Acts
1:4-11
Easter
7
May
28, 2017
William G. Carter
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; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized
with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’
So when they had
come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore
the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times
or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 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.’ When
he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him
out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards
heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of
Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards 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.’
I
don’t know about you, but if I saw a man fly up into the sky, I would stand
there and watch him too.
It’s
not the sort of thing that you see every day. Back when I was a little kid, I
remember seeing the movie “Thunderball.” James Bond needs to escape from a chateau.
So he straps on a rocket pack and flies up and out, where his car is parked and
a pretty girl was waiting. A rocket pack - that was cool.
Just
imagine Jesus, lifting up, disappearing into the clouds. I think I’d stand
there and watch. Wouldn’t you?
Just
imagine the spectacle of the occasion! Like the church in Tennessee that noticed
the crowds had dropped after Easter. So they announced that they would re-enact
the ascension of Jesus. They put out press releases, invited all the neighbors,
brought in television cameras. On the appointed day, they brought in a crane,
put a vest on their pastor, and yanked him into the air. Everybody looked up!
It was an impressive occasion, one I hope is never repeated..
But
I’m intrigued by the retort of the two men in white robes: “People of Galilee,
why are you standing there, looking up towards heaven? It’s an unusual line, so
unusual that it’s neglected by the Bible commentators. They don’t say anything
about it.
Symbolically,
we can understand what else is going on. Jesus has risen from the dead. Now he
is returning to his Father. Where’s his Father? Up there, somewhere. Isn’t that
what we think about heaven? It’s taller than us, bigger than our understanding,
just out of sight. We can understand the symbolism of Christ being lifted up,
even if none of the cosmonauts saw him when they flew into outer space.
It’s
not just a spatial matter. It’s a description of authority: Christ rules over
the kingdom of God. He watches over us. He reigns over all the nations and
their crazy leaders. That’s very good news. And the Psalms talk that way. Like
Psalm 47, a coronation psalm: “The Lord, the Most High, is awesome, a great
king over all the earth. (47:2).” It does say “over.” Then the psalm says, “God
has gone up with a shout (Psalm 47:5).” We all know what “up” means.
And
as Jesus goes up, it gives an extra emphasis to his final words. He’s not singing,
“I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.” No, his final words are a
promise: “The Spirit will come and give you power to be my witnesses.”
And
as he departs, two men in white robes are suddenly present, just as they were
on Easter Sunday (Luke 24:4). They are standing with their feet firmly on the
ground. And they say, “Why are you looking up?”
I’ve
been giving some thought to that this week. As I’ve reflected on it, there are
at least three reasons why looking up is not always a good idea.
Here’s
the first: if you’re looking up, you might be tempted to think that what’s up there
is better than what’s down here. If this world has problems, maybe you want to
get off of it. There’s no overpopulation on Mars, and if you could go to Mars,
you wouldn’t have to deal with the problems down here.
Now,
I know that sounds fantastic, even a little bit crazy, but there are a lot of
people who think Christian faith is about going to Mars. That faith should be
an escape from all the troubles and travails here on earth. There are some
people who even think that someday the trumpet will blow and all the true
believers will float up into the sky. They believe they will get to escape, and
leave behind all the poor shmoes who aren’t as enlightened as they are.
Biblically
speaking, that’s nonsense. It’s contrary to everything that Jesus says and
does. He speaks truth, he heals the sick, he feeds the hungry – because this
life matters, because these people matter, because this world was created by
his Word and it matters. According to the Gospels, he says, “The kingdom of God
is among you (Luke 17:21).” It’s not up there, but down here, in our midst,
waiting to be found. And there’s no escaping the hard work of being a servant
to others in the name of Jesus.
Besides,
down here on the ground is where the action is. The heavenly witnesses in white
can tell us that. We don’t get to escape by going up. Rather, God is coming
down here in Jesus Christ. He came down once, and the witnesses say one day he
will come down again. So there’s no escaping this planet while there is Christian
work to be done.
There’s
a small cemetery over on Lily Lake Road in Dalton. One day I was over there for
a graveside service. After finishing the prayer and giving the blessing, my
friend Bud, the funeral director, said, “Come here, I want to show you
something.” We walked a little bit, and then he pointed to a blue headstone
shaped to look like the Starship Enterprise. Apparently the deceased was a
Trekkie. According to Bud, his final words were, “Beam me up Scotty, there’s no
intelligent life down here.”
I
guess you can live that way, but it’s not really living. It’s escaping.
Here’s
the second problem with looking up: it entices you to believe that the only
power in the universe is trickle-down power.
Now
certainly, God is greater than we are. There is nobody here who is qualified to
create a solar system, nobody here with the power to create a new species.
Those abilities are above our pay grade. We pray, in no small part, because we
wish to be in communion with the Holy God who can do all things.
But
here’s the problem. That Holy God has often been represented by a kind of vertical
theology. God is way up there, and we are way down here. God is holy and beyond
our comprehension, and we are thoughtless worms who don’t know very much at
all.
Diana
Butler Bass describes this as an “elevator theology.” God hands down words of
instruction to the clergy, who hand down the heavenly wisdom to the rest of us.
The clergy, she says, are professional elevator operators. They go to professional
elevator operator school, they learn the right terminology, they learn how to
splash baptismal water and dispense bread and wine as gifts that have descended
from the elevator. And if people follow their instructions, they could ride the
elevator up to heaven when they die.[1]
Her research as a church historian suggests that this vision
is outdated. We have different understandings of science, technology, and
politics that are not top-down. Communication doesn’t only come down through
news authorities; a single tweet will ricochet sideways (even if you don’t know
what a tweet is). She says people are increasingly seeing God as part of the
web or ecosystem humans inhabit rather than as part of a vertical structure.
That is, God is not in some faraway place but much closer to us.
I think she’s right about that. The future of religious
communities will not come from reaching toward the heavens, but recovering the
mystical reality at the heart of our faith. What’s this mystical reality? It’s looking
for the work of God among us. It’s the prayerful perceiving of God in the middle
of our lives, in the middle of our struggles, even in the middle of our pain. It’s
what the adults on mission trips or kids at Camp Lackawanna call “the God
moments.”
It’s making a move from thinking God is detached and
indifferent (high and lofty), or worse, thinking God is always ready to spring
a trap on us and say “gotcha” (holy and angry), to asking, “God, what are you
doing right here? What do you wish to do in my life?” It’s a different set of
questions, not seeking top-down answers, but welcoming God’s holy presence.
And
that leads me to the third problem with always looking up: if you’re always
looking up, you miss what’s going on all around us.
This
week, in the aftermath of that terrorist attack at the Manchester concert in England,
somebody remembered some wisdom from, of all people, Mister Rogers. You might
know that Fred Rogers was not only had an Emmy award-winning show for children.
He was a Presbyterian minister, and a rather remarkable human being.
So
here’s what he said. "When something terrible happened, a tragedy like an
earthquake or a hurricane or something really awful, I would wonder where God
was. Where is God? My mother used to say, "Look for the helpers. There will always be helpers, even if they
are on the sidelines. That's where God is.”
Fred
said, “To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s
words, and I am always comforted by realizing there are still so many caring
people in this world. If you look for the helpers, you will know there is hope.[2]
And
if you’re only looking up at the sky, shaking your fist, and saying, ‘Why aren’t
you doing something?” you are probably missing what God is already doing.
So
we don’t look up to escape. And we don’t look up in the hope that God might
dribble down a little grace if we’re good enough. We look around here, and pay
attention, asking to see afresh that Christ is alive and working among us,
around us, and through us.
And
when we see him, or when we perceive where he is and what he is doing, we will
have something to say to the world. We will be his witnesses. You and I – we’ll
have something to say.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] See her recent book, Grounded: Finding God in the World. Or
watch her at https://youtu.be/tHFsK0BNz7Y?t=13m37s
[2] See, for instance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LGHtc_D328
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