Easter 7, 2021

Sunday after Ascension

#easter7

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Community event

Interesting time

I remember from long ago I first heard the response of someone that we live in “interesting” times. Probably none of us here would disagree with that. But interesting is a – well, it’s an “interesting” term. It’s an ordinary word and we think we know what it means. But to say that of the times we live in isn’t simple at all. It’s complicated.

• critical times?

• challenging times?

• special times? or maybe unexpectedly “ordinary” times?

I want to suggest another term to describe the time we live in.

We live in a “liminal” time. It’s a fancy word – I apologize. But it seems useful because it signals to us that, “Wait. Maybe we should pay attention.”

35 years ago this month, my father died suddenly of a heart attack. I realized this past week that pretty close to 40 days later I heard his voice for the last time. In addition to facing the grief of my father’s death, I had had a ton of personal loss on my plate. I was living alone and in the kitchen eating area of the apartment. And our of nowhere I clearly heard a voice. It was unmistakably my father’s voice. It said approximately, “Don’t worry. I am ok.”

I felt strangely calm. I felt reassured. Though nothing was solved.

One way in retrospect I came to describe the time was an in-between time.

We are not where we were and we are not yet where we will be.

• a surreal time,

• an emptiness.

I saw it particularly in my step-mother’s face, as she was unable to express herself – until we asked her to describe the things she loved about her husband.

We face choices. Choices that may not feel like choices.

• We can try to avoid the emptiness or we can fill our time with busy-ness.
• We need the presence of others while we may feel the urge to be alone.

Fr. Jim

The death of Fr. Jim this week has sent each of us and this community into such an in-between time.

We have lost a beloved part of our community. We’ve lost a huge presence even as the memories are still very fresh.

One of the things I have said many times over the years, “Death in whatever form it comes, catches us by surprise.”

It’s always when we don’t expect it. It always seems to be the wrong time, or at least an inconvenient time.

Ascension-tide

It is in such times that the church was born. “Interesting time,” “liminal time,” a “time in-between.”

Acts 1:1-11

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs,** appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father**. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But 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 ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “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.”

This past Thursday was 40 days after Easter. From ancient times it was observed as Ascension Day. On the 50th day – Pentecost – the church observes the promised gift of the Spirit.

For the disciples it was a Time of waiting. Their Sense of loss was palpable. Thomas had touched those wounds on Jesus’ hands and his feet. And now Jesus was gone. He told them to wait. Waiting is among the most difficult of human activities.

They asked themselves, “How do we go forward?” They were not where they were but they are not yet where they were going.

Pregnant times

Such times are “pregnant.” They are full of promise, but promise that can not yet be seen.

When I was a youth my best friends went to something called “Outward Bound.” The culminating event was to spend an overnight in the mountains of Colorado with nothing but what was in a small pack. I was envious and disappointed for many years that I had not be able to go on my own “Outward Bound” experience.

I did later experience similar kinds of time-outs. In Cursillo weekends. In silent retreats. In a summer in Europe alone and with little money. In those weeks following my father’s death.

Such times are all around us if we can but have eyes to see them.

Where is our hope?

The in-between times are infused with Grace. They are at the same time both inexpressible loss at what once was but also indescribable joy anticipating what shall be. We are not what we were and not yet what we shall be. It is then that the Spirit becomes palpable.

But in such times our tendency is not to see it, feel it, hear it.

A year ago the sermon I preached on the 7th Sunday of Easter was broadcast in the context of a mushrooming response to the Covid pandemic. We were new to it then. It seemed over-whelming. It seemed to have utterly changed the world we live in. The church was empty.

As I look out today, our church has gathered again. And our sacred space is open to the grass, the sounds, the smells, the vastness of our blossoming spring.

It’s so much easier today to sense the presence of God around us. But God was with us no less then than now. A year ago we couldn’t see today, but we had hope.

The loss around us today is different but the presence of the living God is the same.

As Jesus left his disciples he said, “Wait for the promise of the Father.”

Waiting

When I was in my 20’s I spent a lot of time taking the bus. There were short rides between Denver and Colorado Springs. And there were longer ones. Between Colorado and Wisconsin. Once I was on a bus for 3 days after I was in a train wreck in Montana.

I don’t know how it happened or why, but I came to find great satisfaction in waiting in bus stations, waiting for the slow unfolding of the journey. What I did was I would try to look closely at each person in the station. There were just an amazing array of people taking the bus in those days. Young and old, rich and poor. And with each person I would try to imagine their life-story. And for a few moments, at least, I would fall in love with that person. I could find love because of the richness of their life-story that seemed to surround them.

Today the same sort of thing occurs in airports, but everything is so much faster, so rushed, there doesn’t seem enough time for the same kind of thing to happen.

Waiting takes time. The Father promised. But we have to wait.

Conclusion

In John 17 we heard Jesus today express the Father’s promise. He prayed:

All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

He was leaving. An absence. But the Father’s promise was that the absence would become a more sustaining presence, life itself. The gift of the Spirit.

The Spirit cannot be squashed. As one song puts it, “You can pour cement over it but the blade of grass will break through.”

What feels like a “goodbye” will become a greater joy. It is all around us. Wait and See.

Simone Weil, the author of a book titled Waiting on God wrote:

“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” ― Simone Weil, Simone Weil: An Anthology

As we wait in this time between, pay attention with faith and love. Pay attention to the strands that connect us. Pay attention with silence that wonders with awe. Pay attention with words of kindness. Pay attention as we wait, with hope and love, for the Father’s promise.