- THE
POWER SOURCE
- Acts 1:
1-11 ●
Luke 24: 44-53
- May
20, 2007, Ascension Sunday
- When
Ascension Day comes around on the church calendar each year, when
it’s not on a Sunday, it’s very tempting to slide right by it, for it
was last Thursday and its scripture readings of the story of Jesus
rising into heaven.
- Some years
we’ve had other emphases such as confirmation or graduation and so
Jesus didn’t ascend to heaven in that congregation. This Ascension
business is tricky… a little spooky.
- Every so
often, Newsweek or Time will run special features on the
“historical Jesus”.
- There’s a
lot of interest in trying to use methods historians use rather than
religious scholarship, to see if the “Real” Jesus can somehow be
discovered.
- What
prompts these outbursts of academic effort is stories like the
Ascension we just read this morning. Stories that are just too
outrageous for educated, modern, cause-and-effect folks like us to
take very seriously.
- According
to some of the people who are intent on recovering the “historical
Jesus”, the church is encrusted with outdated, pre-scientific-age
gunk. We need a little shot of historical research to be refreshed and
renewed. They will be quick to tell you that Ascension never happened.
It was a story, they’ll say, that the church made up, based on earlier
stories in the Hebrew Scriptures of prophets ascending into the
clouds. If you had been there with your camera phone with the
disciples on that day, there would have been nothing to record, no
feet of Jesus getting ever smaller as they rose away into the cloud in
the sky.
- Well, fine.
I have an undergraduate degree in sociology and history myself, and
the History Channel shows are mighty good ones to watch from
time-to-time. Give me a good documentary and some pretzel/almond mix
and I’m happy. But that’s in my living room, not in the pulpit. It’s
not a preacher’s 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 or to clear the confusion of comprehension.
- 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.
- We are not
going to spend any time this morning wondering about the “HOW” of the
Ascension…. whether Jesus rose into the sky like a helium balloon.
Neither am I interested in the “WHY” of the Ascension… although there
is a stack of theology about it that is both interesting, useful.
- Instead,
we’re going to look at a different gift in the story. and to receive
the gift, we have to think about the story with new eyes.
- Have you
heard the tale about the two coyotes told by the Nez Perce Indians?
Two coyotes went up the river and they came to a big ledge. From there
they saw people living below near the river.
- The two
said to each other, “You go ahead.”
- “No, you
go.” And for a long time they argued.
- Then one
said, “You go first. They will see you, and they will say, ‘The
coyote is going on the trail.’”
- “I’m not
a coyote,” the second coyote said.
- “But
you’re the same as I am,” the first coyote said.
- “We’re
the same in every way, and we’re both coyotes.”
- “No,”
the second coyote said. And they argued.
- Then the
second coyote said, “You go first.”
- They were
on a ridge that the people below could see. So the first coyote
walked on.
- He went
over the small ridge, and the people below said to each other,
“That coyote is going upstream.”
- And they
came out and watched the coyote going.
- “See,”
the first coyote called back to his friend, “What did they say?”
- “They
called me ‘coyote’. You come too. And they’re going to say the same
to you. You are a coyote.”
- “They
won’t,” said the second coyote. “But all right, I’ll go.”
- And he
slowly started walking on the trail.
- When the
people saw the second coyote, they said, “Ah, another one.”
- “See,”
said the second coyote.
- “I’m not
a coyote. I’m ‘another one.’”
- Like the
story of the two coyotes, the story of Jesus’ Ascension contains
things we will only see if we stop assuming - like the historians –
that we know what we’re going to find.
- We don’t
celebrate the Ascension because it’s forty-something days after Easter
and that’s what the church is supposed to do.
- We don’t
celebrate the Ascension because the creed says Jesus rose into heaven
to sit on the right hand of God, although a coyote is a coyote.
- We
celebrate the Ascension because we’re no different from the early
church who gathered around this story from the beginning to hear what
they needed – the news that they were going to receive power.
And perhaps even more importantly, we celebrate this day to be
reminded that we have no power of our own and never have.
- There the
disciples were, a fragile little band of followers, a fledgling
community, anxious and bewildered, watching their Lord and teacher
leave them. But did you notice in the reading? They are not distraught
and sad. When it’s all over, they’re worshipping with joy! They had an
advantage over us. They knew 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 question you ask when your candidate comes out on top and you
want to know when the platform is going to be implemented.
- It’s the
wrong question to be asking, but it’s always all right with Jesus to
ask the wrong question.
- “God
knows the answer, but we don’t get to,” 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.”
- We live in
an era and in a nation which is deluded by the notion that everything
is up to us. To join a church is to stand up and heckle that
idea. Maybe Ascension Day is the perfect day to welcome new members
into a congregation. Whenever people gather around a baptismal font,
they publicly proclaim that they rely on a power beyond themselves,
that they believe in God whose love and strength sustains them in all
things.
- In the
Manual on Ministry in the UCC and the Book of Order in the
Presbyterian Church are these words:
- All
ministry in the church is a gift from Jesus Christ. Members and
officers alike are under the mandate of Christ, who is the chief
minister of all. Jesus’ ministry is the basis of all ministries, the
ministry of One who came not to be served but to serve.”
- There’s a
story about a couple who came to see the pastor with regard to
possibly joining the church. He was so excited about it until he felt
the conversation turn into an interview. The couple wanted to know
just what First ______ Church was going to do for them and for their
children. The pastor brought them to sudden silence by asking,
- “What are
you planning to do for First ______ Church?”
- Soon they
left, never to be seen again.
- All
ministry, including church membership, is a gift from Jesus Christ.
- Without the
gift, without the empowering Spirit that Jesus promised to the
disciples at his Ascension, we can do nothing. We can make no claim.
And nothing that we try to do that is all our idea and not God’s can
finally prosper in the end.
- Oh, sure,
our projects can certainly go a long way before they finally fade. A
program or ministry or piece of polity that is our doing and not the
Spirit’s can look very successful and gain support.
- But if
something is not a work of the Spirit, it will die when our power or
energy to make it happen dies. The work of the Spirit, on the other
hand, never comes to an end. God will accomplish what God sets out to
do and will make use of us and our witness along the way.
- Ascension
Day is the day to remember that it’s the Spirit at work in the church
that makes all manner of impossible things possible – things a good
deal more mystifying than Jesus rising into the air. Things like the
woman who knew she couldn’t face it when her husband became
critically and terminally ill, who woke each morning for months
wanting to fall apart and disappear. But she didn’t. She survived and
met what came each day. And not only that, when she looks back, she
knows she didn’t do it alone because facing her husband’s death was
not something she could possibly have done.
- By the
power of the Spirit of God, a man who had been addicted for more than
half his years stopped and stayed drug-free. When people asked him how
he did it the first thing he says is he didn’t.
- By the
power of the Spirit of God, a Mexican priest took communion to the
people of a town whose church was overrun with soldiers. They shot at
anyone who came near, but the priest came forward to enter the
church. They shot at the ground around his feet, and overcome with
fear, he started to leave, but then stopped, came back again, and
moved forward while the town watched.
- His
courage, which was not his alone, inspired others to fall in step
beside him until there was a collection of unarmed people moving
toward the church. The startled soldiers no longer had the will to do
them harm- so great was the complete helplessness of the power that
was evident among them.
- So the
soldiers stood aside and the people shared the communion of our Lord,
something that moments earlier had been impossible made possible by
the power of God alone. Amen.
- Prayer
- Gift-giving
God, by the power of your Holy Spirit, open our minds to the mystery
of faith and the liberating word that the Gospel is still moving out
through the simplest actions of people no different from us. We give
you thanks for the story of Jesus’ Ascension and the freeing awareness
that we can rely on a power beyond our own.
- Send your
blessing, we pray, on the Church universal, where our questions find
welcome, where they is light for our darkness, and hope for things
that would indeed b impossible if we had only ourselves on which to
rely.
- Amen.
-
- Source:
Catherine Taylor, Church of the New Covenant , Doraville, GA sermon,
June 1, 2003
An
Interpretation