Sermons

May 4, 2008 7th Sunday after Easter – Ascension Sunday

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church
Albuquerque, New Mexico
May 4, 2008 7th Sunday after Easter – Ascension Sunday
Preacher: Christopher McLaren
Text: Acts 1: 6-14, Psalm 68: 1-10, 33-36, I Peter 4: 12-14, 5:6-11, John 17: 1-11
Theme: The Body of Christ is Us

Hiking with Jesus through the olive groves outside Jerusalem, the followers of Jesus were soaking in the words of the kingdom from their beloved teacher and friend. These were heady, heart-filled days in the presence of the Risen One. Who could have imagined it, the one who was dead had come back to them in a new and startling way. He had presented himself to them alive, no matter that mind and heart could only try to comprehend such a marvelous mystery.

Forty days they’d been bumping into the Risen One, puzzling over his words, marveling at his resurrected body, being surprised by his walking through walls, wondering what was next. And then it happened, he left them standing there in the orchard, whisked away on clouds and wind and mystery. I wonder did they try to hold on, did they grab at his legs and feet as he rose? Did they try to tether the power of God to terra firma? This was not a mass ascension at Balloon Fiesta Park, this was a lone ascension, and there was no basket to climb into and tag along. No ropes to hang onto and be carried into heaven. No Jesus, the Risen One was gone. Where did he go?

Where did he go, the thirty-something, muscular young man, with his wisdom stories? Where did he go, my love, the crucified one, the healer of souls, the one who laughed with us at dinner and stunned us with his servanthood. Where did he go?

Look into the clouds in search of him. Scan the heavens. Scramble the jets. Pull up the radar. We must try to find him, to bring him back, to drag that glorious body back to earth. How can we live without the one who was made alive again? How can we live without the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell? But there is more to it, it was not only the divine that we discovered but the fullness of humanity in this Risen One. Our humanity has been lifted into heaven, the most alive humanity ever known has just escaped. How could they have let Christ escape? How can we live without this new humanity, our humanity?

We weren’t prepared for this disappearing act, or were we? Think about the stories that we’ve been listening to since Easter. Thomas, proof demanding Thomas, challenged us to believe without the ability to touch the body of our beloved. There are other ways of seeing and believing. On the road to Emmaus we learned that we meet Christ every time the community gathers to break open the scriptures, every time we share a meal. We discover Christ anew in the breaking of the bread and are nourished by Christ’s presence. In Jesus’ tender conversation with Phillip, we heard Jesus disclose, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” The Christian community that wrote these words and lived by them had come to the wild realization that the beloved and absent friend was none other than God. What is more those who experienced the Risen One began to talk about how even in Christ’s absence they were connected to him, sustained, nourished and grounded in a new source of energy and hope. So perhaps we were prepared for Jesus’ disappearing act after all. The witness of our ancestors in the faith have been telling us in Gospel form what it means to be connected to Christ in his absence, how our lives have meaning even after Jesus has been allowed to escape. The faithful stories we have pondered over the last weeks encourage us to trust our absent lover, to realize that Christ is not far from each one of us. For `In him we live and move and have our being', as Paul proclaimed to the Athenians.

But where did he go? What about his absence? What about his body, his wonderfully rich humanity? We are not allowed to get hung-up on this point. No, the message of the angels is clear, “ 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.”

In Ephesians Paul tells us that Christ’s body is put to good use, in that it is seated at the right hand of God, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the age to come. And that God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” Our humanity is seated next to God in the person Christ, our humanity is now represented, no more than that, it has been taken into God. God loved our humanity so much that our humanity has been welcomed into God.

But while our humanity, our body, has been taken to God, Christ’s body is now found on earth. The body of Christ is not only sitting next to God on high it is here because the church is Christ’s body. We are Christ’s body here and now. In Christ there has been this fantastic invasion of the body switchers. You are Christ’s body but not just you alone, WE are Christ’s body. We the lovers of Christ, the worshipers of St. Michael’s are the living body of Christ. Together we make up the mystical body of Christ here and now in this place. That is what this wonderful passage in Acts is telling us. When we come together we are Christ’s body, we are Christ’s witnesses in the world, we are the chosen vessels of God’s Spirit to spread his kingdom anew in the world.

We are Christ’s body gathered each week in this place of worship. We the people of God physically gathered to hear scripture with our ears, to pray with our voices and bodies, to sing our lungs out with accordions or pianos or violins leading the way, to physically give thanks to God for the blessings of this life – yes both the easy blessings and the hard ones.

We are Christ’s body gathering to feast at a table that is open to all who are seeking the presence of the Risen One in their lives and hearts and bodies. Through taste and touch, and hands out stretched we enact a moment of the kingdom of God, feasting in the divine presence with others that we may or may not see eye to eye with but we can love in the power of the Spirit, in the compassion of Christ around the altar of God’s blessing.

We are Christ’s body when we celebrate the passage of our young people from childhood to manhood and womanhood as we did last week. When we feel in our very bones the importance of passing on to the next generation the truthful story of the Risen One that it might illumine their path, fire their imaginations, loose their creativity, and ground them in God’s love.

We are Christ’s body when we gather to give Christ’s new friends a holy bath, washing them in the waters of life that recall our beloved’s dying and rising to life anew. To be washed in one’s Body in the midst of God’s people is intended to be an experience of new birth, the washing away of the old and the claiming of a new birth-right. A birth that marks one as Christ’s own forever and joins them to the body of Christ.

We are Christ’s body when we gather to offer food to those who need it. Nourishing their body just as Jesus nourished those in need near him. Caring for the whole person is part of what it means to be God’s witnesses in Albuquerque, in New Mexico, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

We are Christ’s body when we gather to anoint and prayer for the sick in our midst, recognizing the presence of Christ in their physical body. We commit ourselves to minister to them, in body and spirit, attempting to live out the deep compassion and mercy of Christ. And in death we celebrate the life that was lived in that body, animated by God’s breath, a living prayer to the creator.

We are Christ’s body when we gather to forgive sins – even in private confession the whole church is present, proclaiming the good news of Christ, go in peace your sins are forgiven, don’t be held hostage to the past, you have a future with God. We are Christ’s body when we live as forgiven and forgiving people.

We are Christ’s body when we gather to praise God for those who are called to lead in this place just as we will soon at the ordinations of Daniel and Judith. In gathering around them, in seeing hands laid upon their bodies, we will recognize in them the blessing and pain of leadership based on self-giving service. We will confirm in them the calling to lead the friends of Christ with a servant’s heart just as Jesus did.
Here in our gathering, eating, washing, proclaiming, anointing, praying, singing, listening, forgiving, healing, burying we are Christ’s own body, Love’s own body, taken, blessed, broken and given for the life of the world. And that my friends is a great way to kill a Sunday morning, just being the body of Christ around this ancient breakfast table.
The angels were right to say, don’t stand around looking up into the sky. The Body of Christ is not only gone, it has been smuggled back into the world through us. We are the Body of Christ, we are the eyes and ears, and legs and arms and feet and minds and faces and hearts of Christ’s love. Christ’s Body is us and we are Christ’s.
It is your body and mine that are blessed to receive the gift of the Spirit’s empowering. May the Spirit animate your body, enliven your mind, fire your heart. May the Spirit compel you out into the world, to heal, to forgive, to aid, to bless, to love in Christ’s name. This is the message of the Ascension and Christ’s missing body. By God’s grace may we truly be what we are called to be, Christ’s Body in this world. And may the circle of Christ’s love continue to expand through us, at St. Michael’s, in Albuquerque, in New Mexico, in the Southwest, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

I wish to acknowledge my deep debt to Juan Oliver for his excellent writing on the Ascension that inspired me and connected with what I desired to proclaim in this sermon.