Sermon: Ascension Sunday 5.4.08

Edgebrook Lutheran Church

May 4, 2008

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 1:1–11

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning ²until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. ³After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. ⁴While 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; ⁵for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."
⁶So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" ⁷He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸But 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." ⁹When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ¹⁰While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. ¹¹They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward 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."

What are we, then, to do?

Can I get a witness?

I said, can I get a witness?

You know, on the South Side where I live, that question gets a slightly different response. Our Lutheran brothers and sisters on the South Side shout “Amen!” or “Yes you can.”

Most of the time, if you were to ask me, “Can I get a witness?” I’d probably say, “What for? Are we going to court?”

But I think that Jesus in today’s Acts reading probably yelled that out at some point as he was ascending into heaven. I mean, Luke doesn’t record it in there, but I think he probably said, “Can I get a witness?” sometime in there.

Because that’s what we’re left with: witnesses.

Today we celebrate the ascension of our Lord. Not much is known about Jesus ascension, and even Luke isn’t really clear on what’s going on. What we do know is that Jesus was with his disciples for 40 days after his resurrection, and then he didn’t show up in the bodily presence anymore. Instead, he spoke of this new way that God was going to be with people, in the paraclete, the Advocate, the Ruah that we spoke of last week. The Holy Spirit.

And today we find these disciples, having been promised the Holy Spirit, having been promised that Jesus would come back again, and they’re staring up into heaven waiting for it to come as if it’s going to happen right now, right away.

And I bet, I bet for a moment there they wondered what they were to do next. I bet, I bet for a moment there, they had a twinge of sadness because this experience with God that they’d been having through the person of Jesus had come to an end.

And how to express that?

Shel Silverstein, at the end of his book of poetry “Where the Sidewalk Ends” has one final poem that reads:

“I went to find the pot of gold

That’s waiting where the rainbow ends.

I searched and searched and searched and searched

And searched and searched and then

There it was, deep in the grass

Under an old and twisty bough

It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine at last…

What do I search for now?”

“What do I search for now?” is probably just the question that those disciples were asking themselves as they stared off into space.

And the only thing that brings them back to reality, that brings them back to action from staring up at heaven are these two people that show up in dazzling clothes.

“What are you doing looking up at heaven? He’ll come back; he promised. The Holy Spirit will come upon you; he promised. But now, there’s work to be done!”

Now, there’s work to be done.

You see, the experience that they had with God, the experiences that we have with God through the gift of the Holy Spirit is not some pot of gold to be found at the end of a spiritual journey. The experience is the journey.

And that is why we don’t stop with just the Gospels in our New Testament texts. The experiences with God continued even after Jesus was no longer bodily present. And so, what are the disciples to do now that Jesus is not bodily present, what are we to do now that Jesus is not bodily present?

Well, we’re not supposed to just stand around looking up at space, waiting for it to happen again. That, according to these two people in dazzling clothes, these two “new people” as the Greek literally calls them reminds the disciples, and reminds us.

We’re about to leave the season of Easter. We’re about to head into spring. We’re about to have life slow down just a little bit. It won’t be the same.

But listen to these people in dazzling white: the work is not done. God’s spirit, God’s indwelling presence is still here, and so our encounters with God continue to happen.

And we can’t be silent about that. We can’t be silent about our experiences with God, our experiences with the God made known in Jesus Christ.

We need to be witnesses! God has made God’s self known to us, and so we need to be witnesses to the fact that God is at work in this world bringing salvation in the here and now.

So, what does it mean to be a witness?

James Mulholland, a Quaker minster, writes in his book “If Grace is True” about one of his first sermons as a preacher. It was at an inner city mission. He says,

“I watched about fifty men, many mentally ill or drunk, herded into a dingy chapel. They mumbled the words to a familiar hymn, yawned through the prayers, and seemed oblivious to the words I’d labored over so carefully. I pleaded with them to accept Christ and experience his grace. No one responded. Afterward, I turned to one of the workers and said, “Well, that was hopeless.”

Then the worker smiled back at him and said, “I used to be one of them.”

Who was the witness there? A witness is the one who says, “The world is ending? Oh, yeah, I used to think that. I’m all alone in this world? Oh yeah, I used to believe that. There is no God, we’re water and some trace elements? Oh yeah, I used to hold on to that. But then…

But then God spoke to me in Scripture. But then the Holy Spirit stirred me to faith. But then I realized that the breath of God moves through humanity like a wind over grass. But then I was baptized into the faith, held by a God, sealed by the Holy Spirit, marked with the cross of Christ forever.

When we have church, when we witness to the encounter that God has had upon us, “I used to be one of them” is not an unfamiliar response. God changes things yet today, and so we cannot keep looking to heaven waiting for eventual salvation, for as those “new people” in dazzling clothes remind us, there is so much salvation to be witnessed to here around us.

So, can I get a witness?

Amen.

Sermon: 6th Sunday after Easter 4.27.08

Edgebrook Lutheran Church

April 27, 2008

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Gospel John 14:15–21

⁵If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
¹⁸I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."

You Promised

Every summer during college I worked as a camp counselor. The camp was named “Kirchenwald” which means “church in the woods.” At the end of each camping week, the entire camp would play a game called Capture the Flag. It was a great game because the whole camp, from second graders to high schoolers, would play. We would split the camp into two teams, and each take a field to defend our flag. I would assemble the team on my field together and attempt to make some strategies. We did, after all, want to win.

At the end of one of these strategic sessions one week, a fourth grader said, “Tim, I think we should pray that the Holy Spirit enter our shoes so we can run faster than the other team!” I looked down at little Sarah and said, “Sarah, God doesn’t work that way.” She looked right up at me and said, “Well it’s a good thing you’re not God or we’d never win!”

And she’s right, of course. It is a good thing I’m not God. It is a good thing that God is more complicated than the small box that I tried to put God in when talking to Sarah.

Today we receive a promise, we receive a reminder, that God is complicated, more complicated than you and I can possibly imagine. This is not means for alarm. This is not means for despair. This is means for glory. You see, we glory that God is complicated in word and deed, in action and structure, because that too is a reminder that God is at work in ways we don't understand. And today is just an example of that.

In today's gospel message we have Jesus finishing the speech that he started last week. It a speech of "final things." If you'll remember, last week Jesus reminded his disciples, and therefore us, that he is "the way, the truth, and the life." Today he tells them something new.

In this last half of the speech, he makes a different statement.

In this last half of that speech, that speech he gives them right before he is going to eat dinner with them, be arrested, be crucified, and rise again. In this last half of the speech that he gives before they are going to get a complete shock: the death of their rabbi. Before they are going to get a complete upheaval of their life's trajectory. In this speech, before he leaves them for the cross of Golgotha, he gives them a promise.

"The Father will give you another Advocate to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth."

The Spirit of truth. The Advocate.

Or, as we say, the Holy Spirit. God's indwelling nature in creation, in humanity, in this world. God's emotional side, as I like to say it. That side of God that nudges us, pushes us, protects, and yes, advocates for us. Jesus promises his disciples that he will send his "indwelling spirit" to be not only with them, but in them.

In us.

As good Lutherans, we beg the question, What does this mean?

Well, you must know that this emotional side of God, this Spirit of indwelling is not new to Scripture. Jesus is not introducing a new idea to the disciples, although I'm not sure they recognized that.

You see, in Old Testament scripture, this Spirit of truth, this Advocate, this indwelling spirit of God is mentioned quite a bit. Her name is Ruah. Yes, that's right, it's a she. Ruah, God's Ruah , God's wisdom is a "she" because Hebrew is a gendered language, and Ruah, which actually means "breathe" in Hebrew, is feminine. Now, in Greek it's Paraclete, which is neither feminine or masculine, and in Latin its Spiritus which is definitely masculine. So, you see, the switch from feminine to masculine in speaking about God is not original to the text. God's Spirit was originally thought of as Ruah, as she that indwells.

And so Jesus is promising that, although it may look like he's gone, God is not. Although it may look like there is no light in this world, there is. The Ruah, the Paraclete, the Spirit of God is with them.

But how will they know? How will we know that the spirit of God is with us? Because, I think this is one part of the tradition that I think we take for granted…or don't take at all.

Do we look for the Holy Spirit, the Ruah of God, the breathe of God working in our world? In our creation? Do we look for the Advocate?

Perhaps we do, but it's hard. It's hard to tell what is breathe of God and what is just wind. It's hard to tell what is the Spirit of God and what, as my grandmother used to say, is just "indigestion."

It was early in the morning on July 4^th of last year when my beeper went off. I rolled over on the small bed that the hospital provided for me. ED, my beeper said. So I called down to the Emergency Room Department.

"Hi Father, you're needed down here right away, please." I glanced at my watch, it was 4:28 am. "Give me five minutes," I muttered. "Ok, please be quick."

So I put on my collar, grabbed my Bible, and headed toward the elevators.

As the doors opened, and walked down the Northwestern hallway, the ED was as busy as I'd ever seen it. July 4^th. A lot of accidents. I entered trauma one, pulled back the curtain, and saw a young man, my age, lying on the stretcher. His mother was weeping uncontrollably over his cold body, his father rubbing her shoulders. There were sisters and brothers, about four siblings, crowded around the bed.

When I entered, the mother looked up and she said, "Padre, Padre, pardone, pardone." She only spoke Spanish, and my Spanish was not enough to communicate fully. But the sister translated, and I knew what I had to do.

I went over to the sink, drew some water, blessed the water, and joined the family around the young man. I blessed his head with a cross, blessed his hands with a cross, and there, under those harsh lights of the trauma room, we all said good bye to this young man. This young man who, just hours before was splashing in Lake Michigan, jumping off his father's boat. One flip too many in those early morning hours, and he hit his head on the side as he jumped.

And here we were, saying goodbye, commending him and the family around to God's care, to God's comfort. As we were praying and going through the liturgy, nurses and EMT's came in and joined our circle. One nurse held the mother in her arms. An EMT wrapped his arm around the youngest sibling there, rubbing her shoulder, and we all prayed and cried together.

Afterwards I went up to the chapel at the hospital. It was dark. I was alone in there. And I let God have it. Where was the God that could still the waters? Where was the God that could part the sea? Where was the God who promised the Advocate, who promised protection, to that young man down there? To that mother, who's only words she could mutter when she saw me was, "forgive him. Forgive him!"

Where was God there?

And then I sat, exhausted. And I remembered the nurse, holding the mother in her arms. I remembered the EMT, a large burly guy, rubbing the shoulder of that young sibling. I remembered the water, that blessed water, that baptismal water, running over the head and the hands of the young man as a sign that he, still, and especially now, was a child of God.

And I that’s when I experience Ruah. I saw the Advocate. I saw the great helper, the comforter, the promised one to be with us. It was a glimpse. It was in the form of a love that moved past the emergency room to cut to the heart of the pain there. And it was God.

You see, Jesus is about to leave his disciples. Jesus is about to die, and I have no doubt that those disciples were going to go back and curse God, shake their fists in the air, and say, "You promised!"

You promised.

And so, here, today, before any of that happens, Jesus promises them that, no matter what it looks like, God is with them, indwelling, moving, shaking, advocating, helping. Breathing in them, with them, and for them.

And I think there was good reason for this promise now, because, even when we try to look for God's Spirit, God's breathe working in this world, we often come up questioning what we are seeing. It is only later, only in the aftermath, only in the resurrection period and afterward, that we remember where God was.

And so Jesus gives his disciples, gives us, the promise before hand. It's given so that we can trust that God is present, God is working, God is indwelling in us despite what it might look like around us. It's a promise that will carry us through those times, that will carry us through those hours of darkness, of loneliness, those hours when we look up at the cross and say, "You promised!"

It's given to those disciples, to us, to be our comforter and our advocate because it is only later that we can see it.

God the Spirit is at work in our world, is at work in us. We may not see it now, but I bet we'll see it in retrospect. I bet we'll see it later. So lets trust it now, and look for it later.

Amen.