THE SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

May 28^th, 2006

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

I John 5:9-13

John 17:6-19

Year B

The church stands today, in between the Feast of the Ascension, occurring last Thursday, and the Feast of Pentecost, coming next Sunday. According to Luke those days in between the cessation of Jesus’ risen appearances and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost were mysterious days. These days hardly anyone pays much attention to them at all.

One Episcopal priest, telling of an Ascension Day when he was in seminary, describes all the deans, faculty, and seminarians vested in full liturgical splendor. As the liturgy ended, amidst clouds of incense, the assembly emerged from the chapel singing some great Ascension hymn. Unknown to the worshippers one student had taken one of those tacky, near-life-size- Christmas crèche figurines, the plastic painted kind, and stuffed it with some sort of rocket device. As the procession wound its way into the courtyard the student lit the fuse, sending the statue soaring up out of the shrubbery, sailing through a cloud of smoke and sparks, buzzing the scattering procession, and finally diving onto the roof of the refectory.

Needless to say the dean of the seminary was not impressed with the student’s defense that he was simply trying to dramatize his belief in the Ascension. I don’t recall anything quite that spectacular from my seminary days, although occasionally a large stone statue did mysteriously appear on top of our refectory roof.

The Acts of the Apostles begins with the Ascension of the risen Christ into heaven. It is an understatement to say it was a dramatic moment; the tail end of the resurrection whipping round and up and out and beyond. You would think that after it is recounted in scripture something like spiritual awe would take place. Instead the very next thing that happens is a meeting. Christ ascends into the heavens and the infant church calls for a meeting, an election?! What makes this election so amazing is that the replacement for Judas is chosen by casting lots. It’s enough to make search committees and commissions on ministry pass out. But it was accepted in Hebrew practice that the casting of lots indicated the Divine will. Thus, with prayer hanging over the lots like a cloud from heaven, Matthias was chosen to replace Judas. That’s the reality of what happened we are told; a reality perhaps easier to accept that the Ascension.

In a church that lives and breathes in and through the modern world it is easy to give the Ascension the brush off. It sounds too much like a mixture of myth and magic, not reality. It’s easier to ignore the Ascension than to observe it because we find it a vestige of the pre-scientific world. Nothing in our world goes up but satellites and the cost of gasoline. So it is well to remember that the early church never worried about the Ascension being scientifically credible because they’d never heard of science. What they cared about was eternal truth.

Today’s gospel is referred to as Jesus’ high priestly prayer. It comes after Jesus had shared his last meal with the disciples and given them his last words. Then, no doubt knowing he wasn’t long for this world, he turned to God in prayer. His prayer is that his followers might be one and that they might be sanctified in truth. In Greek “sanctified in truth” means to be set aside to accomplish God’s purposes. But what IS truth? According to the dictionary truth equals reality. There is no ‘your truth’ vs. ‘my truth’. There is simply reality.

The truth the Ascension points to is the truth that in and through Jesus’ death and resurrection, humanity is taken into God’s presence in a completely new way. This is why when we approach Almighty God in prayer we always do so “in Jesus’ Name”. On a good day that might feel reassuring to me, but on a bad day, the news that my humanity stands in the presence of God, through Jesus, doesn’t help very much. Woody Allen was right when he said, “Faith would come a lot easier if only God would reveal himself by depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in my name”. But Jesus’ change of address is more complicated than a mere relocation to the heavenly realm. What was/is being said in the Ascension is that in Jesus something cosmic is at work; something that affects not only the future, but the present. It is called the reign of Christ.

Wednesday afternoon, I happened across a special on the Oprah Show. She was at Auschwitz with Elie Weizel, famed Nazi death camp survivor and prolific writer. Once I happened across that program I simply could not turn it off. As Oprah and Weizel slowly walked through the entirety of that death camp it was painfully obvious how difficult it was for him to be there at all. Some buildings he simply said he could not enter. In the moving way he always puts words together he described how it was a death factory; a machine of death. He said, “When I am here, I am not alone.” He said he felt the presence of all those who just didn’t make it. The details too numerous and too horrific to restate, he said, “I have written 47 books and when I am here I feel it is as nothing. I feel as though I have only just scratched the surface; only just begun.”

When the shadow of the Nazis darkened over Europe, Karl Barth said he rediscovered the necessity of the Ascension. The Ascension reminds us that no matter what failures, what horrors, keep happening on earth, in the church or in our personal lives, God reigns. The Ascension reminds us we worship a transcendent Lord. It draws a line in the sand to remind us Jesus is not simply a historical figure, in our time and space, but beyond it. The great irony of the Ascension is that in leaving the world Jesus becomes more present to it.

Jesus fervently prayed for the oneness of those wayward followers of his left that night, because he knew what they were up against. He prayed for them to be made holy in truth. He prayed that they should know God. Jesus did not pray that they would have well formulated doctrines. He prayed that they, that we, might KNOW God and thus God’s will for us.

How do you think we’re doing? How do you think you’re doing?

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fiery urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity.” It happens in our personal lives. It happens in the world. It happens in the church.

I hear the word “disillusioned” a lot these days. People saying they are disillusioned with the church or the clergy, with relationships and situations outside the church. And while disillusionment may be painful, it is not all bad, because it is only through the loss of illusion that we have any hope of finding out, not only what is not true, but are set free to find out what is. What we lose becomes less important than what we find.

Thank God for that motley band of fickle peasant disciples who had the courage to find out exactly that. What if they had been too frightened to do so? That question can never be answered. The only question that can be answered is the question of what will we do, in the church, in the world, in our lives, from now on out.

In these last few days of Eastertide the truth underlined is this: that the one who felt the heel of Caesar’s wrath, the fickleness of most of the disciples and the betrayal of one of them, this one has gone into God’s presence – for us. He is Lord, not just of the church, but of all reality; no matter who lives in the White House or what decisions are made at General Convention, or whether we cast lots to choose bishops.

So we rejoice with all those who have had the courage to bear witness to the truth; all those whose lives have run their course – and we pray now for the courage to run our own.

AMEN

The Rev.Virginia L. Bennett, D.Min.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Edwardsville, Illinois