May 24:The Seventh Sunday of Easter:
The Sunday after the Ascension – Monroe
Ascension was last Thursday
It was the day we scheduled to record this our community celebration of the 6th week of Easter. One day revolving and emerging as another day, each linked and urging us into the presence of God.
Psalm 19
Heaven is declaring God’s glory;
the sky is proclaiming his handiwork.
2 One day gushes the news to the next,
and one night informs another what needs to be known.
It is the Sunday between the feast of the Ascension and the feast of Pentecost. Ascension Day occuring on the 40th day of Easter. Pentecost occuring on the 50th day after Easter.
In another week, on Pentecost, we will observe a Week of weeks. That’s the magic of the 50 in the name of Pentecost.
The Christian festival of Pentecost is derived from the older and original Jewish feast of weeks. The week of weeks. In their case 50 days after Passover.
For me, this weaving of weavings of days and weeks, numbers and multiples of numbers, a feast deriving from the Exodus from Egypt woven and transformed into a feast of the Resurrection – for me – these are exciting and inviting messages and signs.
Today
Today we celebrate the presence of the Living God. Our masks don’t cause the Living God a moment’s pause.
Psalm 42
7 Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
8 By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
Today we are here because Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead – today and tomorrow. Though we may be experiencing anxiety, or frustration, or fear, or excitement – This is the day the Lord has made.
The presence we mark today is sacred. Today is sacred. It is sacred because God has acted in it.
We live in a sacred time.
Standing on Holy Ground
Again this week I heard a particular song, repeated over and over. And it’s not just the music or the words that I heard repeated.
It’s the events, the moments, the places, the occasions – at which I have listened to the song and wept. The name of the song is Holy Ground. I read to you a few of the lines:
When I walked through the doors I sensed God’s presence
When I knew this was a place where love abounds
…
And we are standing in His presence on holy ground
…
For I know that there are angels all around
…
For we are standing in His presence on holy ground
…
I first heard the song in the 1990’s. It was introduced to me by a musician I didn’t think of as particularly holy or particularly charismatic.
But I knew that he had experienced the presence of the living God. And I thought of that this week, anticipating being here, recording this liturgy with a mask on, on a day which wasn’t the day we were observing, celebrating in a manner that we wouldn’t have chosen, marking the time as recorded in Luke’s gospel and Luke’s Acts of the Apostles when Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”
Mark an “absence”?
The church has utilized Luke’s texts in its observance of Ascension and the Pentecostal flames marking the arrival of the Holy Spirit. The end of Luke’s gospel reads: “He led them out as far as Bethany, where he lifted his hands and blessed them. As he blessed them, he left them and was taken up to heaven.”
In the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke, he describes with greater detail, a period of 40 days when Jesus appeared to his disciples. Then, “as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.”
For all of my life – and in fact for centuries and millenia – Ascensiontide commemorated a new kind of absence that began – according to Luke’s account – 40 days after the Resurrection.
I have preached about the new kind of absence that Ascension brought – with intention, of course, of proclaiming the new presence ushered in by the Holy Spirit.
Preaching on the absence becoming a presence. But not today.
It seemed to me that today, at this time, in this place, there isn’t room to preach on absence. We don’t proclaim the absence of Christ. We proclaim Christ is Risen. Alleluia.
Sacred / Profane
The time and place we live in can be experienced by some as an absence. Discourse in our country is being driven in the direction of freedom and liberty to do what we want. We rail against being prevented from this or that.
Quarantine is described as a privation, as a keeping apart.
Absence. Absence of the things we have grown to accustomed to. Absence of the fullness we want.
Sacred Presence
It seems to me that the gospel we preach is something different from the message of absence or lack that what we see and hear around us.
What we preach is the power and the life of the living God, all around us, especially in the challenging times, especially when we don’t feel it or see it.
As I pray here in this place I can look out at the absence around me. Pews are empty. I don’t see or hear the kind of feedback I am accustomed to in a gathering of Christians. I hear silence when I am accustomed to laughter and smiles, voices lifted up in song.
It’s tempting to focus on the absence. But I won’t do it.
We are standing on Holy Ground. It is in this silence that the living God rushes in. We preach not an absence but the fullness of God.
Presence of God
In both of his books, the author of Luke and Acts addresses someone named Theophilos. Perhaps that was a real person. Perhaps it is a kind of metaphor for all those who would come to know the presence of the living God. Literally, in the Greek, it means “Lover of God.”
The gospel is addressed to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear the living God in our midst. The gospel is addressed not to those who experience the absence but to those who bask in the presence of the living God.
If we are to perceive that “One day gushes the news to the next, and one night informs another what needs to be known” then we must listen and look closely.
When “Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your God’s cataracts” we must be ready to recognize the living God. It’s not about the deep and it’s not about the cataracts – it’s about the living God.
The Presence of God isn’t built on peacefulness and quiet. Peacefulness – shalom – is the product of the Presence.
The presence of God is not built on pleasant feelings. A feeling of gladness is the product of Presence.
Ascensiontide marks the anticipation of a fullness that awaits – but it’s not the fullness itself.
The Holy Spirit is the anticipation. It is the fullness. We wait in what may feel like an absence – for the presence of the Living God.
No comments:
Post a Comment