Oh the Memories- Ascension 2010

There seems to be something about goodbyes that awakens the instinct to reminisce. I have seen it again and again in a variety of contexts. There’s something about saying goodbye that jolts the memory, that gets the juices flowing. We start speaking a whole lot about the past, re-hashing the stories and events that have led up to the present, rehearsing them again, rehearsing the wisdom that has come with time, considering the meaning that has been made…and this we do to make sense of what we are experiencing in our goodbyeing…the farewell, whatever it may be.

I have a sense that this instinct was awakened in the disciples that 40th day after the resurrection. I can’t prove it or anything, but I just have a hunch. I think it happened after the crucifixion too… its instinctual…when there’s a loss, a goodbye, you tend to gather with whoever is left, huddle up, and tell stories. Fearful of the Jews they may have been, but I think it was more…I think they were hashing it all out…what the years with Jesus meant, what he had said….done…demonstrated and embodied in their midst.

It’s a lot to take in, you know. There’s the reports of the day John was out preaching and baptizing at the Jordan and Jesus shows up and John reluctantly baptizes Jesus…you remember, don’t you? The heavens seem to open, then that divine voice of affirmation over the beloved Son revealing his identity, confirming his mission. They each had their story of their call…that moment when the Savior looked them in the eye and invited them to follow. Remember what it was like to just drop those fishing nets and take those first steps with Jesus? And then what a journey. Trying to keep up with him was enough to wear you out. The teaching….the parables, the riddles that didn’t seem to make sense. There was the healings….blind people walking away seeing, crippled people frolicking without pain, dead people living again. Man, those were the days, weren’t they? I mean, we were on to something. What he said touched us to the core….it stuck chords within us that we didn’t even know were there. Before you knew it we were in this thing. We were enthralled with our Rabbi. He seemed to have the very words of eternal life. He really threw us some curve balls along the way too. That way that he seemed to relate to the ladies…so not what we were used to. He loved on the kids too. Then those cryptic messages again, this time suggesting that somehow he was going to suffer and die and rise again. Rise again? We’d heard of the possibility of being raised at the last day, but never anything quite like he was trying to describe. We’ll never forget when things started heating up…we’d heard the threats, we knew they wanted him…but Jesus is calm, collected. Then the meal…he says the bread is his body broken for us…the wine his blood of the new covenant. Then the garden, the betrayal, the fake trial,…..Golgotha. Man we really didn’t know what to think then. Sure seems like we had put our eggs in the wrong basket. Then he appeared. It was him….alive…very much alive… we touched his wounds…we shared food. And he kept teaching, kept opening the scriptures to us, helping us to understand. And now, some cryptic words about being his witnesses… he blesses us…and then he’s gone…well, gradually I guess, but he’s gone. He told us to wait until we were clothed with power from on high…that the promise of the Father was coming to us. We would be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

The memories are richer and deeper each time we rehearse them…and yet, even with countless tellings, I still find myself coming to this moment with a sense of wordlessness, a silent awe as we contemplate his homecoming. Some will continue to pick it all apart and decide the story is just too ‘exotic’ for us…that was what one writer wrote. Some will say we had to come up with some story to give some answer to ‘what happened to the body of Jesus?’ question. Perhaps this accounts for why so few find reason to gather on a Thursday in late Easter for worship. Maybe it isn’t all that big of a deal anyway. …..or is it?

If we’re willing to embrace holy mystery then today is a high and holy day for us as Easter people.

Hans Seuss von Kulmbach paints a poignant rendering of the Ascension. The disciples, gathered, huddled, predominates the foreground…their faces are vivid…the confusion, the amazement. The upper dimension of the painting simply portrays two pierced feet amidst the clouds.

I must admit, beholding a scene like this awakens that reminiscing instinct within me. We’ve come along way these many generations since those first followers….and what tremendous layers of meaning we have unpacked as the years have gone by. I see those pierced feet that are being enveloped by those clouds, in the same way that Jesus is being enveloped and taken behind the veil into the heavenly realm of God’s full presence. I can’t help but remember Bethlehem- where the Word was made flesh…flesh…that profound demonstration of God’s intent to lend us a hand….to offer us the hope of redemption. I consider what it means for Jesus, the God-man to be among us. God truly is with us! And it colors everything that Jesus then does…because now God is not just a mountain top awesome presence…but God is enfleshed in Jesus…and so the Word continues to speak, and God heals, forgives and delivers people in the flesh. I can’t help but on Ascension day be reminded of how far God has gone to save us…He stoops down all the way and takes on our frail human flesh, so he might redeem us in the flesh. This is what God does for us. And so on the cross God is scarred for love of us wayward folk. And in the resurrection it is not a ghostly apparition, no, it is Jesus…alive, risen, with scared hands, feet and side….among us again….and he gives us a few days to get used to the idea of it all…and then, the God-man, the eternal Son, second person of the holy trinity, ascends to the right hand of the Father. And those precious nail scarred feet popping out of the clouds call to us as a final reminder of the truth... a testimony to the lengths God has gone for our salvation, for in that taking on flesh, Jesus never takes it off!...and a very human Jesus enters behind the veil and takes his place again in the full presence of the Father…what a homecoming! And when we remember all the vivid imagery the scriptures have given us….wow! The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world steps into the holy of holies having made the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. Hands and feet scarred with love stand in the presence of the Father pleading for us. And the triune God who has forever changed because of Jesus’ taking on flesh now receives our frail humanity into his very heart and embrace in our Representative, Jesus Christ. We say he is our representative, for he is for us the foretaste of what will be for us, for we too, his redeemed fleshy ones will one day put on imperishability and immortality and in our flesh stand in that wonderful embrace of the very life of God, that precious, holy, life-giving space which is the joy of the new creation, the source and summit of our hope in God.

Jesus enters the heavenly realm of God…and so is released from the limits of our understanding of time and space. He ascends to come again. Coming again, yes at the end of the age to herald the fullness of the new creation. Coming again, as well, through the blessed promise of the Holy Spirit…that precious baptismal gift, first poured out on Pentecost, and poured out again and again as beloved sons and daughters of God die and rise with Christ in the waters of baptism, for it is the Spirit who communicates the life of God to us here and now. It is the Spirit who makes the Risen One known to us. It is the Spirit who empowers us to live as witnesses of the Risen Lord rehearsing this story, these many wonderful memories and truths in every language, culture, and place. It is the Spirit who draws us into our living into the new humanity modeled for us in the Risen Lord more and more each day. Is it the Spirit who moves us from God doing for us to God’s making his abode in us.

If you think about it, we could simply proclaim the good news of the gospel by remembering these three realities: God with us…God for us…God in us.

Indeed it is a high and holy day as we contemplate the mystery of the Ascension. It’s not just some exotic notion…it’s foundational to our faith and we join generations who have confessed this faith in acknowledging that, ‘on the third day he rose again, he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.’

We are called again to wait for yet another fresh outpouring of the Spirit upon us calling us to new and greater ventures of life, vocation and witness for the sake of the gospel.

And tonight, we’re privileged again that the divine Word speaks again in this place…and we celebrate this meal where the Risen Lord, not bound by the limits of time and space will be communicated to us here by the Spirit’s power. As we commune, we enter into that precious, holy, life-giving space of God’s life in the most fullest of ways as a foretaste of what is to come. And having tasted of something so precious as this, why would we gather here for anything else?

Alleluia! Christ is risen! ….and he lives and reigns in the unity of the Father and the Spirit, one God in glory everlasting. Amen.