"The Lord Will Provide"

Sermon by Rev. William J. Kemp
Peace Presbyterian Church
Lakewood Ranch, FL

"The Lord Will Provide"
Genesis 22:1-14

WOW! This is a story I could do without! I bet no one here would say it is their favorite Bible story! Sometimes the lectionary is a bit like your local multiplex movie theater. Under one roof you find movies are G – good for all ages; others are R – not appropriate for children.

It makes me appreciate why Thomas Jefferson took his scissors and cut out those Bible passages he didn’t think really belonged. Members of The Jesus Seminar have a reputation of doing the same.

For better or for worse, it’s one of the lectionary readings for today, though Presbyterians aren’t required to preach from the lectionary. There are two other passages, plus a Psalm, we could turn to, or we could ignore them all. Running away from it, however, will not solve anything. It’s better to wrestle with passages we don’t like than it is to ignore them. I’m just glad Father’s Day was last Sunday!

Would God command someone to participate in child sacrifice? Such a practice is clearly proscribed elsewhere in the Bible. “What shall I bring to the Lord, the God of heaven, when I come to worship him? asks the prophet Micah. “Shall I offer ...Calves? ...Sheep? ...Oil? Shall I offer him my first-born child to pay for my sins? NO! is the Lord’s resounding answer. He has told you ... what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (i)

No story in the Bible is more troubling or more subject to such a wide variety of interpretations. Traditionally the story is viewed as God testing Abraham’s loyalty. Just as Abraham was about to plunge the knife into Isaac, an angel of the Lord stopped him and said, “Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

Soren Kierkegaard, the 19^th century Danish philosopher / theologian, wrote a book called, Fear and Trembling, in which he imagines how Abraham might have felt. He pictures four different scenarios. (ii)

In version 1.0, Isaac clings to Abraham’s legs and begs for his life. When he looks at his father with sheer terror in his eyes, Abraham rebukes Isaac and screams, “Do you think it is God’s command? No it is my desire.” Here Abraham tries to protect God by blaming himself for the atrocious command. At least Isaac will not see God as a monster.

In version 2.0 Abraham and Isaac journey in total silence. Now Kierkegaard imagines the consequences for Abraham. He is deeply traumatized and psychologically scarred for the rest of his life. “He could not forget that God had ordered him to do this ... His eyes were darkened and he saw joy no more.” Perhaps in this very act of faithfulness, Abraham lost faith.

In version 3.0 Kierkegaard highlights Abraham’s tragic regret by committing an unthinkable murder. Abraham “threw himself down on his face, prayed to God to forgive him the sin of being willing to sacrifice Isaac, and that as a father, he had forgotten his duty to his son.” Here, Abraham concludes that he wrongly believed that God told him to murder Isaac.

In version 4.0 Abraham suffers a failure of nerve, an explicit act of disobedience and returns to his senses and sensibility. He refuses to act because he cannot bring himself to slay Isaac. “Not a word of this is ever said in the world, and Isaac never talked to anyone about what he had seen, and Abraham did not suspect that anyone had seen.”

If we’re not inclined to psychoanalyze Abraham, we probably theologize the story. The painting by Marc Chagall before you gives one common interpretation of the story. Not only does he place Sarah and the ram in the background, in the upper right hand corner you will see several people, including Jesus carrying his cross. Even if we are to see this story as pre-figuring Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, I wouldn’t be any more comfortable. If truth be known, I’ve never warmed up to the idea that God had to kill off his only Son in order to forgive me.

Personally, I’m as put off by the idea of God testing Abraham as I am by the idea that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. I know of a theologian who says that every time someone tells him, “I don’t believe in God,” he responds by saying, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.” Let me tell you about the God I don’t believe in. I don’t believe in a God who plays games with our lives by putting us into situations to “test us.”

If God is a loving parent as Jesus says, what loving parent would deliberately place a child in harms way just to see how obedient she might be? How would you feel about parents who would allow their teenage children to invite friends over for a party, then stock the house with a wide assortment of booze and drugs, only to leave the kids un-chaperoned just to see if all the good things they were taught took hold? That’s how I feel about a God who would put his children to such a test.

I have to wrestle with the scriptures at this point and it’s quite a match. Our story today clearly says, ‘God tested Abraham.” The story of Job begins with God entering into an unholy alliance with Satan to test Job to see if he was as righteous as everyone thought he was. And after the Spirit descends upon Jesus at his baptism, Mark tells us that the same Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tested by Satan (iii) That’s strong language. So, too, is the plea we are taught to pray–“Lead us not into temptation,” or more literally, “do not bring us to the time of testing.” (iv)

A text that gives me wiggle room in this wrestling match is from the Letter of James. Listen to The Message. “Anyone who meets a testing challenge head‑on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life. Don't let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, "God is trying to trip me up." God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one's way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare‑up of our own lust.” (v)

A popular saying that always sends shivers up and down my spine says, God never gives us more burdens than we can bear! I know many who have been broken by the burdens they’ve borne. I guess that’s based on a verse from Corinthians: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” (vi) That doesn’t say God sends the problem, but it does say God can redeem our problems. That’s the God I believe in–not the God who tests us, but the God who is always there to help us pass life’s tests.

Perhaps all the talk about God testing people is a metaphor for an indisputable fact of life --our faith is always being tested. Our faith is tested every time we hear the word cancer or experience the premature death of young person we love or encounter the warehousing of the aged who are more than ready to go home. Our faith is tested when a trusted relationship is broken, when we lose a job, when attacked by an enemy or when we hear tornados or floods, or firestorms. If God is in control, why does everything appear to be so out of control? That’s when it’s most difficult to live in faith and in faithfulness. Of course, it’s only a problem for those who take God seriously. If we weren’t believers, we’d still have to bear the burdens of life’s traumas, but we wouldn’t be burdened by trying to reconcile them with belief in a God of love and redemption, a God who “has the whole world in his hands.” But, at the same time, if we weren’t believers, we’d be denied the hope and the love that are born from keeping faith and living faithfully even in tough times.

So what can we take home from this troubling story? No matter how we interpret it or try to psychoanalyze Abraham, here is a man who at the beginning of his story turns his back on everything to answer God’s call. “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” (vii) He stepped out in faith, but it wasn’t long before he kept tripping over his own feet – taking matters into his own hands, trying to protect himself and securing his future. Remember, since Sarah was beyond the age of child-bearing, he was so untrusting of God that he took it upon himself to father a son by her slave, Hagar. Ishmael was his name. Now he appears ready to turn his back on his future, the future that mattered, the future only God could provide – Isaac, child of God’s promise.

At this moment, Abraham is between the proverbial rock and hard place. He can’t go back but neither can he see any way forward. All he has is God and God isn’t so obviously present. Then all of a sudden, when he least expected it, he heard a voice–STOP! And he saw a ram caught in a thicket by its horns.

Indeed, the Lord does provide. Why are we so often blind to that reality? Could it be that we cling so much to what has been that we can’t allow ourselves to be open to what might be? Could it be that we worry too much about tomorrow – that it won’t be as good for our family, our nation, our church, as it was yesterday? Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.” (viii) A little worry is probably good for us or we wouldn’t act responsibly and the insurance companies would go belly up! But we are increasingly consumed by worry. We flitter from here to there, as the Psalmist says, “eating the bread of anxious toil.” (ix)

Anthony DeMello writes, “If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy … Here is a mistake that most people make in their relationships with others. They try to build a steady nesting place in the ever-moving stream of life.” (x) Jesus would say, “They build their houses on sand.” (xi)

Zits is a daily comic strip about Jeremy Duncan, a 16-year-old high school sophomore. Perhaps you saw the installment from this past Thursday:

(Image of Zits comic strip) (xii)

No wonder we often feel tied up in knots! We won’t let go. The problem with clinging is that we delude ourselves into thinking that we are the providers and that delusion blinds us to the reality that God alone is the provider.

“In face of all of this, what is there left to say? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not hesitate to spare his own Son but gave him up for us all–canwe not trust such a God to give us, with him, everything else that we can need?” (xiii)

There are no “if’s” about it. God is for us and the Lord will provide – not always what we want, but always what we need!

Endnotes

---

(i) Micah 6:6-8

(ii) I’m indebted to a summary provided by Dan Clendenin posted 6/20/05 on www.journeywithjesus.net/cgi-bin/viewprintable?rand1=3

(iii) Mark 1:12-13

(iv) Matthew 6:13

(v) James 1:12‑14

(vi) 1 Corinthians 10:13

(vii) Genesis 12:1

(viii) Matthew 6:34

(x) The Way of Love

(ix) Psalm 127:2

(xi) See Matthew 7:24-29

(xii) June 23, 2011, comic strip by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

(xiii) Romans 8:31-32, J. B. Phillips paraphrase

Men of the Church; Father's Day

June 19, 2011
Father's Day
Grant Lowe

“STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION”

It’s Father’s Day. I never knew my grandparents and I remember asking my father about his father, what he did, his personality, and his father’s father, and he would eventually say “It’s better not to ask any more questions”. Evidently I had some ancestors my father would just as soon not talk about.

I was curious about my ancestors, my origins.

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, is about our genesis, our origins. It’s all about who we are, whose we are, and it holds us accountable.

This is not the first creation story in the Bible. The one that follows in Genesis 2 is actually older, more primitive, uses a different name for God, gives a different account for how God created everything, and is not nearly as orderly and neat. The rabbis wove together several strands or traditions of their people to form what we now have in the Bible. This strand, this later creation story that comes first, is from what we call the priestly tradition around the sixth century B.C.

The Jews traced their history back to Moses who led them out of Egypt to the land of Canaan, their kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon, and their temple in their capital city, Jerusalem. In 587 they were conquered by the Babylonians who dragged them off as slaves. The Priestly writers tell this story to help the Jewish people in a strange land retain their identity, to know the story of whose they were, and to maintain their traditions, especially the tradition of the Sabbath.

Today, we hear it as our story and we are in the middle of it carried along with it, part of God’s eternal story. Knowing we are part of God’s story changes everything!

One message we take from this Scripture as God’s message for us is this : The world is God’s, God’s creation, it all belongs to God, the spirit infinite and eternal that moves across the emptiness, the void, the chaos, and brings order, separating light and dark, day and night, sea and land, and creates each species, orderly, day by day.

The priestly authors, like almost everyone, thought the earth was the center of everything, and the sun and moon and stars all moved in regular patterns across the sky above the flat earth, and they thought the mountains, valleys, rivers, and seas were fixed and unchanging.

But the mountains are not fixed and unchanging; God’s creation is still under construction! As Gail and I have visited some of the extraordinary national parks in this country, we have been impressed how God is still at work. God’s action in creation seems to be a constant cycle of construction and deconstruction, building up and wearing away.

Take The Grand Tetons for example. I wondered “How did God create them?” Nine million years ago the earth’s crust broke along the 40 mile long Teton Fault. Through sporadic movements during the past 9 million years the block on the west rose, hinging upward to become the Teton Range while the eastern block tilted down under the block on the west to form the valley known as Jackson Hole. The sandstone layer now extending more than 6,000 feet into the sky once connected to the layer now 24,000 feet below the valley floor, separating by 30,000 feet in 9 million years, averaging about 0.04 inches/year The mountain is expected to continue to rise and the Valley floor is expected to continue to drop as they have for the past 9 million years. Meanwhile, erosion takes its toll and the rocks will be washed away into the valley, the streams, and the sea. The authors of Genesis viewed the earth as flat and the mountains fixed, rather than growing and diminishing, but it is clear God’s creation is still under construction!

Iowa has been having destructive floods this week. My shirt is from Coralville Iowa, near Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa. In 1866, Louis Agassiz, the French scientist teaching at Harvard had come to give a lecture on glaciers. Some of the geologists from the University of Iowa took him out in the afternoon before his speech to see where a recent flood had washed away top soil and exposed some unusual limestone formations. When he gave his speech that evening he surprised them with a speech about the coral reefs of Iowa, left there from the Devonian era about 400 million years ago! The people of the settlement shortly thereafter adopted Coralville as its name. My T-shirt pictures some of the creatures that lived in that Devonian sea.

As we study the universe we find it is probably more than 13 billion years old expanding and contracting, that our sun has existed for 4.5 billion years, earth, has been around for several billion years. God created the earliest life forms billions of years ago, and they grew and diversified into new life forms which grew and multiplied – which were then practically all eliminated in the Permian extinction about 270 million years ago; and that God then created new life forms that grew and multiplied for two hundred million years until they were nearly all eliminated in the extinction that took place about 67 million years ago ending the era of the dinosaurs Only 0.01 percent of all species that God created still survive on this earth, bombed occasionally by asteroids and pelted regularly 500 times a year by meteorites. Scientists who study rocks, geology, archaeology and the rest will continue to learn more about how God continues the work of creation, building up and tearing down, but the frame for all that we have learned and will continue to learn is that the world and all the universes that are, are God’s, and it is still under construction! Seeing the world and ourselves from that perspective makes all the difference in the world.

Something else we learn from this passage: We are created in God’s image.

What does this mean, to be created in God’s image? It can’t be physical, because God is not physical. God is Spirit, infinite, eternal, holiness, goodness, and truth. What does it mean to be created to reflect the image of God’s spirit, God’s breath, the source of life, God’s spirit? We reflect God’s Spirit and bear the fruits of the Spirit, compassion, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness (Gal 5:22).

“What gives humans value is not our physical substance, not even our superior three pound brains, or vocal chords, or communication abilities, but our relationship to God. What does it means to be created in God’s image? It can be seen in Jesus as in the likeness of God. Not that God has hands, feet, nose, or the physical features of a 1^st century Jewish man, but that Jesus spirit exudes God’s spirit. What does it mean to be a real whole human being, created in God’s image? - look to Jesus.

God isn’t finished with us yet - you and I are still under construction!

This view changes everything. From the perspective of faith, the very way we see the world is itself transformed.

There is much more we can take away from this passage, but the final Message I want to mention is this: We are accountable – as Stewards (1:28) “And God said …have dominion over the fish of the sea and birds of the air and over every living creature that moves upon the earth”. And so God puts us in charge as God’s stewards, as tenant farmers of Creation, which is the context of our discussions on ecology.

Wendell Berry, in his novel Jayber Crow, describes Althey, who had a 500 acre farm. Althey was a careful manager of the 500 acres which was able to sustain him and his family. “Althey was not exactly, or not only, a “land owner”. He was the farms farmer, but also its creature and belonging. He lived its life, and it lived his. He knew that of the two lives his was meant to be the smaller and shorter. Troy, his son-in-law, who would come to inherit the land, had no idea, not a suspicion. He thought the farm existed to serve and enlarge him”.

For me that says it all. God places us on earth and holds us accountable as stewards, as temporary tenants of God’s creation. Creation has a life and we have a life, and ours in the shorter.

How does one hold onto this message in the midst of all the struggles of life?

You have this truth that it is God’s world. Each day build on that truth. On bad days stuff happens to the life you building, and you struggle to patch it up. On your worst days you claim the world is yours, and you can do whatever you want, and when you do that the life you are building suffers and crumbles, and then you begin again in repentance to rebuild. But you are still God’s creation, and you are still a child of God, created in God’s image, and God isn’t finished with you yet.

You and I and all God’s creation are still under construction. Amen

Nurturing the Spirit Within; Acts 2:1-18

Pentecost Sunday

Nurturing the Spirit Within: Acts 2:1-18

Reverend Tricia Dillon Thomas

Prayer: Come, Holy Spirit. Come.

It’s called blind contour drawing. It’s an effective training tool for artists to practice discipline by only looking at the object being drawn and not the paper. To practice drawing what they really see, what they might miss if they were otherwise concentrating on the finished project.

It gives the artist the freedom to let go.

When someone asked my friend Casey what it was he was going to paint (in an art class at the conference I was at last week in Montreat), he answered, he didn’t know. Having just heard the words of a hymn to sing later in worship that same night, we were asked to paint a phrase that struck us. That moved us. Casey was just going to put the paint on the cloth and see what happened. I smiled to myself because it was the same way I was painting, and the same way I have engaged my preaching texts for last several years. It’s the way I move beyond the rational and allow myself to really look, to really see what the Spirit is saying. It’s blind contour drawing.

Today’s scripture lesson just happens to be all about the Spirit. About the advocate that Jesus sends to the twelve after he ascends into heaven. It is another birth narrative, the birth of the church. Let us listen now for the word of God.

READ ACTS 2:1-18.

They sat there, in that house in Jerusalem, waiting. Waiting for days. Perhaps praying. Talking to one another about the past 50 or so days and the things God had done. Waiting as Jesus had ordered them. Waiting for “the promise of the father” (1:4). Waiting to be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

And she came.

Like the rush of a violent wind she came.

The storm filling the entire house.

So disruptive was her sound that when those in the city heard,

they had to come and see.

Tongues of fire poured out.

Poured out with God’s abundance.

Like mighty seas that had been let loose, the tongues of fire fell from heaven.

As a young person I always imagined these tongues to be hot and wet, like the divided tongues of a snake, hovering and finally finding their rest on the shoulders of the twelve.

And suddenly, on no merit of their own, but as the Spirit gave them the ability, the disciples began to speak in tongues. This abundant Spirit penetrated the barriers of language and nationality, so the people could hear God’s deeds of power in their own language.

The people around couldn’t believe what they were hearing. The disciples were speaking in ways that people from all over the world could understand what they were saying about all the deeds of God. Some wondered cynically if the disciples weren’t drunk on new wine. Indeed they were filled with something new. A new Spirit.

Like the rush of a violent wind she came. And with the deep groans of labor she bore the church.

The church. That which is the body of Christ.

Listen and hear that.

The church. That which is the body of Christ.

Take that statement, hear that statement in all its truth. If we yearn to see Jesus in this world, all we must do is look to the church because it is Christ’s body. The church that is world wide and surpasses all time. The body of Christ that existed from it’s earliest days and reaches beyond the scope of our lifetime. This is the church that was ignited with the rush of a violent wind.

It is God who created the church we celebrate on this Pentecost Sunday, and it is God who calls people into the church. It is God’s church. And it is God’s will its members are to express. And as members of the body, we are called to do God’s will, to discern how the Holy Spirit is moving us.

If we remember who it is to whom we belong and whose will it is we are called to serve, (1) then I pray as individuals, as a Church, and as the church universal we will allow ourselves to be opened by the spirit and trust and have faith in how we are being called to move, to speak, to act. It is not always easy to know what God is calling the church to say and do.

But what I wonder about most (not only as a pastor, but as a member of the body, and as a mother who is tired, and as an American citizen who is constantly trying to turn a blind eye to the very tempting idols of the secular world) what I wonder about most on this Pentecost Sunday is what am I doing, what are we doing, how are we actively discerning the Spirit in the body of Christ? If we are each part of Christ’s body on this earth, are we living our lives in ways that help us actively engage the Holy Spirit and follow through with how we are being called?

Are our individual lives and our corporate lives being lived in such a way that we are able to reflect on how God is working in the world and how we are being called to participate in that work?

Are we open to the Spirit moving us beyond Sunday worship Christians to everyday disciplined Christians? Are we empowered through the Holy Spirit as the people of God to bring witness to Jesus the Christ?

Listen to what happens later in the chapter as Peter continues to talk to those gathered.

Peter said, "Change your life. Turn to God and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so your sins are forgiven. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is targeted to you and your children, but also to all who are far away—whomever, in fact, our Master God invites."

He went on in this vein for a long time, urging them over and over, "Get out while you can; get out of this sick and stupid culture!"

That day about three thousand took him at his word, were baptized and were signed up. They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.

Everyone around was in awe—all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met.

They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.(2)

Their lives were forever changed. They lived in a new way, they worshiped in a new way, with the rush of a mighty wind they were transformed.

As I mentioned earlier, a couple of weeks ago, I left town to spend some time at Montreat. Even though I was reading scripture nightly and praying daily before I left, I felt detached and alone. I was overburdened and tired, my focus was on the finished piece of work (getting the kids to school, making dinner, doing the tasks of my job, taking care of others, etc), not in the present.

When I got there, I was surprised by the quiet.

I was surprised by how much I just wanted to sit silently and listen without an agenda.

My prayer, as theologian Shirley Guthrie encourages us, was “Come, Spirit. Come.”

My prayers were about listening to God instead of talking to God. The listening and the intentionality brought me peace. And strangely enough, I remember towards the end of the week how when I walked across campus intentionally trying to encounter the Holy Spirit in the present, actually calling on the Holy Spirit to come, I found my legs getting heavy as if I became rooted with creation. It is hard to describe in rational, linear terms.

But when I told Judi Creneti about it, she could almost finish my sentence. She has in fact a collage picturing it. A woman with roots coming from her legs down into the earth. I had surrendered to God in a way I had never before imagined and I think the barriers I had put up to control the Spirit began to fall down when I prayed for the Spirit. Great is the mystery of God. And in all things pertaining to the Holy Spirit, in trying to understand this third person of the Trinity, that which works thru us and in us, I tend to wax poetic. (3)

This Pentecost Sunday is a day to celebrate newness and renewal of purpose, mission, and our calling as God’s people.

And so I bring us back to blind contour drawing.

Have we, like God’s people before us, kept our eyes on what God is doing in the world rather than our finished product?

Are we practicing daily discipline and keeping our eyes on how God is really moving in this world and in our lives? As individuals, participants in Peace Presbyterian church, and members of the body, the church universal, my prayer is that as we pray for the Spirit to come the barriers in our lives will fall to the side and the breath of God will knock us off our feet with the rush of a violent wind.

Amen.

Closing Prayer: Spirit of the living God fall afresh on us.

An exercise in Blind Contour Sculpting:

Our faith is a journey. Most of us started this journey listening to the stories of the Bible, retelling these stories until we began to know them. At some point in our journey we came or we will come to a place Paul Ricoeur calls “Second Naivete.” It’s when we come to recognize the biblical witnesses and our Christian theology are beyond rational reasoning. They are gray places, mysteries, and “Second Naivete” is living into that mystery, being at peace with the mystery. But it doesn’t mean we stop seeking the God’s wisdom and God’s spirit. Some preachers and other artists try to understand the mysteries outside of the logical brain by accessing the right side of our brain. Through art and music. For me, it is in such places where the breeze of the spirit indeed becomes the rush of the mighty wind.

I invite you during this time to look under your chair for a piece of clay. As we hear the music first sung by the choir, then rung by the bells, and finally sung by us, I ask you to pray, “Come, Spirit. Come.” It’s blind contour sculpturing. The point is not to have a finished sculpture, but to use the clay pressed between our fingers as a way to listen to the spirit. Perhaps you’ll be surprised by what you hear. During our singing, when you’re done, I invite you to place your pieces of clay on, around, and under the communion table. The table that reminds us of how the body is called and a table that is a reminder of the kingdom of heaven here on this earth.

If you don’t have Clay…

In the back are places with baby wipes, and trashcans beside you.

Pray with me now. Come, Spirit, come.

(1) Shirley Guthrie, Christian Doctrine (Westminster/John Knox Press: Louisville, 1994).

(2) http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+2&version=MSG

(3) Shirley Guthrie, Christian Doctrine (Westminster/John Knox Press: Louisville, 1994).

Power to be Witnesses

Acts 1:1-11
Ascension/7th Sunday of Easter
Elizabeth M. Deibert

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock, our secure dwelling place.

My earliest childhood memory is of mastering bicycle riding at age 4. I could not even sit on the seat, and there had never been any training wheels. I just took my neighbor’s bicycle into the grass and kept trying and falling, and trying again until I got it. Then I moved to the dirt driveway, and finally to the road. Remember the movie ET, when the bike begins to lift off and fly. That’s how I felt. I was flying! I was empowered. Today is a day of empowerment as we celebrate the Ascension of Christ. He flew away, so we can fly away – to a better place now and at the time of our death. Not an escape as much as an empowerment, a transport to another perspective.

There have been a few moments in my life when I recognized in a unique way that there was a power of the Spirit present beyond that which I could describe. I remember feeling transported to another place as we sang Holy, Holy at the table on the day Peace was chartered as a church. I remember being lifted up by God’s Spirit upon hearing glorious music sung by choirs and congregation at the Worship and Music Conference in Montreat. I remember hearing Rutter’s Requiem directed by him in the Clare College Chapel in Cambridge, England, a year after his choral scholar son had died. I remember feeling strangely empowered, almost an out of body experience, the day I read Romans 8 at my father’s memorial service. And I remember, despite considerable exhaustion and pain from an anesthesia-free delivery , feeling powerful and jubilant at the birth of all four of our children.

Jesus promises power to his disciples, even as they are witnesses to this amazing event – his ascension into heaven, not to the great upstairs room of a two-tiered universe, but to the place beyond what we can see, the realm of God and the angels.

Just as Christ, in the incarnation, takes on our humanity to live our life and die our death, in his resurrection and ascension, Christ takes his body, our humanity into the realm of God and this life of ours will never be the same again. We are empowered to tell this story of our new dwelling with God, to operate out of this majestic truth. To abide in God. The ascension is giving me a new understanding of what it means to dwell with God.

Christ prays in John 17 that we would be one, one with him, as he is one with his Father. By ascending with his human body, he makes us one. Why is Thursday’s Day of Ascension so important? Because it is the final act of the Resurrection.

Hear now the reading of the Ascension story: Acts 1:1-11

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning 2

until the day when he was taken up to heaven,

after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.

3 After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs,

appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

4 While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem,

but to wait there for the promise of the Father. "This," he said,

is what you have heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water,

but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."

6 So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time

when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" 7 He replied,

"It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.

8 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." 9 When he had said this, as they were watching,

he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven,

suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.

11 They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?

This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven,

will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

NRSV

And see and reflect with me now some of the icons and paintings of this story through the generations.

Both icons, which depict Christ beyond us but still with us, pay as much attention to the followers of Christ who remain waiting for Pentecost. There is a profound sense of the sovereignty of our Lord over all the earth. Rembrandt image uses light to communicate the power and majesty of Christ. Dali gives us a more modern sense of the thin membrane between heaven and earth. It is as if Christ is suspended over earth, but not sitting above looking down. Finally we have the early Renaissance Italian Giotti, who captures the communion of the saints, who are all entirely focused on their union with Christ.

The problem with our understanding of Ascension is that we want answers to the wrong questions. We want to know how the Ascension could happen. There are Biblical scholars and theologians today leading us to the wrong questions, encouraging us to find factual evidence for stories that do not call for such historical, critical scrutiny. It “is not our job to take the Bible's mysterious stories and make sense of them, to get rid of the strangeness or the wildness or the unpredictability. If a story is mysterious, then the church needs to practice being mystified, not jump as quickly as possible to some explanation that removes all the shadows as well as the light.” (Catherine Taylor, http://day1.org/513-power_source) It is our job to ask why, not how, regarding the ascension. What is going on, not can we prove it to be fact?

And so, while the disciples are amazed, staring off into the heavens, like those who have just witnessed a miracle, they are not disturbed that their teacher, master, Lord has left them.

The departing Jesus does not make his way to some distant star. He enters in to God’s dominion over space. He has not gone away, but now and forever by God’s own power, he is present with us and for us. His going away is in this sense a coming, a new form of closeness, of continuing presence. Because Jesus is with the Father, he has not gone away but remains close to us. Now he is no longer in one place in the world, as he had been, before the Ascension. Now through his power over space, he is present and accessible to all, throughout history and in every place. (Pope Benedict 16th)

In the Ascension Jesus’ earthly mission is crowned. In this coming back from death and going again , the membrane between heaven and earth is eternally altered. There is now the promise of coming and going in new and exciting movement along the Way. The beginnings of a thoroughfare have been outlined, and Jesus has been the first to travel it. The promise is that many more will travel it in the days ahead, because these same awkward, gaping disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit, will show the Way. (Randle R. “Rick” Mixon)

We celebrate this day to be reminded that we have no power of our own and never have. We have power, given to us for the purpose of our witnessing to the power, the honor, the majesty of God.

There the disciples were, a fragile little community, amazingly enough still confused about Jesus’ mission. They are watching their Lord leave them, but they are not upset, just caught up in wonderment. When it's all over, they're worshipping with joy, we learn in chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel. They witness to us of the power of God. They demonstrate to us that they had no power of their own.

Any power they would ever know would be given to them by the Spirit, and they aren't even told when or how. Someone in the group does ask the practical question--someone in a group always does. He or she asks Jesus, "Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?" It's not a faith question; it's a political question. It's the wrong question to be asking, but Jesus is generous in responding. "God knows. We do not know." Jesus says. "Stop worrying about having things the way you want them and wait for something else, a power that is coming. A gift is on the way. Wait for it." (Catherine Taylor)

How much of our lives do we spend asking the wrong questions, worrying about what we think we need? God is trying to tell us to wait for the power of the Spirit, trust in the timing of the Spirit, and be fulfilled in the unity we now have with Christ taking our humanity into the heart of the God, who is beyond us and with us and in us. In Christ, we are united –body, soul, and spirit, in life and in death – with the God to whom we belong.

Jesus says, in a passage from John 14 so often read at funerals, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling places.” This is now, not just when you die. There are dwelling places for you in God’s house now because of Christ taking your body, soul, and spirit there. “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” This now, not just in the afterlife. By the power of the Spirit of Christ, our way, our truth, our life we are dwelling in the heart of God. Though unseen, it is our true home. When we have those moments of keen awareness of the beauty of God, when we feel transported to another realm, when we experience the thin membrane between heaven and earth, then we are noticing where we really are, and where we will always be, more and more as we grow in union with Christ, at home with God, who loves us.

And it is through an awareness of that secure place, that we can speak faithfully “witness” to the world. The word for witness is martus, from which we get the word, martyr. The early Christians were not afraid to die nor were they afraid to speak the truth they knew of God’s goodness and power, because they knew their dwelling place, their home. The ascension assured them of that because Christ was and is now ever-present drawing all humanity to himself, making us one in the Triune God. When we try to dwell, anywhere else, when we cling to any other power, then we ultimately will be stripped down to weakness. Christ’s power is made perfect in the place of our weakness. That’s why some of the most profound words come from those most weak. Jesus said while dying “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The homeless person reminds us that God will provide. The little girl said while dying, “Mommy and Daddy, do you see the angels?” The weak and dying child had the power to be a witness, and we have the power to be witnesses, because of the Ascension.

Let us pray:

Holy God, as we rejoice in your secure dwelling, may we know

what is the hope to which Christ has called us,

what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints,

19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.