Today
we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension.
We
celebrate Christ coming at Christmas,
but what are we to make of his
departure?
What
do we make of our Lord flying off and leaving us behind?
John
is a funny gospel because it doesn’t always tell the Jesus story.
The
other gospels had already done that,
so John isn’t that interested in the
story.
He’s
interested in showing us what the story means.
Today’s
Gospel lesson doesn’t tell the story of the Ascension,
but it tells us what the Ascension
means.
It
explains the profound shift in the story and the change in our religion
that happens at this point.
In
capsule form, we find it in a single verse:
Jesus prays to the Father:
“As you sent me into the world, I
have sent them into the world.”
Jesus
has passed the torch of the Christ light to us.
We
have been given the mission.
We
are the ones to reveal God’s love as Jesus did.
Jesus
was preparing his disciples for this. When he taught them,
“As the Father has loved me, so I
have loved you . . . .
Now love one another.”
The
shift in our religion is from a relationship with Jesus
to a relationship with each other.
That
is why in our Baptismal Vows which we will renew today
we promise “to seek and serve Christ
in all persons.”
This
is why John in his first epistle says,
Anyone who claims to love God but
hates his brother is a liar.
If he does not love his brother whom
he has seen,
he cannot love God whom
he has not seen.”
The
Christianity Jesus leaves us with at the Ascension
is a profoundly humanistic religion.
But
that humanism can get lost in our religiosity.
I
think for example of a well-loved Cursillo song.
I
am all for Cursillo and there is something legitimate in the piety of this
song,
but I see a problem.
It
goes:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full on his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow
strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace.
I
get the piety. I even like the piety.
But
if thinking about Jesus makes “the things of earth
grow strangely dim,”
that’s not the kind of religion we
read about in John.
Jesus
says head on, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world.”
Quite
the opposite, he says:
“As you sent me into the world, I
have sent them into the world.”
Biblical
Christianity is a deeply worldly religion.
James
Fenhagen, the late dean of General Theological Seminary,
said in his essay “The Anglican Way”
that Anglican spirituality is an
intentional practice
of “holy worldliness and worldly
holiness.”
We
are not set apart from the world,
not set apart from the human drama
authentic
Christianity is lived up to our chins in the human milieu.
That’s
what the Anglican priest and poet John Donne meant
when he wrote,
“No man is an island
Entire of itself . . . .
I am involved in mankind.”
This
holy worldliness, this Christian humanism
consist of two basic practices:
First,
we act as Jesus to others.
Second,
we find Jesus, not just in the Bible,
not just in the sacrament, not just
in prayer,
but in other people.
It
is as simple as our baptismal vow
to seek and serve Christ in all
persons.
We
want to show our love for God, we show compassion to one another.
To
be Christ for others and to find Christ in others,
we have to know something about
Christ.
That’s
what he rest of the Jesus story is there to teach us.
It
shows us what to do and how to be.
And
it shows us what to look for in others.
As
we read the Gospels,
we find a Jesus who is sometimes
strong, wise,
merciful, forgiving, reconciling.
That’s
what we are called to be.
But
we also find a Jesus who was homeless,
rejected, and condemned.
That’s
Christ too.
When we experience those things,
we are experiencing Christ,
And
when we see others enduring those hardships,
we see and serve Christ in them.
Some
brands of religion are attempts to unite ourselves
with an eternal transcendent God
in order to escape “the changes and
the chances”
of our “all too human” life.
Christianity
turns the religious project on its head,
because or goal is to unite
ourselves to a God
who chooses to live this human life.
Our
faith is not an abstraction.
It
is not an escape from this life.
It
is a plunge deeply into reality,
especially the reality of caring for
one another.
