Pentecost. 

Then comes volume two. The title of that book tells us all we need to know: The Book of the Acts of the Apostles. It is a book filled with stories of just how they were baptized by the Holy Spirit, and the many things they did as witnesses and apostles. In Acts, storyteller Luke goes on to say that Jesus told them to fan out across the ancient world: “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." [Acts 1:1-11] It’s important to remember that the Samaritans firmly believed their region of the land, their temple, and their understanding of what God asks of us to be the way, the truth and the life. Surely those early apostles were hesitant to go to Samaria. There was no love shared by Samaritans and Israelites. 

No doubt, it ought to strike us as challenging as well, to hear we are expected to reach out to those most unlike ourselves. That is, Jesus calls for a vast expansion of just who these neighbors we are meant to love as God loves us is to include. This remains our greatest challenge as Christ’s Body, the Church: to leave our comfort zone on Sunday mornings to fulfill what it means to follow Christ rarely fits into our daily to-do list. To often we have other interests, other priorities. 

The same was true on that day of Ascension as the disciples quickly change the topic: are you now going to restore the kingdom of Israel? No longer interested in what they are called to do, what can you do for us, they say. I don’t think we can begin to fully understand just how disappointing this would be for Jesus to hear. He is all about the kingdom of God his Father wants to be our future, and instead we want to go back to the way things used to be. Jesus shows great restraint and patience. Rather than chastise them for not getting just what he has been preparing them to do, he simply reminds them of their mission, blesses them, as he ascends out of their sight on a cloud. 

As they stand gazing up into the heavens there can be no doubt that like their companions James and John had demanded, they would rather go with Jesus to sit at his right-hand and his left-hand in God’s household of steadfast love and forgiveness. Why can’t we just get away from it all and go with him they think? In all fairness, most of us, if not all of us, feel that way from time to time. How great would it be to get away from it all! As Woody Guthrie famously sang during the Dust Bowl years, sometimes we feel like “I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.” The world as we once knew it, or at least how we think it had been, has simply moved on without us. Like the disciples, we stand gazing up at the heavens, yearning to return to the past. In truth, those days were never as good as we would like to think. At least nowhere near anything like the kingdom of God Jesus calls not only to embrace, but to actively bring to others – especially to those utterly unlike ourselves. 

Enter stage right, two men in white robes who are suddenly standing beside us asking the pivotal question in Luke’s story of Ascension: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Followers of Jesus, his Body, the Church, why are you standing around gazing up into the heavens? Wish you were somewhere else? Wish you could just leave this place and be carried away and disappear among the clouds? Do you want to go back to the days of old? Why, indeed! 

At the end of the day, the story Luke tells is all about us. Like the disciples, we are meant to stay where we are in our Jerusalem. God’s kingdom is not somewhere else. It is meant to be planted, unfold, and grow right here and right now. If this world no longer feels like home, Jesus calls us to follow him to make the world new in the image of God’s kingdom. To make it the home that God has intended all along – a friendly place, with friendly folks, beneath a friendly sky. 

A friend once said, “All sickness is homesickness.” The African bishop, the Blessed Augustine, wrote in his confessions, “Our hearts are restless until we find our home in Thee.” This is where the kingdom of God’s steadfast love is meant to take hold and grow into our real home: in our hearts. Our true home. Christians are fond of saying that Pentecost is the birthday of the Church – the Church that is meant to be the first outpost of God’s kingdom for which Jesus gave his all. But the true birth of the Church is on that fortieth day after the resurrection as he leaves us on our own to continue the work he does, and greater things than these. Everything necessary for the birth of God’s kingdom has been given to us in Christ. As he leaves to work from home, he trusts us to continue to remake this world into a new kind of kingdom, a new kind of home for all. 

Christ says, “I came to serve others, not to be served.” His true home is in our hearts and in the things we do and say. Our acts as apostles. The real truth is that he never really leaves us. We simply forget he is here. “I am with you always, to the end of the age,” he says. [Matthew 28:20] He does not leave us altogether, but he does entrust us to continue the work of taking his Father’s kingdom to the ends of the earth, serving others as he served all others. Serving the Christ that is in all creation from the beginning: Christ in every person, every creature, every rock, river, tree, flower, and ocean. When our home is in Christ, wherever we are, we work from home. Just like he does! Amen.

Filled With the Joy of God's Love Easter 6B

 

Filled With the Joy of God’s Love  Easter 6B

We hear echoes of Maundy Thursday with John’s focus on foot-washing and an astonishing new commandment to love one another as Jesus has loved us. We also hear echoes of Pentecost, with the depiction of an equally astonishing and unexpected outburst of the Holy Spirit amongst Gentiles, who were, up until that moment, considered the quintessential outsiders. As Jesus said one night to Nicodemus, like the wind, the spirit comes from we know not where, and goes we know not where – and it astonishes us right where we are when it comes! 

We are still at the Last Supper in John. After washing everyone’s feet, Jesus commissions the disciples saying, “You are no longer servants, rather you are my friends.” It is possible to mistake this as admission to an exclusive club with new rights and privileges. We are friends of Jesus, too, we might say. Look at us and be jealous, we might think – if not aloud, at least to ourselves. Yet, to do so misses the two-edged sword that is the Word of God – the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, the Word at the beginning. 

This friendship with Jesus means to fold us into the Body of Christ, the Christ who comes to dwell among us as one who serves, not one to be served. To serve others with God’s steadfast love for all humanity. To seek and serve Christ in all others. We are to serve all, not some, not many, surely not a few, but all others, loving our neighbor as ourselves – as we would like to be served. 

It ought to strike us, if it has not already, the astonishing irony of John’s story of the Last Supper. Jesus commissions us to be his friends so that his “joy may be in [us], and so [our] joy may be complete,” overflowing from our lives into the lives of others – all others. Jesus is filled with joy despite the fact John tells us, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1). And yet he remains filled with joy, commissioning those who wish to follow him to go into the world as those who wish to serve others, not be served by others. Such love for one another, such seeking to serve Christ in all persons, is the source of the same joy that fills the Risen Christ; this is an astonishing assertion as he steadfastly walks out of that supper, one step at a time, to carry his cross to Calvary, Golgotha, the Place of the Skull. 

It’s as if, in those final moments with those who are now to be his friends, Jesus has embodied the Psalmist’s call: “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things…. Shout with joy to the Lord, all you lands; lift up your voice, rejoice, and sing…. Let the sea make a noise and all that is in it, the lands and those who dwell therein. Let the rivers clap their hands, and let the hills ring out with joy before the Lord, when he comes to judge the earth.” Jesus imagines a new world unfolding from the events that are to follow that Last Supper. Jesus imagines his friends will now continue in the midst of God’s work: not only the judgment of the world, with all its foibles, problems, and troubles but also the renewal and repair of a broken world, as we become the Body of Christ, bringing his joy of service to others as a new reality for all people! Sing to the Lord a new song, indeed! 

If this strikes us as astonishing beyond all knowing and all possibility, today’s Word means to remind us that these first friends of Jesus were astonished as well. We hear about Peter, who, prior to the events of today’s reading, has had a perplexing vision of what singing to the Lord a new song was to be about. As he is praying, he is hungry. The Lord shows him a vision of all manner of creatures to eat that are not Kosher and says, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter says three times, “No, I have never eaten such things.” We are meant to remember that this is Peter, who had denied even knowing Jesus three times. Peter, whom Jesus asks three times, “Do you love me?” Peter who says, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.” Peter, to whom Jesus says, “Tend my sheep, feed my flock, seek and serve me in all people!” 

As Peter emerges from this vision, Cornelius, a centurion, sends men to bring him to his home, where Peter is faced with a house filled with Gentiles, those quintessential outsiders, who want to hear about the Word that had come to dwell among us, with God’s steadfast love for all creation. They want to hear of the God to whom even the hills and the rivers and the seas and the lands and all who dwell therein want to sing a new song, a joy-filled song! They long to hear and join the song that declares a renewed world that fears the Lord and desires to enter into his new command to love one another, even as Jesus did, marching toward pain. 

Peter begins to speak, and lo and behold! The same spirit that had come upon the disciples in an upper room on Pentecost, that same spirit that turned them into evangelists who could speak about God’s steadfast love in Christ Jesus in ways that people from all corners of the earth could understand, that same spirit showed up! Peter begins, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.” 

And then it happens. The Holy Spirit comes upon these quintessential outsiders, and suddenly they, too, are extolling God in ways that anyone could understand! Peter and his Jewish, Christ-following friends of Jesus stare in disbelief. So that’s what the vision was all about, he must have been thinking. These are not just words I am speaking. God really, truly does not show any partiality whatsoever! And so, what could they do, but baptize this house filled with Gentiles? They would spend the next few days together, filled with the joy of Jesus, with God’s steadfast love for all persons: male and female, Jew and Roman, slave and free. All divisions would need to cease because the repair of the broken world had begun! 

God’s Word on this day means to ask us: Do we accept Jesus’ invitation to become his friends? Do we wish to be served, like the people of this age? Or do we wish to serve? Do we wish to serve even those who are most unlike us, as Peter and the friends of Jesus do? Are we ready to be as astonished as they were that day in the centurion’s house to discover that God loves even those most unlike us in every single way? Do we wish to be filled to overflowing with the joy of Jesus, a joy that seeks and serves the Christ in others, all others, no matter what? 

Of course, we do! We are those people, like the writer of the First Letter of John, who know the pervasive reality of God’s love in Christ Jesus, who, though he was leaving this world to return to the household of God’s steadfast love, has made us his friends. We have been made new. We are those people who seek to sing a new song to the Lord our God. We seek to join the chorus of all creation who joyfully sing of the transforming love of God in Christ Jesus. We are those people who have seen and believed the transforming love of God in the death and resurrection of his Son. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!