Not alone. May 29, 2022. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

 

Ascension Sunday

Acts 1:1-11

Today we celebrate the Ascension of Christ - technically, in the church calendar, the Ascension was on Thursday, 40 days after Jesus’ resurrection, however we are given the liberty to celebrate it the following Sunday. So that’s what we are doing. But there are a few things that make celebrating Jesus’ Ascension a little challenging. For one, it's just plain hard to imagine. Like did Jesus just start gently levitating in the midst of conversing with the disciples? Or did he shoot off like a superhero? Then there’s the part about where did he go? Heaven isn't literally in the clouds. So what's the point of him being carried up if he wasn't going up to a physical location? But the biggest issue is why do we celebrate him leaving us? Wouldn't it be better to have him here on earth where we could touch him and hear his actual voice? Where he could lay his hands on us and our loved ones when we were sick. Where he could be our true teacher and we wouldn't need to deal with different people's interpretations of what he said. I mean, how many of us have desperately cried out from the depths of our hearts, “Come Lord Jesus”? His departure doesn't necessarily feel like good news.

But if I may, I’d like to just set aside the rather silly image of Jesus rocketing up to heaven because the logistics of how that happened doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the  deeper meaning and message that Jesus gives us before he ascends. And that message is, “Unless I go, the Spirit can't come.” Jesus must go. He must leave this earthly plane in order for the Holy Spirit to come more fully into our world.

Because there is a connection between absence and presence. I'm sure we're all familiar with the saying “Absence makes the heart grow fonder." And it's true. We have to experience, to some degree,  the absence of something or someone in our lives in order to have a desire for their presence, to appreciate their presence. One of the amazing things about human beings is our ability to adapt. And science actually tells us that we are especially skilled at quickly adapting to the good things in our lives. It takes longer to adapt to things we deem as bad, but even so we eventually do that too. Yet one of the downsides of our adaptability is that we easily get so used to the good people and the good things that fill our lives. So used to them that we take them for granted to the point where we stop noticing the good and start to only see the bad. I mean, how many times do the people that we most love in our lives are the ones that get on our nerves? Oftentimes it takes some distance, some degree of absence to shake us up a bit in order to become more aware and grateful of presence.

Absence helps us to receive presence. For it’s when we feel incomplete. When we don't have all that we want. When we long for someone or something - peace, comfort, joy, justice, God in our lives, it is that incompleteness, that longing that makes room in us to perceive what we actually already have. Because that's where we really struggle, in the perceiving of the truth, the reality of the presence that already is. And we touched upon this in our opening prayer, what we call The Collect, that we might have the faith to perceive - to perceive that the Ascension means that Jesus is no longer limited to one place and one time like we are. Rather because Jesus, in both body and spirit, entered into the heavenly realm he is now able to be present with us in a way that is new and, as our collect puts it, “fills all things.” Now there is a holy union of spirit and matter. Everything, all of creation, is joined with the divine. At Christmas we proclaimed that God is with us but now it goes even deeper than that. God’s Spirit is not only with us but within us and all of creation filling us with peace, power, and presence. Even in the midst of the most dire of circumstances.

Like the ones that have made the news in the last few months. I don’t know about you, but the world seems particularly heavy to me. We’ve been dealing with a pandemic for years. Then in February Russia invaded Ukraine and we were flooded with new reports of so much suffering, death, and devastation. Then two weeks ago Saturday there was the racially motivated mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket. Ten people killed, three wounded, and countless traumatized. Who knew that just a handful of days later, on Tuesday, there would be more tragedy with the senseless killing of nineteen children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas. We have been bombarded with stories of so much pain. And then, of course, there’s the “regular” suffering that happens everyday which doesn’t make the news.

What are we to do with all of that? There are no easy answers. And yet, as people of faith, people who believe in a good and loving God revealed in Jesus the Christ, we know that such suffering is not the end of the story. And that even in the darkest parts of our collective human story, God is somehow there. Because Jesus truly fills all things - there is no place, no circumstance that is too much for God. And we know that Jesus’ life on this earth wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows. He knew pain, he experienced grief, he went through death. And he even knew something that is likely worse than death, what it’s like to feel completely forsaken. Jesus was no stranger to the horrors of life. And it is this Jesus, this holy union of God and humanity, who fills all things - everywhere, for all time. Which means that the people who have lost their lives in Ukraine, in Buffalo, in Uvalde - they were not alone. Christ was present. Those who are left to weep this very day over those tragedies - they are not alone. Christ is present. And as we live our lives in the days to come - we are not alone. Christ is present.

Even as we despair over recent tragedies and deeply feel the absence of what is good and right and just, darkness has not overcome the light. This world of ours is still infused with the divine. We are not alone. Christ is present - filling all things. With God’s help, may we have the faith to perceive that. To trust that God's spirit continues to be at work to heal, to hold, to renew. And to allow that spirit that dwells in us to use us in that healing, that holding, that renewing work. We may not be able to change the world at large, but we can pray, we can act, we can live in ways that witness to the reality that everyone one and everything in this world is sacred because God in Christ fills all things. And come what may, the power of God’s hope, God’s love, God’s presence will ultimately prevail.