This past Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension. On Ascension we commemorate that moment when Jesus took the Disciples, 40 days after his Resurrection, out to the Mount of Olives and gave them some final words, some last wisdom, and then ascended up into heaven.
This moment was a second death for the Disciples. The first death was on Good Friday, and they had begun the process of grieving when their grief was interrupted by the Resurrection. In the following 40 days they had encounters with Jesus, wild and wonderful experiences of the Risen Lord with them in person, in the flesh. We heard many of those stories at the beginning of the Easter season. Like Easter Sunday when Mary Magdalene had the experience of encountering Jesus by the empty tomb. We heard both John and Luke’s versions of the Disciples gathered together in a locked room in their fear, and Jesus appeared among them and showed them his wounds. There are other stories, like the road to Emmaus when two Disciples were walking and Jesus appeared to them. They did not know it was him, but in the breaking of the bread they realized that Jesus had been with them that entire time. Stories like the Disciples going back to work on the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus calling them from the shore in the early morning and feeding them some freshly cooked fish. There are other stories that we don’t have. They were not recorded in the Gospels, but we do hear tell of them.
And we have this final Resurrection experience where Jesus meets the Disciples at the Mount of Olives. He says this is it. I am going back. You are not going to see me again like that. This is the second death, and the Disciples start that grieving process again. Like so many of us in grief, their first response is just to be stuck. They just stand there, looking up. It takes awhile, but finally some angels come along and say, what are you looking at? Jesus is gone. You need to get out of here.
The next thing the Disciples do is something normal as we process grief, and try to go back to the way it was before. We pretend the loss didn’t happen. We try to recreate the past, as if we could. What do the Disciples do? They say there used to be twelve of us. We lost one, that Judas guy, so let’s pick a new Judas. So they create a criteria for the next Disciple. The person had to be with them from the beginning, which I find a fascinating detail. The way I had always imagined this as a kid, was that Jesus called his twelve Disciples, and then went out and started preaching and other folks came along for the ride. But that’s not what the Acts of the Apostles says. It says there are a whole bunch of other people there from the very beginning, and one of them is going to be one of the twelve. There are so many people that there are options they can pick from. The Disciples are trying to go back. They are trying to imagine as if they could go back in time and be they way they were.
But here is the problem: you can never go back. You cannot recreate the past. What the Disciples are in is not a new beginning, but rather a liminal in-between time between the Ascension and Pentecost. Even though it is ten days, they have no idea what is going to happen. Next week we will hear the story of how the Holy Spirit came down and lit a fire underneath them to go out into the world and do all kinds of wonderful and amazing works. But they are not there yet. Right now they are in this moment of deep grief, trying to recreate what once was.
What is true for them is true for us. We do the same thing. When we have loss, we so often try to grasp at the world as it once was, whether it is the loss of a loved one, or the loss of some part of our life. We do it as a community, as a country and long for the past. We do it as a church. We long for a church that once was, the booming church of the 1950s that I have heard great things about. Or perhaps the church of the 80s or 90s, which was fantastic. The church before the pandemic, the church of February 2020 was great. I loved it. But it is gone. That ship has sailed. We can’t recreate the past. Instead, what we do is move forward
It's not that the past is completely gone, there is no discontinuity. We bring forth elements of the past, but we can’t recreate it. So what we do is build upon it. The Disciples cannot recreate what their life was like when Jesus was with them, but what they can do is move forward in faith, pulling forward the best of that life. They can keep grounded as the Holy Spirit leads them, stay grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Stay grounded in the way of love that Jesus taught them and Jesus showed them through his kindness, compassion, and healing. They can pull all of that forward, but it will not look the same, it will not be the same. It will be something new and something wonderful, guided by the Holy Spirit.
You already know the ways it is going to shift because you have been hearing that story throughout this Easter season. The Lectionary does this weird thing by messing up the chronology. During the early Easter season we were hearing stories about what the early Church was like in the Acts of the Apostles, but all of those stories are after Pentecost. Now we have gone back. Thursday we heard about the Ascension, today we hear about the in-between time, and next Sunday we will hear about Pentecost. But you know what is going to happen, and that is that the Disciples will find out about the power of the Holy Spirit that will lead them in new ways. Not ways that are discontinuous from Jesus, but ways that build on what Jesus was doing. Last week we heard the story of the way Peter finally comes to realize that Jesus’s message of love, peace, justice, mercy, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion is not just for him and people like him. It is for the Gentiles also. So Peter realizes that they, too, can be baptized. God’s message of love is for all people and all creation. That is different from what they had experienced when it was just the twelve of them with Jesus. But it builds on it in ways that makes so much sense from everything that Jesus showed us.
That is the model for us as we move forward, individually, as a country, as a church. Whatever loss we have experienced, we cannot rebuild it the way it was. It is not possible. But what we can do instead is move forward in faith, continuing to follow the way of love, not as it was, but as it is. What we can do is follow the Holy Spirit and all the wonderful and wild ways the Spirit is moving in this world, lighting a fire under us to go out and bring the message of love and peace and kindness and compassion and forgiveness to a world that so desperately needs it.
The reason we try to go back and rebuild the past is because there is comfort in doing so. We are trying to fill some kind of need in our lives, but the real way to feel that need is through love. We can share that love, we can bring that love to this world that so desperately needs it. We can look for the ways the Holy Spirit is blowing, and we can follow along. Keep doing what Jesus did. Keep loving this world. Keep caring for this world, and we can join in on that good work.
AMEN.
