Ascension
Acts 1:15-17, 20a, 20c-26 | 1 John 4:11-16 | John 17:11b-19

Gladden us with holy joys, almighty God, and make us rejoice with devout thanksgiving for the ascension of Christ your Son is our exaltation, and where the head  has gone before in glory, the body is called to follow in hope.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

Today we’re celebrating the Feast of the Ascension.  It’s the end, in a sense, of the physical presence of God in Jesus in this world, and the thing about it that I like so much is it focuses on that period of time after Jesus died.  So often we think that’s the end of the story.  Jesus died.  The disciples went off and preached this great teaching of forgiveness and love.  But it’s really a story about a group of human beings who lived in this world with Jesus for three years, and let’s focus primarily on the disciples, the apostles, rather, I guess.  But they were men, just like you and me and like all women, and they really had a hard time grasping the fullness of this mysterious thing called the kingdom of God that Jesus came to establish.  And the thing that’s so fascinating to me about the initial beginnings of this experience of this kingdom finding its beginnings, its seed form in the world came through the gospels and the story of Jesus making clear to us who God really is, the compassionate, loving, forgiving, healing God that we believe in. 

Never have you seen God so clearly represented than in this person, Jesus, but the issue was they didn’t understand it.  They didn’t get it.  It’s so clear that, when he went through the final stage of his life before his resurrection, it left these men just completely bewildered, frightened, locked in a room, not understanding much, and in a way, they must have doubted that Jesus was who he said he was, the one who would restore Jerusalem, bring everything back to making it what it should be.  And then he appears, and the thing about those post-resurrection appearances for 40 days, they were such a clear confirmation that Jesus was who he said he was.  They believed he was the Son of God, the one who speaks the truth.  Now, think about that.  It’s interesting.  In the first reading, we learn something about this whole issue.  If you’re going to enter into the kingdom of God, as he invites us to come into it, he’s going to explain what it is.  Unless you believe in Jesus being the one whose explanation is really the truth, unless you believe that, you’ll be condemned to a life that is not as full or rich.  I love that image in the reading, because when I first read it in the first reading, it’s like, oh, it means if you’re not belonging to a Christian religion or something, you’re going to be condemned.  No, it’s not that.  It’s simply saying that, if you believe in Jesus and he is the one who reveals the truth of who you are and who God is and what we’re here to do together — if you don’t believe in that, you will be condemned to a life that is less joyous, less full, less wonderful and less effective in terms of why we’re here.

So we see this moment in the disciples’ life, the moment in the church where we have human beings absolutely certain that this is the truth that is coming through this God/man Jesus, and we’re going to listen to it, and we’re going to see what it is and understand it.  And he presents it as a promise.  “This is what I promise you.  God, as he is in me —,” Jesus is saying this.  “God, as he is in me — you are going to be able to be like I am, a human being fully human, also filled with divinity.”  Now, I’m not saying we become gods as Jesus was God, but that union between divinity and humanity in Jesus was so intense, so complete that we’re not going to have that, but we have something so like it, as effective, in some ways, as it was.  This promise of the kingdom is based on an event that was going to happen after Jesus returned to the Father after 40 days of making clear what the kingdom of God is.  He’s saying, “You’re going to be filled in a moment.  Call it baptism.  Call it Pentecost.  You’re going to be filled with this incredible gift called God’s presence.”  That’s the promise, and that is given to every believer, every human being.  So we’re in this world, challenged to be witnesses of the same thing that Jesus came to witness.

Now, what it seems to me that happened in my life and maybe in yours, I transferred all that responsibility over to the church.  The church does that work.  The church is commissioned by being the teacher, the preacher.  So the teaching and preaching is where — you go to church to get it, and then you get it, and then you try to live it.  And the shadow of that system also has another kind of side to it that’s a temptation of all religion where, if you’re in a position of great authority, you can start telling people what to do, and so control is always going to be the shadow of the institutional church.  But she, the church, is not the sole presenter to the world of the in-dwelling presence of God.  It is every single person who understands it and believes it, and we become the witnesses.  We become the ones that make the work happen, the laity.  That’s one thing interesting about Vatican II that happened, gosh, over 50 years ago, and it said so clearly the church is not the hierarchy.  The hierarchy is there to teach, to serve, to awaken in laity the role that the church has, and the laity is going to carry it out.  The laity is going to be living this truth in the midst of other people, and that’s how the kingdom is going to happen.  That’s what’s going to change the world.  And what is going to change?  How’s it going to change? 

Well, something really dawned on me when I was working on this feast this year.  It’s like, okay, we’re here to establish the kingdom of God.  It’s joyous.  It’s wonderful.  It’s filled with wonder and awe and fullness.  And then I look at the world, and the world seems to not be so wonderful and not so full of goodness and corrupt and a mess.  And so I’m thinking, “Wait a minute.  If the kingdom of God is going, as a goal, to create a world that is perfect, then it’s not doing very well.”  So if it’s not here to create a better world, what’s it here to create?  What’s the kingdom for?  What’s it doing?  Well, the kingdom, it seems to me, is not about saving the world and making it a perfect place but saving human beings from the illusions that keep them from being who they’re intended to be.  The world is not the concern of God, but the concern of God is the humans who live for a period of time in their existence in this world and how they deal with it and how it deals with them.  That’s the context of this thing called the kingdom of God.  That shifts a lot for me, especially when it talks about what it is when Jesus is describing it to his disciples.  What’s it going to be like when you live in the kingdom of God?  How will you act?  How will you function?  Well, it’s kind of scary and kind of weird.  It says, “Well, this is what’s going to happen.  You’re going to be strong, and you’re going to be able to drive out demons.  And you’ll speak new languages, and you can pick up serpents with your hands.  And if you drink anything deadly, it’s not going to harm you, and wherever you lay your hands, when you lay your hands on the sick, they will recover.”  And so how do we interpret that?  If that’s the job that you and I have as a believer, God living in you, you living in him, and he’s going to be able to make these things happen, how do we discover what that really means? 

Well, let me start with the idea of driving out demons.  If we’re here in the world to drive out demons, why are demons still here?  What does it mean to drive out a demon?  Does it mean to destroy it, get rid of demons?  No.  Demons are supposed to be here.  It’s pretty clear.  If God wanted no demons, there would be no demons.  Demons have a role, but they’re dangerous.  What’s their danger?  Demons pose as non-demons.  Demons become, in people’s minds, something that’s logical, practical and beneficial, and they use people and abuse people, and they think this is a good thing.  So when you drive out demons, you’re not driving evil out of the world.  What you’re doing is exposing demons for what they are.  That’s different.  Think about it.  Being in the world as a witness to this truth that is God living in you, living in me and exercising this power and knowing that demons can destroy people, most especially when they pose as something else.  What a great job or what a great occupation it is or privilege it is to be able to expose that, and you have the power to do that.

Y’all can speak new languages.  What does that mean?  There’s a way to speak to the mind, and it’s logical.  And that’s the way most people speak, but there’s another way to speak.  It’s speaking to the heart, and it’s speaking a world that is mystical and mysterious.  And somehow we lose a sense of that.  The world of angels, the world of the dead, the world of all these spiritual creatures floating around, we need to talk about that.  We need to be able to express that with people, and so there’s something about being a witness to this incredible gift of a new kingdom that God has established for us, a kingdom that transforms us.  Then we’re able to speak about it, talk about it.

And we’ll be able to pick up serpents.  Well, serpents are evil, aren’t they?  Well, not really.  If you look at the image of serpents throughout history, and it’s even true in the Bible, you’ll see that the serpent is often a sign of healing.  Remember when the serpent was held up by Moses on a stick to heal everybody of the poison that they had.  So if you look at a serpent as the archetypal sign it carries throughout history of human beings, it’s an image of awakening, of new life.  You’ll be able to deal with that.  You’ll be able to be in the business of awakening people to something that was hidden.  It’s another way of talking about the healing, but in the sense when you lay hands — whoever you touch and you lay hands on them and they’ll be healed, that’s a different kind of transfer of power from you, the divine power of you going into someone.  One is a direct way of touching them, and the resonance moves from you to them.  But the other one is more interesting.  It’s more etheric.  It’s somehow witnessing a reality by what you’re doing, the work you’re doing, that’s based on something that is way beyond our own human power.  So to be able to be one who enlightens others, you are sharing the enlightenment that you’ve already accepted. 

I don’t think you can share anything that God is creating you to share unless you are engaged in it, and the witnessing is not talking about it but being somebody that is doing it.  When people see you doing the work of healing, awakening people, of speaking to the heart, of exposing demons, you’re the church.  You’re everything religion needs to be, wants to be by just being that in the world, and the world is not going to be ever perfect.  Sometimes isn’t it a shame?  We think, “Oh, if our family is not just the healthiest family, then it’s valueless.”  No, the unhealthy part of every family is there for the people in the family so that they can grow and change.  The church is imperfect.  It’s filled with corruption, all that stuff.  Well, maybe it is at times.  It’s there, but maybe that’s because dealing with that kind of imperfection in humanity, in all of its positions and places where authority is, to see it as not perfect is a real powerful image of what it means to be in this kingdom.  Why is the kingdom based on this thing about healing, exposing demons, and bringing somehow light into darkness?  That’s the work that we go through in order to be transformed.  The earth, the world is always going to have that kind of evil in it, until the end of time, but what a shame.  We worry about our own interior life.  We’re not yet whole.  We’re not full.  No, we’re never going to be whole and full and perfect.  We’re always going to be struggling against the inner demon, the inner problems, and if we expect that in ourselves, which we do, we’re going to end up with shame.  If we expect it in the church, we’re going to end up with alienation and rejection of something it has within its great powers.  We’re going to lose the kingdom, and that’s not what we’re here for.  We’re here to witness it, engage in it, be it, and witness it by being someone who sees and understands the beauty of the ordinariness and even the imperfection of it all  What a gift.  What a promise.  What a life. 

Father, your power, your ability to transform us into the wholeness that you’ve intended us to have is beyond our imagining, and yet you share it with us. You tell us that we can participate in it, not being the cause of it but by being someone who brings it through our own intention, our own transformation work. We witness it to one another. Bless us in this work. Build in us confidence into being able to accomplish it and the joy that comes from knowing that we are bringing life to those we love, and we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.