His Ascension, Our Sending (May 17)

Readings, Acts 1:6-14 and John 17:1-18
Image, Bagong Kussudiardja, Ascension, 1983.
 
I built a graph for today’s sermon – look at that, it’s got an x and y axis and everything… I’m way out over my comfort zone here. What we’re tracking here is something fairly simply, being left in charge of something (either of relatively high or low importance) – that’s on the x axis, and then on the y we’re charting our confidence in our capacity to handle the responsibility of being left in charge.
 
So we all love the ones down the bottom left – easy tasks for which we are completely confident. The sweet spot, and by and large, we hope that these fill the bulk of our days. Now when we get around the middle, where our capacity/confidence is just a little below what is required, we might say this is a pretty good spot for learning and growing. We’re going to be stretched but not overwhelmed. And then way down here on the right, this is where we don’t want to be – this is the stuff nightmares are made of where we are pushed out onto stage in front of a full house to play Hamlet without having ever studied the script.
 
We’ve just heard Luke’s account of the ascension, Jesus going ahead of the disciples and instructing them to wait until the coming of the Spirit so that they may carry on and expand his work. At this moment, as they look to the skies seemingly anticipating his immediate and dramatic return… where do you place the disciples on our little table?
 
Fundamental to the Christian faith is this: Jesus didn’t take us with him, but sends us on in his name (and with his Spirit).

 
When we think of the graph, we’re talking about a high level of responsibility – commissioned by Christ to go out and proclaim good news, perform works of justice and mercy, and invite and guide others along this way. And I’m sure many of us would feel – if not always then certainly from time to time – that the line of our capacity and confidence doesn’t quite run up to the heights to meet it.
 
Thankfully, we, like the disciples, are gifted the Spirit. The Spirit descends, and in so doing, creates the bridge between the two lines. The Spirit descends, and in so doing, raises us up with gifts and graces to take up the responsibility laid before us. The disciples may not have felt ready, but with the Spirit they would become ready. We, likewise, will often not feel ready, but indeed, friends we are, for despite the going ahead of Christ, we have not been left orphaned. This is the good news of the gospel: as Christ disciples called to carry on his work we are given meaning and purpose… and as the Spirit’s children we are raised in capacity to see this meaning and purpose (this Christian life) not as terrifying burden or unscalable mountain, but a free and joyful path for which we are well equipped to tread.
 
But there is more to say about what it means to say that fundamental to the Christian faith is that Jesus didn’t take us with him, but sends us on in his name (and with his Spirit).
 
The very base point of Christianity is that we have not been removed from the world. Jesus’ ascension did not result in our own. We (the Christian) are commissioned to live in the age between Christ’s resurrection and return. We are in, if not of, the world. If this is true, then we ought not to devote ourselves to trying to correct this decision as if Christ simply forgot to collect us. I speak less here of those intentional communities of monks and nuns which through scholarship and service often remained in contact and enmeshment with the world more than we’d imagine. Rather I think either of those who seek to remove themselves or their communities out of a loathing of the world, and/or a preoccupation with apocalyptic fervour. I mean here also those who, bashful over the delayed return of some militaristic Christ, seek to compel the world – through sword or law – to be a so-called Christian nation.
 
Such is the brilliance of Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” scene in The Brothers Karamazov. In this famous scene, Christ returns – not in glory, but in the quiet manner that marked his ministry in the gospel. He moves through the town, offering healing and hope. Naturally, the authorities of the Church take him into custody and the Grand Inquisitor interrogates him. Christ, again as he often does in the gospel accounts of his trial, remains silent as the Inquisitor rails. Chief among the charges is that the burden Christ put upon his followers to continue without him, that is to say, the burden of freedom, was simply too much to expect for the masses. Sure, the Inquisitor admits, a few great and holy Christians might be able to actually live into the freedom of discipleship, actually take up the responsibility of the Christian life which is not marked by law but by grace, but they are few and far between. The bulk of humanity need someone to take charge, to provide limits and rules, to give them bread and order… and it is the church, which has taken up this mantle. And people were more than willing to give up the freedom and responsibility and have the church believe on their behalf and simply tell them what to do (even if this was mostly what not to do). And having received this authority, the Inquisitor builds to pronounce, the Church is not ready to hand the throne back over to Christ, who had his chance, but threw it away in this misguided belief in the freedom of conscious.
 
As the scene concludes, the accused Christ stands, silently, and kisses the Inquisitor, who – overcome by an act of pure grace – but unable to change his ways bellows: Go and do not come back at all ... do not come at all ...ever, ever!’ And he releases [Jesus] into the town’s dark streets and squares.
 
Here lies the danger inherent in the ascension, in the freedom given to the Christian in the power of the Spirit… that we, whether as individuals or as an institution, might seek instead security and stability won through the use of worldly might. That, realising the inability to remove ourselves from the world, we might seek to remove the world from the world. That in fear or apathy we might seek to police a kind of purity where we seek to expel those works of art, forms of culture, ways of being, or even people and communities, that we judge to be anathema with our vision of earth as it is in heaven.
 
With the ascension we see, we have not been removed from the world, and we ought not to devote ourselves to trying to correct this decision as if Christ simply forgot to collect us. Rather we ought to devote ourselves to living lives that resemble what Christ’s would have had he not ascended (even as we recognise - and will celebrate next week at Pentecost - that it is the ascension that makes this kind of a life possible). We honour the ascension by living lives of humble service, generous mercy, a tenacious love of justice, a devout commitment to neighbourliness, a fervour for community, worship, and joyful proclamation of the One who sent us out love and serve the world to the glory of God and flourishing of neighbour.