Seventh Sunday of Easter
Is it any wonder that the disciples should be standing there with their mouths hanging open? God knows that I would probably be doing the same thing. Just think about it. Put yourself in the place of the disciples. You’ve made what you thought was going to be a triumphal, political entry into Jerusalem. Maybe even harboring in your heart the hope starting a revolution and kicking out the Romans. Instead, your teacher, friend, and hero ends up being crucified like a common criminal. But then TA-DAAAA three days later, people are saying that he isn’t really dead. That he’s alive again. And then you see him, too, several times, over a period of 50 days. But it’s always the same: Jesus shows up quite suddenly and then disappears again. Except that he can’t be a ghost because you can touch him and see him. He eats right in front of you; and everyone knows that ghosts don’t eat.
OK. So, you adjust. You try and get used to it. And after a while, you’re not even spooked anymore when suddenly, Jesus is standing there, or sitting with you at a table. And then, just as you’re getting used to this new way of doing things THIS has to happen! You’re walking along and, whoops!, there’s Jesus again and somebody who still doesn’t quite get it asks if the revolution is going to happen NOW. And Jesus gives a typical Jesus-type-answer about how nobody really knows when it’s going to happen, but only God does. Nothing new, really and then he starts talking about how you’re going to be going to the ends of the earth to spread his story (again, nothing new). And then, all of a sudden he stops talking and thhhhhhhhhup he gets sucked up into the sky!! It’s the perfect maraschino cherry of weirdness to top off what has got to be one of the strangest experiences of your entire life. So, is it any wonder, then, that you’re just standing there, looking up, with your mouth hanging open? And then, just to keep you on your toes, there are suddenly two guys standing there all dressed in white whose sole purpose is to yell at you: “What are you people doing just standing around, looking up, with your mouths hanging open? He’ll come back again, don’t worry about it. Now get moving!”
Yuri Gagarin wasn’t the first person to venture into the heavens. It was Jesus! At least, that’s how we tend to look at it in this day and age. Taken literally, the ascension belongs to the mythical three-story world-view of the ancients. Heaven was literally above the clouds. Hell was literally beneath our feet. The ascension is neither about interstellar transportation, nor is it an illustration about the structure of the afterlife. We miss the point if we focus on geography and space travel instead of our own spiritual journeys.
What this story is about is connectedness. If we consider the Gospel reading for today, from John, we can see what it is that I’m talking about. As is so often the case when dealing with John’s gospel, you get finished reading the lesson for today and your first response, “What did I just read?” The problem is that we want to be so concrete about the Gospels. We want to be able to take something away with us when we’re done with the reading. Something that’s simple and easily applicable. And that’s so hard with John’s Gospel, because John is the most symbolic of the four. It just doesn’t lend itself to that kind of thing. John is not the facile story-teller that Luke is, for example. But we think it ought to be and so when we read it we look for something concrete and when we don’t find it we start to read more closely and we get all bogged down in the details and we end up not seeing the forest for the trees. Certainly, there are times when a detailed, line-by-line, word-by-word reading of John can be helpful. But there are also times when it’s better to approach John on a conceptual level.
So, what is Jesus talking about here? It’s a meditation on connectedness. Jesus is talking about nature of the relationship that he has with God. It’s a relationship of supreme intimacy because Jesus and God are one and the same. My work is your work, your work is my work. My glory is your glory, your glory is my glory. In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the word WAS God. God the Creator and Jesus Christ the Son are two different glimpses of this great big inter-related bundle of intimate relationship and shared identity that we call God. And what Jesus goes on to say is that this relationship of intimacy-beyond-imagining spills over into everything; into all of creation. It spills over into the relationship between Jesus and the disciples.
As you listen to the second half of today’s passage, don’t listen for the details, don’t try to understand it, but rather sense it: Sense the closeness; the intimacy that Jesus imparts to the relationship shared between God the creator, Jesus the son, and the disciples:
"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
They’re mine, they’re yours, they’re ours, they are each other’s, we are theirs… And it all becomes so mixed up and jumbled until one is completely indistinguishable from the other: God, the disciples, Jesus, us… So don’t try to figure it out! Don’t think about it! Just accept it. This tangled mass of inter-relatedness; of weakness and omnipotence; of selflessness and selfishness; of dying flesh and life-giving spirit; saints and sinners; all of us; together. This powerful, churning, amazing, sometimes frustrating, but always surprising mass of humanity and divinity is what we call the church! This is who we are!!!
Luke, of course, approaches the whole thing in a much more story-like way in the book of Acts. But he ends up expressing the same ideas. The lesson for today from Acts is the beginning of this particular story. Jesus has died, he has been raised again, he has spent time with the disciples and now he ascends to heaven. And then the two messengers in white appear, urging the disciples to shake themselves loose from their stupor. The work of the church is about to start. The disciples are about to receive the Holy Spirit. So, they can’t simply be standing around with their mouths hanging open. They have to get to the right place.
Not to tip our hand, but next Sunday we will hear the story of Pentecost: the story of the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit; Receiving a portion of God. It’s the same idea, but communicated to us in story-form, rather than symbolically. They will be dwelling in God and God will be dwelling in them. They will be intimately and intrinsically connected, sinner and sanctifier, creator and created. A powerful, churning, amazing, sometimes frustrating, but always surprising mass of humanity and divinity that we call the church! The body of Christ.
Once we can realize that on an emotional level, we realize that nothing is the same. We realize that we aren’t in Kansas anymore. So, how do we actually live into this sense of connectedness? Just as an example, several years ago, one of the things I did for Lent was to give up watching TV. It was good for Anke, too, because she ended up watching less TV, as well. As a result, we started talking more. We became emotionally closer to one another, and our relationship is stronger for it.
When it comes to our relationship with God, prayer works the same way. The more we pray, the more we work at our relationship with God. The more we pray, the closer we are to God. All too often we approach prayer with a “laundry list” mentality. “Hi God, thanks for all the stuff you do for me. This is the stuff I want now. These are the things I want you to do for me now. Here are the things that are not quite so pressing, but if you could get around to them quickly, that would be nice. And here’s the stuff that, long term, I would like to see happening. But that’s long-term, mind you. Amen.”
There’s a reason why prayer is regarded as a spiritual discipline. It’s because we need to be disciplined about it. And we need to be disciplined with regard to two things: Content and frequency.
Let’s look again to the example of a marriage. One of the skills that I most often find myself having to help young couples to develop is communication skills. Communication is more than making your needs, wants, and desires known. Communication is an active process. It does involve speaking and at times, when appropriate, making one’s needs, wants, and desires known. But communication also involves active listening, which means not just hearing the words that another is saying, but reflecting on their meaning and working with your partner to come to a clearer understanding of one another and the situation or subject being discussed. The more we look at communication as a skill, and the more we actively practice those skills, the more effective we become as communicators and the relationship is strengthened because of it.
These same skills come into play when we’re talking about prayer. We need to get away from the laundry list mentality and realize that prayer is a process of communication with God. Prayer is a process of conversing with God. It involves speaking and listening. The more we practice prayer, alone and in groups, and the more we talk about prayer and our prayer experiences with others, the better we become at discerning the voice of God in our lives.
We need to be disciplined about what we are praying for; the content of our prayers. We need to remember that the primary purpose of prayer is not to give God a honey-do list, but to become conversant with God, so that we can learn to understand God’s desires for us. And the other thing is frequency. Effective, disciplined prayer is not something that just happens on the fly. What does it say about the importance that we assign our relationship with God in our lives, when the only time we talk to God is when we’re in trouble?
Prayer needs to be intentional. It doesn’t have to be a long time. 5 or 10 minutes to just sit and understand what it means to be in God’s presence. 5 or 10 minutes to talk to God about how you’re feeling and what you hope to accomplish in the course of the day. But make sure you do it every day!
Prayer is important because it’s one of the things that binds us to God. And when we bind ourselves to God, we bind ourselves to one another. Because through the Holy Spirit, we have been bound up together in God and with God. So, when we allow ourselves to be drawn into deeper relationship with God, we are also opening ourselves up to be brought into deeper relationships with each other.
One of the things I’ve discovered about disciplined prayer is that after a while, you come to the realization that you don’t need to pray for yourself anymore. You realize that the laundry list becomes useless because you realize that God doesn’t need your laundry list. God simply needs you. And so, you start praying for others. Your friends. Your family. Your siblings in Christ. You pray for your opponents and your enemies. You pray for the poor, with a desire that God show you what you can do. You pray for peace, and you mean it. It’s not just a tack on because you’re expected to pray for peace.
Just like constant, open communication is the basis for a strong marriage relationship; constant, open communication with God is the basis for a strong faith-relationship. It’s something we need to foster in our lives, so that we can be closer to God so that, in turn, we can know what it is that God is calling us to do. In turn we are drawn closer to one another. And not only because we are praying for one another. We are drawn closer to one another, because we begin seeing how we fit together as we discover our gifts and ministries and begin putting them to use in the congregation. We begin seeing how we mesh together, our gifts and our ministries complementing one another.
And slowly but surely, we see Jesus’ prayer becoming a reality. This intricate maze of inter-relatedness; of weakness and omnipotence; of selflessness and selfishness; of dying flesh and life-giving spirit; saints and sinners; all of us; working together our gifts and ministries complementing and completing one another. This powerful, churning, amazing, sometimes frustrating, but always surprising and inspiring mass of humanity and divinity that we call the church! This is who we are!!!
AMEN