Readings (Track 1)

Between the reference to greed in the Epistle and its leading role in the Gospel, the preacher’s set up for a barn-burner of a sermon, perfect for Lent. Not perfect for this year, when the combination of the stock market’s year-to-date performance and inflation have too many of us just trying to keep our heads above water.

So, if not greed, what? We might start with the Epistle’s remix of baptismal language to describe our ongoing pilgrimage. “Raised with Christ” (v.1), “stripped off the old self” (v.9), “clothed yourselves with the new self” (v.10): that’s the language of baptism. The remix suggests—no, assumes—that this stripping off and putting on is an ongoing process, a process that the Epistle calls “renewal.”

Read in isolation, the Epistle’s language might suggest a process we direct—self-help on steroids. Our recent Gospel readings tell a different story. Recall what we’ve been hearing. Three weeks ago the lawyer asked “And who is my neighbor?” (Lk. 10:29), certain that the obligation to love applied to only to some people, and Jesus’ Good Samaritan parable blew that out of the water. Two weeks ago Martha wanted to talk about that love (“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me” [Lk. 10:40]) and Jesus redirected the conversation to the one necessary thing. And today, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me,” and Jesus shifted the focus to greed.

The protagonists in these stories are confident in identifying their situations (What we need is a clear boundary between those who are and aren’t my neighbor. Mary needs to shape up! My brother’s cheating me!). And they’re confident that they know exactly what they need from Jesus, what help they need from Jesus. But Jesus in each case radically redefines the situation.

A modern writer (Anaïs Nin) put the very old observation succinctly: “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” If that’s the case—and our recent Gospel readings point us in that direction—we’re hardly in a position of direct our own renewal. We may be fervent in prayer (“Help me correctly identify my neighbor!” “Tell her to help me!” “Tell my brother to divide it with me!”), but the end result can be pretty much as described in our first reading: “The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.”

So where does that leave us?

The crucial bit’s in the first reading. Faced with this crazy-making people, we hear the divine soliloquy: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. ⁹ I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” Well, what is the Lord going to do? There’s a pretty direct line from these words to the Incarnation: we’re going to make this work; we’re going to do this together. Jesus does not want us to stay stuck.

OK, but how does Paul—or whoever wrote Colossians—think that works? A full answer would hardly fit into one sermon, but here are some things we can notice in today’s reading and in the rest of the letter (since this is the last week the Lectionary has us in Colossians).

There’s a lot in today’s reading about, well, weeding. “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication… [etc.]” A bit later: “But now you must get rid of all such things—anger… [etc.].” Weeding is important. But, recalling our recent Gospel readings, it’s the start, not the end of an answer, also because we can confuse flowers and weeds, and because an exclusive focus on weeding sets us up for pride and intolerance. So let’s keep reading.

“In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” That’s not just a statement about who’s included in the renewal, but about how the renewal happens: throwing together—in Christ—folk who otherwise wouldn’t be associating together, let alone listening seriously to each other.

Because notice what follows in the next verse: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” There’s that clothing language again, but now with precisely those dispositions that allow folk trapped in their own worlds (“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”) to learn from each other, to be transformed by each other.

Later the author turns to relationships within the household, wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters. This part sometimes gets written off as undigested cultural commonplaces, but it looks like there’s more going on. Perhaps the most important is that each of the parties are addressed as responsible moral agents. They have choices, and their choices matter. In the context of our how-does-renewal-happen question, what’s interesting is that rather than giving any encouragement to “now I’m a Christian and all these earthly things don’t matter, the author pushes the readers—including us—to take these relationships more seriously. There’s a lot in these relationships beyond our control, and God, who’s out for our renewal, will use that. As one of the desert fathers observed, it’s not the challenges we take on but the challenges that show up uninvited that are often most decisive.

And behind it all, Hosea’s God (“How can I give you up, Ephraim?”), who is not content that “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are” be the epitaph for any of us.

The “new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” Can’t accuse the author of thinking small. Renewal, transformation: we like these words, despite the fact that both involve change (“How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?”). So we’ll give the last word to a former Episcopalian, John Henry Newman: ““To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

Readings (Track 1)

Back in 1964 Bob Dylan sang “There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’ / It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls…” Today, between the January 6 hearings and the recent Supreme Court decisions, we might wonder whether the 60’s were just the warm-up act.

So what’s our role as Christians? The parable in today’s Gospel is a key part to any Christian answer.

Recall what lead up to the parable… “But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” The question assumes that some are my neighbor, that some are not. This is likely a near-universal assumption. Consider our pronouns: What does “we” mean if it doesn’t contrast with “they”? Consider the role of language (accent, vocabulary, etc.): after a few words we’ve instinctively slotted the speaker as one of us or them. Clothing, zip code: so many ways of slotting people into us or them.

So: who qualifies as my neighbor? That’s the conversation the lawyer wants to have. And Jesus’ parable is designed not to answer that question, but to blow it out of the water. At least two elements accomplish this: First, the cast (Priest, Levite, Samaritan [The Samaritan the classic “Other”; “Be a good boy or a Samaritan will…”]. Second, Jesus’ closing: “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

Now, if we pull back the camera, there’s an obvious question. A few weeks back we heard Paul say “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Haven’t we just replaced these contrasts with “Christian and non-Christian” so that we’re back where we started?

A response to that question requires two hands. On the one hand, the NT is clear: saying “yes” to Jesus is fundamental. On the other hand, if that “yes” motivates anything other than love, it’s no longer Jesus to whom I’m saying yes.

Here’s the thing. Jesus’ “love your enemies” isn’t simply one element in his teaching; it captures his Father’s modus operandi throughout the Bible.

His Father’s modus operandi: we meet this in today’s first reading from Amos and repeatedly in the coming weeks with the Old Testament lessons from the 8^th & 7^th C. prophets. The Northern Kingdom (Israel) and Southern Kingdom (Judah) are turning their backs on God, oppressing the vulnerable. Those two actions are two sides of the same coin: I turn my back on God and—surprise—I’m no longer in solidarity with all those who bear God’s image, but with those who bear my image: same skin color, dialect, etc. Anyhow, Israel and Judah: they have made themselves God’s enemies. So for God all the good and easy options are off the table, and God struggles to find a way to stop the madness and to begin laying the foundation for a better future.

And it captures Jesus’ modus operandi. Two weeks ago we heard James and John offering to call down fire on a Samaritan village that—they thought—had not given Jesus a sufficiently enthusiastic reception. So Jesus finds himself for neither the first nor the last time among his enemies.

Any two-bit god can surround themselves with friends; Jesus’ God is constantly seeking out his enemies.

Our Eucharistic Prayer reminds us of this weekly. For example, Prayer A: “to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all” or, again, “Sanctify us…and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace.”

To stay with our liturgy for a moment, every week there’s the Confession and Absolution. So the divide between Christians and non-Christians isn’t between friends and enemies of God. On our good days we Christians are allowing God to continue the life-long work of transforming us from enemies into friends.

In sum, that’s one thing the parable is doing, messing with our notions of “us” and “them.”

The other thing the parable is doing: highlighting compassion.

“But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity [compassion].”

Words matter. It turns out that in the New Testament the Greek verb translated ‘have pity/compassion’ is used exclusively for Jesus, the two exceptions being in Jesus’ parables. Compassion, the Gospel writers tell us, is fundamental to how Jesus navigates this world. And this, in turn, shapes their understanding of how we follow Jesus.

So, in the parable compassion is the turning point in the story. And if we read the parable as an allegory of the divine-human history, it is the turning point in that history: this Samaritan God finding us and caring for us on the Jericho road. We hear that turning point in our Eucharistic Prayers. What is the start of Eucharistic Prayer A if not an extended description of compassion?

“Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself; and, when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you, in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.”

Today so much undercuts and deadens compassion—and nothing more effectively than the us/them dichotomy.  We need this parable—particularly in an election year, in which the political parties are pulling out all the stops to motivate us, but usually not toward greater compassion.

What this sermon boils down to: an invitation to use Jesus’ parable as a lens through which to view the world we’ll encounter in the coming week. Us and them. Notice how often this gets encouraged, the subtle ways it can distort our identity. Look for opportunities to enact William Temple’s claim: “The church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.” Compassion. Notice all that deadens it. Look for opportunities, however small, to practice it.

Readings (Track 1)

Had we continued the Gospel reading for one more verse we would have heard this: “At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.’”

‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants…’” In context, Jesus is thanking God for the work the seventy have just reported. These infants, not the wise and understanding who hold power in Jerusalem and the synagogues, are declaring and embodying the good news of the Kingdom. And these words identify a recurrent theme in our readings, and so serve as the backbone of this sermon.

Our first reading introduces us to Naaman: “Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the LORD had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.” Short of being king, he could not have greater honor. But his disease threatens all of that.

He learns of the possibility of healing in Israel. His king takes advantage of the situation: he sends Naaman to the Israelite king with a letter: “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” He’s insured that Naaman will have access to whatever’s available in Israel: if Naaman’s cured, wonderful; if not, the Israelite king’s behind the 8-ball. The Israelite king responds by rending his clothes (his own, not Naaman’s). And the story could have stayed stuck there had not Elisha heard of it and told the king to send him Naaman.

We know what happens next: “So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.’” Naaman, of course, is furious that Elisha has slighted him by not coming out himself. His servants find a way to spin the situation to maintain Naaman’s honor, so that he washes and is cleansed from the leprosy.

Elisha could have met Naaman at the door and followed Naaman’s script (“I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!”) That he did not is a clue that the story is not only about the Lord’s desire and power to heal—worth celebrating!—but also about the Lord’s hostility toward the human games surrounding honor. Elisha, the Lord’s prophet, refuses to play that game, and Naaman’s cure depends on his loosening his grip on it as well—even if only a little.

“The Lord’s hostility toward the human games surrounding honor.” Is that too strong a way of putting it? Maybe. Nevertheless, something like that is true, and explains, for instance, the Lord’s regular preference for the one who is not the firstborn: Abel, not Cain; Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau; David, not any of his older brothers. It’s part of what gives the edge to Paul’s “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

And, of course, it prepares us for Jesus’ words: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” So what happens to the wise and understanding? Look again at what happens with Naaman: his salvation comes through folk considerably below him: that little Israelite maid captured in one of the Syrian raids, the servants who accompanied him to Elisha’s house. What gifts might God be trying to give us through people we regard as below us?

Paul’s words, in turn, are helpful for understanding how Jesus’ words might play out among the Galatians, and, by extension, among us. His discussion of walking according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh (the flesh: our humanity in rebellion against God) is not designed to give us a new way of playing the honor game, an additional way of ranking people. Rather, he encourages us to guard against letting concerns for honor get in the way of more important things, to look for ways to build each other up.

One test for how we’re doing in the honor/humility department is the way we respond to insults or slights. Some are intentional; others are unintentional, byproducts of our fallibility. It is our response to them that’s important. Abba Isaiah, one of the desert fathers, said “Nothing is so useful to the beginner as insults. The beginner who bears insults is like a tree that is watered every day”. Abba Isaiah is not encouraging us to water each other—that is something we do without encouragement. He’s encouraging us to see insults, slights, etc. as opportunities to grow in humility.

In addition to giving us a window on (or maybe a mirror for) issues of honor and humility, our first lesson provides an opportunity to notice something about the means of grace, the Sacraments and Scripture in particular. “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” It’s a perfectly reasonable question. Elisha’s command is quite arbitrary. There is the same sort of arbitrariness in our Lord’s choice of water to give us new birth in baptism or of bread and wine to give us his own Body and Blood, or of Holy Scripture as a privileged setting for conversations with our Lord. There are so many attractive rivers out there, so many promising strategies for healing and self-improvement, so many other places to be on a Sunday morning. We come to the water, the bread and the wine, the Bible, because that’s where Jesus told us to go, and that in itself requires a certain ongoing humility.

Of course, in this story Naaman has it easier: seven dips in the Jordan and he’s cured. The means of grace sometimes have this immediate and dramatic effect, but usually it’s a long-term process: water eroding our stony hearts. And so Paul encourages us: “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” It is a matter of, as Nietzsche put it, “a long obedience in the same direction.”

Paul follows that encouragement with “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all” and with that we’ll return to the first reading, to notice the people who were pivotal in the story, or, in Jesus’ language, the infants.

Notice, first, the little maid, captured in a Syrian raid, and now serving Naaman’s wife. She could easily have kept the information about Elisha to herself, and taken a sort of joy in watching the commander waste away. She could have seen it as a sort of justice, or even as punishment from her God. She’s near the bottom of the totem pole, but she has choices, and she chooses to give Naaman the information that saves him.

Then there are Naaman’s servants. Naaman’s response to Elisha’s non-appearance suggests that he had a short fuse, and his servants would have been the first to suffer from that. Never mind whether they thought Elisha’s instructions had any merit: they could have enjoyed watching their master stymied. They’re not much up the totem pole from the little maid, but they have choices, and they chose to deal gently and honorably with their master, and he is saved.

The little maid and the servants. Nameless, they’re the heroes of the story, Scripture’s story. Scripture plays many roles; the role noticeable here is that of providing a sneak preview of the Final Judgment. The story honors them, and in so doing reminds us that there is finally only One whose opinion/honor matters. So let us seek honor, but be careful to seek it from God, who alone is in a position to truly give it. And if we do as well as the little maid, or Naaman’s servants, we will have done very well indeed.

Readings

Joyous Feast of Pentecost! Happy Birthday, Church!

The Spirit who brooded over the waters at creation, the Spirit who raised up a mighty host from Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, the Spirit who sustained Jesus throughout his ministry, this Spirit descends on the disciples. The excitement in our Acts reading reverberates throughout the New Testament letters: the Holy Spirit has arrived with power; fasten your seat belts!

Power. We heard about it in the Ascension Day readings:

And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Lk. 24:49)

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.” (Acts 1:8)

We often associate power with compulsion. If I’m powerful enough you’ll do what I want whether you like it or not. But God, who treasures human freedom, doesn’t use power that way. And that’s costly for God: recall Revelation’s Lion of the tribe of Judah who is therefore the slaughtered Lamb. The Holy Spirit’s power is like that, so that in the New Testament letters we hear admonitions like “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30) and “Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thess. 5:19). The Spirit’s choices re power are costly for the Spirit, and—obviously—for us when we grieve/quench the Spirit!

So, it’s clear that the Spirit’s coming isn’t about power as compulsion. What sort of power then? Power/strength for what turns out to be a long-term project: planting God’s life, love, grace, glory in every nation under heaven: Parthians, Medes, Elamites…that’s just the start of the list. Scroll down the list far enough and we hit the Badgers, and are by no means at the end of the list. But this power—coupled with God’s passion for human freedom—carries its own vulnerability, so our choices matter.

These choices are, in fact, the focus of the readings from Romans and John.

In John the Spirit’s coming is set in the context of the Father and the Son making their home with those who love Jesus and keep his commandments. “Making their home”—that’s what King George’s troops did in the colonists’ homes. Not appreciated, one of the sparks for the revolution. We will “make our home with them:” for God that has to be what we desire, that desire expressed in loving Jesus and keeping his commandments. That combination of love and obedience echoes Israel’s classic confession, the Shema:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. (Deut. 6:4-6)

Perhaps Jesus is updating the Shema.

In Romans Paul focuses on his readers’ choices by contrasting “a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear” and “a spirit of adoption.” That’s worth chewing on for a bit. What drives our choices? Certainly fear and desire belong in any short list.

Fear. It’s not as though there were nothing to be afraid of. Recall the parodies of Kipling’s poem “If” that started appearing early in the last century: “And if you can keep your head when everybody round you is losing his, then it is very probable that you don’t understand the situation.” There’s plenty to fear. In Luke’s description of Jesus in the Garden we hear “In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (22:44). The issue is what we do with the fear, and Isaiah nails it: “Surely God is my salvation; / I will trust, and will not be afraid, / for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; / he has become my salvation” (12:2). We’re not told that Jesus received any answer in the Garden, but he chose trust over fear.

Desire. How much of Scripture—including today’s Romans and John readings—seek to nurture our desire! Paul: “it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ– if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” Not easy in suffering, but vital precisely there. The author of Hebrews recalls “Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame” (12:2). And John: ”…my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” As house guests go…

C. S. Lewis: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (from “The Weight of Glory”).

Recall too the prophet Joel’s words that Peter quotes: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” The Spirit, showering us with dreams and visions, awakening our too-feeble desires.

So, fear and desire. I spoke earlier about God’s project of planting God’s life, love, grace, glory in every nation under heaven. A big part of that is dealing with our fears and desires. In this nation, even ours with its toxic brew of fears and desires. So, we want to pay attention our fears and desires, talk with God about these in our daily reading Scripture and praying. Pay attention to these navigating whatever combination of opportunities and challenges the day presents. The choices we make re our fears and desires will make the Holy Trinity more or less welcome as houseguests. And the welcomed presence of the Trinity: what that can do in shaping our fears and desires!

Consider Peter in our reading from Acts. The Spirit has arrived, opening multiple new channels of communication. But Peter still has choices. The chief priests, elders, temple police, Romans, the crowds that seem equally happy to cry “Hosanna” or “Crucify him:” they’re all still in place. What will Peter do with his fears and desires? He opens his mouth…and throws the gates wide open: “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That’s what God’s power looks like.

The Spirit is about opening channels of communication, providing language that bridges divides. In a highly polarized context that’s perhaps not a bad starting point for thinking about how the Spirit might be working among us today. We have choices in our language and actions, to open up or close channels of communication, to make understanding across barriers easier or harder. The Spirit that brooded over the chaos and darkness at creation: that Spirit’s probably not intimidated by our current context. Those dreams and visions the Spirit’s been giving us, so easy to write off: let’s take them seriously and see where they might lead.

Readings (Psalm 93)

Joyous Ascension Day! I’ll come at our feast in two ways, looking at what it says about our humanity, and looking at how this ascended Jesus through the Spirit encounters us in the Eucharist.

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” Yes, Ascension Day is one of our major feasts, but what do we make of it? If all we had were these two texts from Luke, it would be like having our experience with weddings reduced to watching the bride or groom head off for the ceremony. Fortunately, we have Daniel’s vision for the important part:

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed (7:13-14).

So, the New Testament writers in various ways understand the ascension as the culmination of the human story, Jesus, the Second Adam, breaking with the disobedience of the first Adam, and so bringing our humanity to its intended goal.

Psalm 8 asked the question:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Ps. 8:3-4)

What are human beings? Oh, the ways that question gets answered! “The one who dies with the most toys wins!” That’s one of the more popular answers, and our economy would probably collapse without it. Macbeth, facing his own death, human life “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing” (V.5.25-27). The prophet Isaiah cries out in near despair “All people are grass, / their constancy is like the flower of the field” (40:6). The good news: Jesus’ ascension is the definitive answer to that question: human beings are those destined for “dominion and glory and kingship.” For that the Father created us; for that Jesus took on our flesh; for that the Spirit empowers us.

What are human beings? Let’s come at this in two additional ways. In Luke’s texts what isn’t said is as important as what is said. There’s no hint of Jesus shedding our humanity (“Finally!”) to return to being, well, simply divine. Jesus in all his humanity—including those wounds he’d invited Thomas to probe—ascends. The Greeks got it wrong: progress isn’t about distancing ourselves from the body, from matter; these are part of God’s good creation. Nor is progress about erasing the hard, painful, or even dumb moments in our pasts. Jesus ascends with those scars, and they’re part of his glory. So, whether it’s that strange assortment of voices that is my self, or the equally strange combination of events and circumstances that constitutes daily life, there’s nothing that God isn’t out to touch and transform.

What are human beings? Our answer to that is inevitably shaped by our experiences with those more powerful than ourselves. “Children should be seen, not heard.” “Yes, you can come in, but don’t touch anything!” Is that what our humanity comes to before divine grandeur? We focus too much, I think, on divine grandeur and too little on divine generosity. Recall last week’s Gospel: “we will come to them and make our home with them” (Jn 14:23). The God revealed in both the Old and New Testaments desires to share as much of God’s self as we can take in, to share as much of God’s love, God’s joy, God’s peace as we can take in.

What are human beings? Invitees to a celebration that has no end. And all this underwritten in Jesus’ ascension.

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” That’s a real break: Jesus is there; we’re here. It’s an unnerving enough break that our two collects do their best to dance around it. The first collect: “give us faith to perceive that…he abides with his Church on earth.” The second collect: “so we may also in heart and mind there ascend and with him continually dwell.” Absence, what absence?

Now in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says “I am with you always” (28:20). So how is this absent Jesus present? The short answer is the Holy Spirit—in an astonishing variety of ways. We might also ask why would Jesus be present? The short answer: to walk with us. Today’s texts don’t go into this, so let me simply recall a bit of Luke just before today’s Gospel. On Easter Sunday two disciples are walking to Emmaus and a stranger joins them. They talk about the week’s events and…

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he [the stranger] interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight” (24:27-31).

Jesus opens the Scripture; Jesus breaks the Bread. It’s a one-off event; it’s the pattern of every Eucharist. Through the Holy Spirit in every Eucharist Jesus is present. “The Word of the Lord.” “This is my Body…This is my Blood.” All very material: ears, mouths, bread, wine. God likes matter; God created it.

Jesus with us in the Eucharist: it’s a hinge in time. We hold up our recent past: praise, offerings, confession. The Scripture, the Bread, the Wine: these propel us into the new week. The Scripture: how do we incarnate this Word on Monday morning, Wednesday midafternoon with the clock moving at glacial speed, Friday night? The Bread and Wine: Jesus’ Body and Blood, but therefore the model for everything our hands touch during the week. How do I lift this moment, this situation up to God so that God can do something extraordinary with it? The good news: we’re not alone in any of this. Jesus—through the Spirit—let’s do this together. “I am with you always.”

Ascension Day: the glad proclamation that even when Jesus’ way is heartbreakingly hard, it is the human way, and it leads to unending joy.

Readings (Using the John 14 reading)

I hope you’ve not skimped on the coffee this morning, because we’re going to jump into the deep end, that reading from the Revelation. That, in turn, will set us up to think about what the Church is for—not a bad question since we’re only two weeks out from celebrating Pentecost.

A few weeks back we noticed that Revelation likes images that shimmer, enigmatic images. John hears “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David,” but what John sees is “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered” (5:5-6). So here, toward the end of the book, John hears “the bride, the wife of the Lamb,” but what John sees is “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (21:9-10). This is something like what we encountered in Physics 101. Is light a particle or a wave? Yes, depending on what you’re trying to explain.

The new Jerusalem. No need for a temple, or a sun, for that matter: “for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.… for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”

“The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.” Pull the camera back to include John’s Bible (our Old Testament) and it’s clear that this New Jerusalem is finally fulfilling the hopes for the original Jerusalem. Recall Isaiah:

² In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
³ Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. (2:2-3)

Something beautiful is happening, and the nations want in on it.

Then there’s Ezequiel’s river flowing from God’s presence: “On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” So healing is needed—still! The city has gates, the classic means of controlling access, but the gates are never shut. A bit later we’ll hear “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (22:17). Jerusalem is finally fulfilling its role, being the place where God’s glory is visible and healing is freely available.

I mentioned enigmatic images a bit ago, and in its final chapters the Revelation takes these to a different level in the form of two juxtaposed stories. In the one, a decisive battle in which evil is destroyed and the great white throne before which everything is sorted out. On the other hand, open-gated Jerusalem offering glory, joy, and healing to all who would enter. Well, which is it? What the Revelation may want to show us is that within the limits of human language and human understanding our clearest picture is this pair of starkly contrasting images.

Perhaps this should not be surprising. Recall how our story starts. Genesis gives us not one, but two creation stories. In one everything is good from the start, the humans play no active role, the seven days are as much liturgy as anything. In the other God works by trial and error, Adam plays an important role, and the good emerges at the end of the process: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken” (2:23). To capture the reality of the beginning and ending of human history Scripture gives us pairs of stories.

What may be at stake in these pairs of stories is the challenge of doing justice to God’s sovereignty and human freedom. There’s a popular saying attributed to various folk (Augustine, Ignatius, etc.) “Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” Maybe, but it could be heard as a call to run ourselves ragged. I like what the Ignatian author Jim Manney does with it:

“I prefer to reverse it: ‘pray as if everything depends on you, and work as if everything depends on God.’ This means that prayer has to be urgent: God has to do something dramatic if everything depends on me. It also puts our work in the right perspective: if it depends on God, we can let it go. We can work hard but leave the outcome up to him. If God is in charge we can tolerate mixed results and endure failure.”[1]

OK, what of the Church? In John’s vision there’s the New Jerusalem, finally doing its job. Sounds pretty good. What happens until then? Let’s circle back to the angel’s words: “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” “The bride, the wife of the Lamb:” that sounds like the language used elsewhere in the New Testament for Christ as bridegroom and the Church as bride. Or, to come at John’s vision from another angle, from 1^st Corinthians: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you (3:16)?” Or, more extensively in Ephesians, “¹⁹ So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, ²⁰ built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. ²¹ In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; ²² in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (2:19-22).

Because God desires that all enter freely into joy, into God’s presence, God really needs a place where God can be at home, where God’s healing glory is visible, and that is the Church. That’s the dynamic in this morning’s psalm, God’s blessing here that ripples out to the corners of the earth. That’s at the core of today’s Gospel: “we will come to them and make our home with them.” This is why, by the way, the New Testament letters devote virtually no attention to evangelism and virtually all their attention to the elements in congregational life that make God’s healing glory easier or harder to see.

And this sweeping vision plays out in the decisions of specific women and men, folk like Lydia, that dealer in purple cloth from our first reading, folk like you and me.

We’re here, God knows, because we need to be here. And in the larger story that the Revelation brings into focus, we’re here because God needs places where God’s at home, where God’s healing glory can be visible in the common life of God’s people, whether gathered together or scattered through our communities during the week. A tall order, yes, which is why Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit on approach, the flaps extending, wheels down.

[1] https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/work-as-if-everything-depends-on-god/ (accessed 5/16/2022).