BRB

May 29th, 2014
Ascension Day
St. John's Episcopal Church
Springfield, Missouri
The Rev. David Kendrick

Two of my social media friends, one in Indianapolis, the other a lay worker in the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, have started recording a reflection on the collect for the coming Sunday and podcasting it. They managed to squeeze in two podcasts this week, one for this coming Sunday and one for today, the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Since they’re both active on Twitter, they have a challenge each week in which they try to summarize the collect in 140 characters or less. Holli Rickman Powell said she was tempted to tweet the following: BRB (Be right back).

That’s exactly what we have prayed this day, in this collect that may be 1,300 years old, or perhaps as old as 1,700 years old. So perhaps for 17 centuries, Christians have prayed on this day that as “our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages.” In their podcast, Brendan O’Sullivan-Hale and Holli both spoke honestly of their struggles with this feast day. What is there to celebrate about Jesus leaving us?

“Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?” Will you, our Lord and our God, finally vindicate your people against all her oppressors? Jesus first disappoints them by answering, “It isn’t for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority.” And then follows the second disappointment. He is taken away from them in the form that they could perceive it: a lifting up and a cloud covering. Behind that cloud is the place, or dimension, from which the Word, the second person of the Trinity, had come from. Those first disciples kept looking up, because they understood that Jesus the human being was not coming back this time. The 40 days of his Resurrection appearances were done. Jesus the man, they would not see again. Perhaps they kept looking at the cloud because if they focused on their last vision of Jesus, the memory of it would never fade from their minds.

But, we are then told, “suddenly two men in white robes stood next to them. They said, ‘Galileans, why are you standing here, looking toward heaven?’” Why do we stand looking toward heaven on this day? Jesus Christ has “ascended far above all heavens.” In whatever dimension of spirit beyond our imagination that the creator of all things lives, he is there with his human body. Spirit and flesh live together there. What cannot be “touched” and what can be touched live together. In that is our eternal hope.

And yet, we also hear that Jesus has ascended far above all heavens in order that “he might fill all things.” The Ascension is not about Jesus leaving, but about his coming back. And indeed, in the modern lingo, he will “brb.” “Rather,” Jesus said, “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 end of the earth.” As the angels said, “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven.” That is our eternal hope.

But we living members of the Body of Christ do not live on hope alone. With the coming of the Holy Spirit, Jesus will be with them again. He tried to tell them that in John’s Gospel. “I assure you that it is better for you that I go away. If I don’t go away, the Companion [or Advocate] won’t come to you.” For the Holy Spirit to come to us, Jesus tells his disciples, he the human being must go. If he didn’t go, then the Son of God would be subject to the same limitations of space and time that all people are subject to. Like every other human being, Jesus would only be present in one place, with only those people who could see him, hear him, touch him.

But when the third person of the Trinity comes, Jesus will be with that person. And the Spirit is as close to us as our own breath. In Greek, the same word could mean “spirit,” or it could mean “wind.” And the wind is everywhere. So wherever the winds of this world are blowing you, the Holy Spirit is blowing with you. And where the Spirit is, there is Jesus, no longer confined to our space and time, but present to all people, in all places, at all times. And as you breathe, the Holy Spirit breathes into your heart and mind and soul. And where the Spirit breathes, there is Jesus, as close to us as the breath we share. Indeed, Jesus will be right back. In truth he has been right back ever since that first Pentecost.

Each of us has a share of that Spirit breathing through us, inspiring us, enlightening us, warming us. It has been my conviction since we began this Ripe for the Harvest process that if we asked each other and ourselves what God wants for this parish, and if we gave the best answers we could in an atmosphere of prayer and worship, that the Holy Spirit would guide us toward the right answers. After this mass, you will see and hear the answers you came up with. You will see and hear how these answers have been understood by the committee that first examined the results, by myself and the Vestry. And there will be more questions to help us see how, in the 21st century, in Springfield, Missouri, we might be “witnesses” of the risen Christ.

Springfield, Missouri, might not be “the end of the earth.” But it is the place where God has given us power to witness to the truth that Jesus Christ died for us, physically rose from the dead, ascended with that same body, and with the Spirit fills all things with his love. If we keep talking to each other, and to our neighbors, about what God wants for us, then we will have whatever power we need to be witnesses. And of the ascended Jesus Christ, our all-powerful Lord and Savior, we will be able to say, “BRB.”

[I edited this to reflect that Brendan O'Sullivan-Hale is not an ordained priest, but a faithful layperson.]