May 29, 2022

Remember last week when Jesus healed a lame man at that pool? A few days later I saw this comment on Facebook: “I don’t know if Facebook has ever caused the lame to walk, but it sure has caused the dumb to speak.” We can’t argue that, can we? Especially when you hear Ted Cruz saying that the USA is the safest country on earth!

I love this three-week series of church celebrations – today is Ascension Sunday of course, and next week is Pentecost and then Trinity Sunday. Once Jesus ‘lifts off’ from his earthly life, and after the Holy Spirit dramatically empowers us for discipleship and ministry, then the Trinity spreads out over all the world or universe as the sacred presence manifested in so many ways. But first today we have Ascension lift-off.

At the recent clergy conference in Chemainus, Dean Ansley read a Parable of the Acorn to us, which I’ll summarize here: There was a kingdom of modern acorns living at the foot of a towering old oak tree. They were like midlife baby-boomer ‘acorns’ and they bought self-help books and took seminars and had support groups etc. – all aimed at living their best life as acorns. One day a scruffy stranger acorn arrives, with a cracked shell, and dirt stuck to him. He sat under the oak tree and told them something quite shocking. Looking upward at the big tree above them, he said: “We … are … that!” … Ridiculous, thought the other acorns – ‘how could a tiny acorn possibly be a great oak tree reaching twenty meters into the air’? The visitor explained that to become such a tree, you’d have to let go of all your plans for your best acorn life; and instead go down into the ground “where your shell will crack open and that power that is in you be released”. But the other acorns thought that was insane since then they would no longer be acorns. ...

According to our first reading from Acts, Jesus spent forty days on earth after his resurrection – still living a kind of acorn life we might say – hanging around making sure everybody was okay. Last week I watched Godspell again – did you ever see that 1973 movie? There too we have a version of Jesus who cares deeply about his followers. He has a wonderful time with them, even dancing on top of the Twin Towers in New York City … long before 9/11. Whether Jesus spent forty days on earth before ascending to heaven, or whether it happened on Easter Day as Luke says at the end of his gospel, is beside the point … although it teaches us not to take such details too literally.

Cambridge priest and poet Malcolm Guite comments that while in one sense Christ ‘leaves’ us on Ascension Day “in another sense he is given to us and to the world in a new and more universal way … universally accessible to all … And since his humanity is taken into heaven, our humanity belongs there too.” Here’s Guite’s Ascension sonnet:

We saw his light break through the cloud of glory

Whilst we were rooted still in time and place

As earth became a part of Heaven’s story

And heaven opened to his human face.

We saw him go and yet we were not parted

He took us with him to the heart of things

The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted

Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,

Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,

Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,

Whilst we our selves become his clouds of witness

And sing the waning darkness into light,

His light in us, and ours in him concealed,

Which all creation waits to see revealed.

In light of what a gift Ascension is to all of us, let’s look at the lovingly grateful epistle message today as well. Paul writes to the Ephesians that he never ceases to give thanks for them – that’s also how I feel about Two Saints Ministry BTW. Paul prays that they will be given ‘Sophia’ the spirit of God’s wisdom – something we continue to need strongly today. We are called to know -- what is the hope to which God invites us, and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power … especially perhaps if we’re willing to let go of our acorn life, so to speak. Are we willing to turn away from using so much energy on the ground, and instead to dive more deeply into the fullness and abundance of God’s plan for us as a faith community? Or will we keep tending to our acorn state?

Let us pray: Gracious Creator God, whose son Jesus Christ ascended to heaven to be with you, and with all of your sacred Creation, please send us your Holy Spirit of wisdom – to give us counsel on how we might best move forward in discipleship – how we might ‘lift off’ from too many earthly property concerns, and take on the wings of freedom in response to a world so fraught with countless perils. The children of our world, those who survive humanity’s addiction to violence, face a future that looks shockingly bleak. Help us to see, Creator God, how we can better direct our energies towards your own compassionate concern for all that lives, Amen.