Monday, June 12, 2017
VII Easter
Sermon
for the Seventh Sunday of Easter
Year A May 28 , 2017
|
|
Holy
Trinity & St. Anskar
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.
+In the Name of God,
the Holy and Undivided Trinity
The angels’ comment
following their derisive question seems to be a non-sequitur. If He is going to return in the same way He left, then why NOT
look into heaven? Where else SHOULD we be looking? Unless what they saw was not
really Jesus floating up into the sky, but something else, which they couldn’t
describe precisely. So they talked about clouds, and being “taken up”.
Maybe it was something like
what happened in Emmaus, when having broken bread with the two disciples, He
“vanished from their sight”.
In both instances the
disciples’ reaction was surprising. Cleopas and his companion went right back
to Jerusalem, with a kind of confidence and joy.
And Luke says that after the Ascension, the disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the
temple blessing God.” But why weren’t they sad? The Lord had disappeared. Why
were they joyful? It must have had to do with what they had seen, which they
could not describe in words, but in images that made sense to the three-storied
model of the world that they shared.
Giving free rein to
imagination, maybe in our day we would say something like this. “While He was
blessing them, He seemed to grow radiant until He just dissolved in brightness.
But He didn’t seem to be gone, even though we couldn’t see Him anymore.” If it
were something like that, then it would make no sense to stare into the sky,
and it would explain the joy. They must have felt that the Lord was still with
them.
Our picture of the world
may be not entirely unfriendly to this sort of thing. After all, we think of
the visible world as bundles of energy ~ of light, speaking poetically. So maybe visions like the
Transfiguration and Ascension ~ and whatever happened when the empty tomb was emptied, and in
the subsequent appearances ~ all had to do with a new organization of the
particular bundles of energy that had previously been known as Jesus. But then,
this kind of speculation is probably just another way of “gazing up into
heaven”. Appropriate enough ~ for a few minutes ~ but not what we are called to
do indefinitely.
Like the Apostles, we are
called to live in the world, in time, but also in joy and anticipation, and to
spend our lives blessing God. We are NOT called to know the Day and the Hour of
His return and the Restoration of the Kingdom. Any attempt to fix the date is
impious. And when He does, return, it will be “in the same way as [we] saw Him
go.” That is, we will recognize Him in a completely new and inexpressible way,
as present in the world, filling it, and permeating every ounce of matter and
every atom and subatomic particle unto the perfection of the cosmic recreation
He has already begun, and the Transfiguration of creation which we taste
already here and now at the Table in the Temple where we are continually
rejoicing and blessing God.
ALLELUIA!
CHRIST
IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD,
TRAMPLING
DOWN DEATH BY DEATH,
AND GIVING
LIFE TO THOSE IN THE GRAVE!
ALLELUIA!
