Scriptures: Acts 1:1-11 Ephesians
1:15-23
I John 5:9-13 John 17:6-19
When I was at Penn State in the early ‘80’s – the early
1980’s, not the early 1880’s – I was active at Faith United Church of Christ, a
UCC congregation located along College Avenue, one of the two main drags
through State College, the other being Beaver Avenue. Faith UCC had and still has a strong ministry
to Penn State college students – in those days they had a seminary intern who
handled most of the ministry to the college kids, in addition to a pastor who
had a heart for ministry to that age group, and I’d been intensely involved at
Faith Church for the four years I was at Penn State. Over the course of four years, I’d watched as
the students ahead of me who were active at Faith Church prepared for graduation
and went off into the dreaded real world, away from the bubble world of State
College, otherwise known as Happy Valley.
Each summer, the church would put together a picnic for the
college students, who would return to Faith Church for that one summer Sunday,
for worship and a picnic afterward. Thirty-plus
years later, I still remember the odd mix of feelings I had at the picnic the
summer after graduation. A surprising
number of folks, some who had graduated and some who still had a few more years
ahead of them at Penn State, converged on State College that summer, we
worshipped together at Faith Church, as we had so often for the past several
years, and after church we went to a state park with a picnic area. Pastor Meckstroth from Faith Church was there,
as was Dan Dupee, the seminarian who had ministered to us for the past two
years. There were lots of familiar
faces, and yet to me it felt very different from picnics of previous
years. In previous years, I and those
who were in my graduating class could enjoy catching up and leave at the end of
the day, knowing that we’d be seeing one another again in September. But this time, we had already graduated, and
so this picnic was essentially goodbye for those in my class – no longer would
we be returning in September to class registrations and textbooks and number
two pencils. It really was the end of
our time in Happy Valley. The few weeks
since graduation had already changed those of us who had graduated, and changed
the conversations we had with one another - as those who had graduated were
moving on with their lives, so was I. It was the early ‘80’s, and the economy was in
the toilet; by the time of the picnic a few of us from the Penn State Class of
’83 had already found jobs; many others hadn’t.
Some had set wedding dates; others hadn’t. And so this picnic was an in-between time, a
transitional moment, in a way confirming that one chapter of our lives had indeed
ended and the next chapter had only just begun.
There was familiarity, but also distance and strangeness, even awkwardness,
as we said a kind of final farewell not only to one another, but to the church and
college ministry that had been such an anchor to us in our time at Penn State.
I say all that, not to treat us to a stroll down my weird version
of memory lane, but to try to provide some sense of the emotions that may have been
present at the moments captured in our readings, which represent in-between
times. In our reading from John’s
gospel, in the preceding chapters, in what scholars call Jesus’ farewell discourse,
Jesus had been giving his disciples his final instructions, final marching
orders, in preparation for his upcoming arrest, trial, and crucifixion, and in
today’s reading prays for them in what scholars call Jesus’ high priestly
prayer. And in our reading from Acts, of course, Jesus
is saying farewell to his disciples before his return to the Father, what we
call the Ascension. Both of these are
in-between moments, transitional moments, or to use another word, liminal
moments, hinges on doors of the spirit that mark the threshold from one way of
being to another.
I’d like you to remember the feelings of strangeness and
awkwardness of that last after-graduation picnic I described in considering the
account in Acts of the conversation between Jesus and the disciples just before
his Ascension, his return to the Father.
In the Acts account, the awkwardness comes, in part, because of the
contrast between the disciples’ vision of their future and Jesus’ vision of the
disciples’ future. The disciples ask
Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to
Israel?” We remember, of course, that at
the time Jerusalem was under Roman occupation, and before Rome had been
occupied by Greece, Persia, Babylon. The
disciples could hardly be blamed for figuring that if Jesus could overcome
death itself, surely he could overcome Caesar in Rome and all the puppets
Caesar had set up locally – Herod, Pontius Pilate, and so on. Perhaps this would even be the time when the
vision of Isaiah would be realized, when nations would come from the north and
south and east and west to ascend the mountain of the Lord and bring blessings
to God’s people in Jerusalem.
Jesus shuts that conversation down right quick: “It is not for you to know the times and
seasons that the Father has set by his own authority.” In other words, MYOB – mind your own business. But then Jesus gives them something else to
occupy their minds: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon
you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to
the ends of the earth.” And then as
Jesus ascends, he is essentially lifted out of the picture; in the words of the
creed, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, from whence he will
come to judge the living and the dead.
And this is why many of our hymns today have a kind of coronation feel
to them; using traditional language, having completed his task on earth, Jesus
resumes his throne in heaven and reigns in power. But the disciples don’t know all that; all they
know is that they are standing there staring up in the air with their mouths
hanging open, both at the absence of Jesus and at the task he has given them to
carry out in his absence. And then an
angel comes to tell them to stop staring in the air with their mouths hanging
open, and here endeth that reading.
Essentially this moment represents the handoff of ministry from Jesus to
the disciples. The students were about
to become the teachers; the ministered-to were about to become ministers, the
small flock that Jesus had tended would soon be shepherding flocks in their own
right, under the guidance of the Spirit.
I’ll mention, as an aside, that the symbol of the United Church of
Christ, the crown, cross, and globe divided into three sections, is a symbolic
representation of this moment – the Lordship of Christ over the whole world,
and the three sections of the globe representing Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria,
and the ends of the earth.
Anyway…..It is for this handoff of ministry that Jesus is
preparing his disciples in our reading from John’s Gospel. The setting is the Last Supper. Jesus knows that he is about to leave them –
and, from their point of view, leave them behind. And again, Jesus’ presence has a strangeness
to it, sort of a there-but-not-there feel to it, as even before the arrest and
crucifixion, Jesus says things like” I glorified you on earth” – past tense,
action already fully completed, and this is before the crucifixion, remember –
“by finishing the work that you gave me to do….And now I am no longer in the
world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you…..while I was with
them, I protected them in your name that you have given me….But now I am coming
to you.” Even though Jesus is still
seated at table with them, it seems like in one sense Jesus’ time on earth is
already behind him, like he already has one foot out the door. And yet he loves his disciples, and prays for
them.
Jesus knows that, as the authorities – Jewish and Roman – by
and large hated Jesus, opposed his message, and were about to arrest and
crucify them, they would do the same to his disciples. And so he prays for his disciples, that the
Father would protect them, and that they would all be one. And goes on to pray the same for all of us -
that God would protect us, and that we would all be one - again, as a aside, this is the motto of the
United Church of Christ – “that they all may be one”.
As we’ve seen these past few weeks, in John’s gospel,
there’s a lot of difficult language about “the world” – the Greek word is “kosmos” – language about the world
hating Jesus, about the world hating the disciples, about being in the world
but not of the world, even Jesus saying he’s not praying for the world, but for
those God had given him out of the world.
Earlier in the prayer in verse 4, Jesus said, “I glorified you on
earth…” – there’s a different Greek word for that, gyn, and Jesus isn’t speaking of hostility toward the earth, toward
the planet itself…this isn’t some sort of gnostic, spirit is good/matter is bad
thing. And the famous verse that begins
“God so loved the world” – uses the Greek word kosmos. So John uses the
word kosmos in several different
ways, but in today’s reading, in which the kosmos
hates Jesus and his disciples, he’s talking about the world’s domination
system, the forces of Empire – Roman empire or that of any empire before or
after, right up to the present day – which is governed by domination, oppression, violence, death, as contrasted to the reign
of God described by Jesus, which operates on the basis of self-giving love. The forces of empire, the domination system,
the kosmos has one way of doing
things – domination, oppression, violence, death - and the reign of God has an
entirely different way of doing things – love and life - and the two are
utterly opposed, utterly incompatible.
And so Jesus is not only praying that the disciples will be protected
from violence from the system, but Jesus is also praying that they won’t be
co-opted by the system or buy into it.
And that is part of the reason for Jesus’ prayer for unity – if we’re
united in serving the reign of God, we will be less likely to defect to serving
the Domination system of Empire. Of
course, the church has a record that’s mixed at best – while the early church
held up under persecution fairly well for the first 300 years, the adoption of
Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine not only ended persecution
against Christians – which is good – but co-opted them into serving the Roman
empire – which has corrupted the church from that time to the present day, as
through the centuries the church has blessed and baptized the corruption and
violence of the wealthy and powerful to this day as “God’s will”. What Roman persecution couldn’t accomplish,
Roman co-optation did, to the church’s lasting discredit.
And yet….and yet….. Jesus prayed for his disciples, and
prayed for us – and the answer to that prayer is still working itself out. In today’s readings, the disciples are at an
in-between place, a liminal space, on the threshold between one space and
another, between the time of walking with Jesus and the time of being guided by
the Spirit. Next week is Pentecost, when
we’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, which transformed Jesus’
often-bumbling disciples into women and men who turned the world upside down in
Jesus’ name.
We, too, are in an in-between place. We live between the “already” of the
beginnings of the reign of God and the “not yet” of still living as broken
people in a broken world. It’s a strange
and awkward place to be, not unlke the strangeness and awkwardness of that last
picnic with my classmates in State College, as we’re caught between the ways of
Empire and the ways of the Spirit, and
often find ourselves attempting the impossible task of living in both worlds.
The good news is that we are not in this in-between place
alone. Indeed, we are never alone. When Jesus walked the earth, he could only be
in one place at one time; if Jesus was in Galilee, that meant he wasn’t in
Jerusalem, and vice-versa. But with the
coming of the Spirit, Jesus is with all of us and in all of us wherever we
go. The coming of Jesus and the sending
of the Holy Spirit are God’s ultimate solidarity with each of us, and with us
as the church, and with humankind and all of creation. Jesus ascended, but the Spirit descended. When we are undergoing life transitions –
starting or ending a job, starting or ending a relationship, leaving home for
the first time or starting a home with a spouse or partner – we are not alone. When a baby is born, and we’ve brought new
life into the world, we are not alone.
When loved ones pass, and when we ourselves are on our deathbeds, we are
not alone. From cradle to grave, and at
every point in-between, we are not alone.
We are not alone. Thanks be to
God. Amen.
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