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Sermon for Easter 7A: Sunday after Ascension (and Mothers Day)

May 12, 2002

Today is now the Seventh Sunday of Easter: or, as it is subtitled on your bulletins, the Sunday after Ascension Day, when we remember in our lessons and prayers how Jesus was exalted with great triumph to God’s kingdom in heaven, and we look forward to our hope that we too will be exalted to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before.

The Ascension, however, is one of those articles of the Christian faith that has come in for some rather rough treatment in our modern (and post-modern) intellectual climate. Our first lesson today, from Acts, tells the story: how Jesus promised his disciples that power would come upon them, and while he was speaking, he was lifted up, he rose vertically into the air, until “a cloud took him out of their sight,” and they were left there, alone, staring up into the sky. For a lot of people today, that picture of Jesus going up into heaven is a difficult one. We today tend not to think of “heaven” as a hyperphysical realm just beyond the sky. We today tend to think that if you go up you go into space, into the solar system, into the galaxy, eventually into the great darkness between the galaxies. E.T. may go up to go home, but we tend to want to think of Jesus returning home to heaven in a different way.

So here’s a different way to think about it: What the Ascension means is that Jesus is now no longer separated from God in any way. Of course Jesus was always the Word of God incarnate, Jesus was always in relationship with God in the deepest and most fundamental way, Jesus always, all through his earthly life and ministry, could say “I and the Father are one.” But Jesus was also the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, Jesus was not just fully divine but also fully human—and part of what it means to be human is to experience separation.

As a human being, part of the way I know who I am is that I am not someone else. There is a separation between me and the rest of the world. There is a part of the world that is my body, that I can feel and direct and move at my will; and there is a part of the world that is not my body, that I can’t feel and move that way, that is separate from me. That separation helps define me. Another thing that helps define me is my separation from other people. We have a book at home called Where You End and I Begin—and it makes the point that one of the signs of a healthy personality is strong ego boundaries, so that I don’t project my baggage on you and don’t let you project your baggage on me, either. Being separate that way is one of the things that helps us be ourselves. And we are separate from God: God is Creator and we are creatures, God is infinite and we are finite, God gives us freedom, so that we are not just passive puppets of God’s omnipotent will, but we are different from God and separate from God and can give to God a unique devotion and a unique love that is ours and only ours to give. Being separate is part of what makes us human.

But being separate also has its downsides. Separation can make us arrogant. The fact that we can control our bodies, and the rest of the world appears to us as just kind of a backdrop, a stage set, for what we do with our controlling bodies, has made us arrogant toward our environment, toward our planetary home. Separation can make us lonely. Even though strong ego boundaries are healthy, we also long for the sense that we can really share ourselves with others, that we can really understand and love another person deeply, that we can go beyond just “I” and “you” and get to “we.” Separation can make us spiritually small. I am glad that I’m not just a puppet of God’s will, I am glad that I’m different from God in that way; but I also know that I find it terribly easy to forget about God, terribly easy to get so caught up in my own immediate business and busy-ness that I take for granted the love and the grace and the Being that holds me in life, terribly easy to let my ego get separated from the Source who alone can make me more whole. That’s the paradox of separation: it helps us be who we are, but it also cuts us off from so much more that we could be.

Part of the meaning of the Ascension is that it points to the promise of being human without being separate. Jesus returns to the infinite and eternal glory that he had with God before the world existed—and he returns to that glory with his full humanity—with his human personality that loved and wept and joked with the disciples; with his human experience that knew pain and joy and suffering and hope; with his human body that walked the roads of Galilee, and hugged the children that were brought to him, and suffered and died on the cross, and appeared alive to his disciples after his suffering, to eat and drink with them and teach them about the kingdom and bless them to the end of the age. Jesus takes his full humanity into God, and in God that humanity is no longer separated from anything. Because Jesus’ body is no longer located in one little bit of space-time separated from the rest of the Universe, now therefore the whole Universe is enfolded in the Body of Christ. Because Jesus’ personality is no longer defined by ego boundaries over against other selves, now therefore all our selfhood, all our personalities, can be grounded in the true Self of Christ. Because Jesus’ love is no longer limited to one little group of disciples long ago and far away, now therefore our love too can be coinherent and interanimated and made more whole in the love of Christ. The symbol of the Ascension, the mystery of the Ascension, points us to the promise of a humanity that is not defined by being divided; the mystery of the Ascension points us to the promise of a humanity where we can be ourselves without being separated from God, or from the world, or from each other.

What the fullness of that promise will be like, we cannot yet tell. The mystery of an ascended way of being in which we can be ourselves and yet not be separated is more than we can grasp in this life, it’s more than we can comprehend in the way of being that we know now. But even now, I think, we get glimpses, we get hints, we get foretastes, of what that ascended life will be like. Even now, in the experience of genuine and generous love, we get the feeling of what it is like to be our own distinct selves, and yet not to be divided from each other—we get the feeling of what it is like to be taken up into a reality that is greater than us and yet allows us to be the unique and precious individuals that we are—we get the feeling of what it is like to be not just an “I” and a “you” but a “we.”

And we can experience that quality of love in so many of our down-to-earth, daily relationships. Today we are celebrating Mothers Day; and certainly one of the places we discover a love that lets us be distinct but not divided is in the love between mother and child. A good mother knows that her child is not just an extension of herself, that the child has hopes and dreams and ambitions and needs and problems and accomplishments that may be quite different from the mother’s own—and yet a mother rejoices in her child’s joys, and suffers for her child’s sorrows, and feels satisfaction for her child’s accomplishments in a way that is very much her own. One time my parents were visiting a church where I was serving; and I preached a particularly good sermon that day; and at the end of the service I was greeting people at the church door and people were saying things like “Nice service” and “Good sermon”; and my mom came up and said, “I’m so proud of you.” My mom was telling me that I had done a good job—and she was also telling me that she felt joy in the joy that I felt in the good job I’d done. That’s a love that is more than just an “I” and a “you” but makes a “we.” That’s a love that is a sign of the love of the ascended Christ that is inspired in us by the Holy Spirit.

And we are called to grow in that love, not only between mother and child in families, but between sisters and brothers in Christ in the community of Christ’s Church. Someone told me once that what drew them to our church was not so much that it was an Episcopal church, but the quality of friendship and togetherness in the people that were there. “I could be just as happy as Methodist or a Presbyterian or a Lutheran,” he said, “but what brings me here is my friends.” I think my friend was touching a very deep truth there. It is the quality of our friendship, the quality of our fellowship, that is the medium in which we grow in the love of Christ. Personally, I think our being Episcopalians has something to do with that fellowship: the character of our liturgy, in which there are no passive observers but everyone has a part to play; the character of our theology, which encourages every one of us to think for ourselves and not just accept what authority tells us; the character of our incarnational faith that calls us to see the reflection of God in all the world, and therefore to rejoice in a world that is fundamentally good—all those things are parts of the Episcopal way of being Christian that bring a distinctive quality to our fellowship here. But in the last analysis, it is this community, it is these people, it is these friends, who are the ones with whom we learn how to love in a way that cares not just about “my needs” or “your gifts” or “somebody else’s problems,” but that cares about our faith and our hope and our mission to share God’s love with all the world. This church community is for us a school of discipleship that teaches us how to love in distinction without division, how to love with diversity in unity, how to love not just “I” and “you” but “we.” And that too is a sign of the love of the ascended Christ, inspired in us by the Holy Spirit.

Today we celebrate the Ascension: we celebrate the Good News that Jesus is not separate from God, and we celebrate the promise that we will be not separate, we will be united in God’s love as well. Let us hold fast to that promise, and let us live that love, with each other, with our families, with our community, with our God.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.