The following sermon was preached on Sunday May 21, 2023 at St George’s Transcona. You can learn more about St George’s and find links to their YouTube channel by clicking here. Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash (When I was looking for an appropriate photo I found this and it made me snort laugh, I hope it does the same for you.)
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight O God, for you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
This past Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension.
For those of you who might need a brief refresher, the story of Jesus’ ascension is found at the beginning of the book of Acts. Jesus has been resurrected and reunited with his disciples and has spent forty days with them. I find it hard to believe, but this past Thursday was 40 days after Easter. This is why the church celebrates Ascension Day on a Thursday, not a Sunday.
That seems pretty logical to me, well thought out, even though it means that a lot of churches either don’t celebrate the ascension at all, or they just move it to the nearest Sunday out of convenience.
Today we have a reading from Acts that tells the story of Jesus’ ascension, and a gospel reading that takes place just before the crucifixion.
Let’s start with our reading from Acts. Jesus has been with his disciples for forty days and now they ask him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
The text doesn’t say this, but I wonder if Jesus’ heart sank as he realized they still didn’t understand. Did he feel like a failure? Did he wonder if he should hang around a bit longer and try to explain everyone one more time?
Because it seems to me that every time Jesus tries to explain what he is planning to accomplish, the disciples listen, nod their heads and then go right back to their original paradigm. “That’s all really cool Jesus, but now we’re going to take back our kingdom, right?”
We can only guess what Jesus is feeling based on what he says which is something like, “Stop obsessing over dates and times, that’s God’s job, not yours,” and “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.” (8)
And then, we are told, “he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” (9)
Jesus disappears and now all the disciples are staring up into the sky unable to believe what has just happened. Then two men in white robes appear and ask, “what are you doing staring up into the sky?”
I imagine it was actually a terrifying and confusing moment to experience, but as a reader, I find it hilarious to imagine all these men with shocked looks on their faces , mouths hanging open staring up into an empty sky, and then, startled by the question from the men in white, trying to explain what they’ve just experienced.
We know that gradually the disciples did begin to make sense of all of these experiences, but it didn’t happen right away.
And that may be in part because of all the ways their lives keep changing over a short period of time. Constant change is exhausting, disorienting, disheartening. We don’t tend to do our best thinking in those sorts of circumstances.
From the time they first met Jesus they began to develop a set of expectations – we see an example of those expectations in their question to Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Those expectations were dashed when Jesus was crucified. Jesus was dead and before they could even really wrap their head around that reality, Jesus was alive again. And through the next 40 days they began to hope again, began to imagine a future with Jesus again, and then, in a moment, he’s gone… again.
The disciples had developed a sense of what it meant to be a follower of a physically present Jesus, but they did not yet understand what it would mean to follow Jesus without actually being physically present with Jesus.
It was possible that the whole movement would fall apart at that moment, but it didn’t. In fact, as they begin to figure out what it means to follow Jesus Christ without the physical presence of Jesus Christ the movement strengthens and grows rapidly.
When he was physically present with them, Jesus kept trying to explain things to his followers and they kept missing the point. It was only after he ascended that they began to reflect on all the things he had said and began to make sense of them.
I wonder why they didn’t do that work when Jesus was present but I suspect that oftentimes, we avoid difficult questions until we have no choice but to answer them.
It’s really common to avoid tough questions when we’re feeling comfortable or to avoid tough questions that might make us feel uncomfortable, but that short term gain of comfort in the moment can often lead to long term pain.
It’s a very human thing, but oftentimes when the disciples listen to Jesus they hear what they want to hear, they hear what they are comfortable hearing. And they didn’t want to hear that Jesus was going to leave them again. So when he does, they are sad and confused. And after he leaves, they have to do the hard word of thinking back and realizing that Jesus has been saying this would happen all along.
I wonder how many of them thought, “If only I had really listened to Jesus when he was here I would have asked him so many questions!” Or, “If only I had listened to Jesus when he was here I would have understood what was happening and spared myself so much confusion and suffering.”
So that was Thursday and today is Sunday and the lectionary gives us this story and then jumps back to an event that happens before the crucifixion.
Sometimes I read scripture silently and sometimes I read it out loud. When I read this week’s gospel reading out loud I noticed something new.
John’s writing style is very different from say Mark’s. John’s writing style is particularly difficult to read aloud – if he’d invited me to edit his gospel I would have said, “John, you are way too wordy. Try to say what you mean in a single sentence, instead of repeating it with only slight variations over three or four sentences.”
But he did not ask me.
And it seems that the creators of our lectionary also thought John could use an editor because they made the rather unusual choice to end our reading less than halfway through Jesus’ prayer. I wonder if they looked at the second half of the prayer and thought “this is all rather repetitive. Let’s just end it partway through.”
The prayer is 25 verses long, but our reading ends at verse 11.
Chapters 14-17 of John’s gospel are known as Jesus’ farewell discourse. In these chapters we see Jesus spending time with his disciples trying to prepare them for his death.
Which is no easy task.
In one of my favourite scenes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, two characters are talking about the death of their mothers. One character asks the other, “Was it sudden?” And the response is, “No, and yes. It’s always sudden.”
Death, even one you think you are prepared for, is always sudden.
But Jesus is trying to prepare them. He is doing his best to make sure they have everything they need to walk through the dark and confusing times they are about to encounter.
And as part of that process, Jesus prays.
Jesus was a person of prayer and so it’s only natural that he would end these discourses with prayer. This prayer is, as prayer always is, a conversation between the pray-er and God.
But Jesus is also aware that he has an audience and so this prayer works on two levels – as a conversation with God, and as good news for the disciples.
Later, when they begin to think back on this time and remember what Jesus told them, they would also remember the words of this prayer. A prayer that says things like, “They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” (6)
In dark moments, when they begin to doubt, they can remember Jesus’s affirmation that they belong to God and have been faithful to God.
This idea repeats throughout the prayer, the disciples belong to God.
God didn’t really need this reminder, but how comforting this repeated idea must have been for the disciples in moments of dark and doubt. May it be a comfort to us as well – we are God’s people too. We belong to God.
I said earlier that this prayer is repetitive, but I actually think that is part of its brilliance – so it’s a good thing I wasn’t this gospel’s editor! In its repetitiveness it begins to take on the cadence of a chant or a mantra or a Taizé song.
There are some things we need to be told more than once – especially during hard times. I need to be told over and over and over again that I belong, that I matter, that I am loved.
And this is what Jesus does, he says the same thing, with only slight variations over and over again – you belong to God.
I’d encourage you to read the entire chapter this week, read it as a prayer, read it more than once.
The entire prayer ends, “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (26)
This is my prayer for all of us this week. May each one of us know that we are loved by God, and may that love pour out of each one of us throughout the coming week.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.