Rev. Jenny Shultz
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Ascension of the Lord
Acts 1:1-11
Living the “In Between Life”
“How we spend our days”, according to Annie Dillard, “is how we spend our lives.”1 So the question is, if not Life itself, what is the meaning of the “in between time” that captures most of our moments, most of our existence?
If how we spend our days is, in fact, how we spend our lives2 then I spend my life in the checkout line at the grocery store, speeding up and down the aisles looking for the the last ingredient of my grandmother’s homemade apple pie which is probably, unfortunately, already in my basket. Before the steering wheel of my car driving my son to the nanny’s house where he will spend most of his in between time: he’ll fall and learn that he can get back up, he’ll bite a friend and learn that sometimes they bite back, he’ll build a castle out of dirt and understand that his hands were meant to engage the Earth, he’ll paint a butterfly and call it Mommy because he is learning to share his love with other living things…
Meanwhile I will sit, again, at 10 and 2, along 1-40 driving to the coffee shop where I will see Andrew who knows that I want a decaf iced americano with 3 shots, and then if it’s Wednesday morning I’ll see Bill Wright with his former colleagues and, first, learn that this weekend is he and Anne’s 60th wedding anniversary which they are celebrating today with their kids in VA, and second, i’ll allow my subconscious the luxury of imagining that I have any idea what he and his science buddies are talking about, quantum physics something..., then i’ll drive to the church, and on certain days after a while my car will take me, again, to the coffee shop- and this time I’ll see the woman that brings her laptop every day, drinks an espresso and then a cappuccino, and we’ll smile and exchange pleasantries, and then go back to work.
Then upon leaving church, I”ll drive back to the grocery store, speed up and down the narrow aisles of whole foods building a meal in my head as I pedal past my subconscious who’s busy staring down the dark chocolate bars found on every end cap, and then I’ll wait, again, in the checkout line, in the long line leaving the parking lot, at the stoplight… trying to discern if I should pull out the $10 from my purse to give to the army vet who is standing on the corner… waiting himself… then the light will turn green, so I’ll drive on by leaving my subconscious on the corner to have a meaningful conversation with the tattered man in my rearview mirror.
I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of my life waiting, watching, passing by, speeding past, considering an option, but watching as it slowly fades away in the rearview mirror, walking fast, running even, leaving my subconscious to do the work of the present that my mind has already negotiated away, yielding it to the past.
What is life, if not the in between time?
Shauna Niequist, author of Cold Tangerines, writes this in the foreword of Jeff Goins book, The In Between:
“What we have is time. And what we do is waste it. Waiting for those big spectacular moments. We think that something’s about to happen- something enormous and newsworthy, but for most of us it isn’t. This is what I know: The big moments are the tiny moments. The breakthroughs are often silent, and they happen in the most unassuming of spaces.”3
Today is Ascension Sunday, often an overlooked holy moment in the life of the church, in the planning of the preacher as it is bookended by the holier days of our liturgical calendar…Easter on one side which it fulfills and Pentecost on the other which it anticipates. It may actually be intentionally overlooked by some of us theological types as we progressives tend to have difficulty with the notion that Jesus, or any of the other four individuals mentioned in the scriptures who were said to have been lifted into the sky, actually ascended into the “Heavens” - were taken up into the clouds. Or we could just say that many progressives have a hard time believing anything that we can’t see, touch, or prove… But that is for another sermon!
The best and most meaningful way that most of us have come to experience this idea as having spiritual meaning and authority for us is through its deeply metaphorical invitation to delve into the depths of the incarnation. Marcus Borg reminds us that, “because the risen and ascended Jesus is 'one with God,' he (like God) can be experienced anywhere. Jesus is no longer restricted or confined to time and space, as he was during his historical lifetime. Rather, like the God whom he knew in his own experience, he continues to be known in the experience of his followers4…. in your life and mine, in our daily tiny moments that often do lift our feet from the ground.
Another example, using language from Matthew's Gospel, is for Christians to think of the risen and ascended Christ as Immanuel--'God with us'.5
We know that the book of Acts is a written testament of the Acts of the Holy Spirit in the church, and really begins with the holy fire magic of Pentecost the true birth of the Church and her presence in all the Earth. However, Pentecost doesn’t happen until the 2nd chapter of Acts. What we find “in between” chapter 1, verse 1 and Chapter 2, verse 1 - proceeding this holy fire activity is actually the holy manna of the church’s birth, the tiny moments along the way that prove as kindling for the prophetic flames that will burst into the sky, that will reach across oceans and ethnicities, that will speak of the holy reign of Christ that is to come, for one and for all. But not yet… Jesus said, not yet.
These tiny moments, we read in Acts chapter 1 are about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the time that he was taken from this Earth at last. These tiny moments, in between, to which you have been my witnesses.. He said, “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. But not yet… 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.”6 But not yet. So if not yet, then what now?
What is life, if not the in between time?
Let’s listen now as Shauna Niequist testifies to this holy in between time once again,
"I sat with an old friend today. She and her husband have endured unimaginable loss throughout the course of their lives, and another very fresh loss in these last months. We sat in the golden fading light of a Chicago spring. Our kids ran around and around the screen porch, and the grass was impossibly green, almost glowing. And in the midst of all that wild and lush beauty, we sat facing one another and she told me all the particulars of that most recent loss. What I heard in her voice stunned me, moved me, instructed me. She was present to it, unafraid. She told me about it unflinchingly, and what I realized was that she decided a long time ago that she wasn't’ going to wait for perfect and she wasn’t numbing herself against the worst case scenario. She had seen the worst case scenario more times over than any of us should have to.
What I saw in her was a vision for how I want to live: In the midst of one of her darkest seasons, twisted with uncertainty, bruised by the words of former friends, she sat with me present and unarmed by busyness. She looked in my eyes and told me they’d be fine. She told me sweet and funny things about her kids, asked me about myself. She wasn’t waiting for the good part. She knows that these are all the good parts even while they’re the bad parts. She wasn’t shut down, going through the motions. Sh wasn’t holding tight until this season passed.She was right there with me, right there with her kids, right in all the glory and pain and mess and beauty of a spring night in between everything.”7
Theologian Jeffrey Peterson-Davis reminds us that hearing this commission while peering up into the sky, reaching for the feet of Jesus that he might lift them too, was quite staggering for Jesus’ friends. Bearing witness to Christ in a world that suffers is overwhelming. We have trouble even imagining our own communities being free from hunger and poverty, racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, violence, from undue suffering and illness. But the final words of Jesus to his followers were that they will bear witness to him throughout the world.8
With mouths still gaping open, eyes squinted under the bright sun’s bedazzling glow, the men in white asked them’ Why are you still standing here looking up at Heaven?” As if to say, “what are you waiting for? Waiting on? Don't give up, don’t shut down, or just go through the motions, don’t just hold on tight until the season passes, but get in there, into the world, where your hands can engage the dirt, where you’ll learn that when you fall you can get back up again, that even in your darkest season of life, you can look at the world - eyes wide open and proclaim that you will be fine… that Christ is coming, again, in the same way that he was raised up from us.
I believe that as Jesus' feet lifted from the ground, as he ascended into the liminal spaces of our lives where time and distance have no rule, where his presence would permeate the very air we breathe, he took a little bit of each of us with him, like seeds that when looking out over the broken and embattled horizon of humanity he would scatter across the Earth, watering it with one tiny moment at a time...with each smile exchanged between strangers standing Side by side in the grocery store checkout line, and every time we are moved to be present with those standing on the corners of our lives who would otherwise fade into the distance of our rear view mirrors, each and every time the burden of shame is lifted from a young woman’s soul as she looks fully into the mirror at a wholesome self worthy of all that is love around her, with every promise fulfilled and every wounded heart forgiven, the ascended Jesus is present with us.
Jesus said the Holy Spirit power will come upon you, and the world will be transformed with one giant flame after another… not yet, but in the days to come. And As you wait, and watch, listen and learn...do so with the eyes of Jesus wide open to the possibilities of grace and justice, peace and proclamation, with the heart of Jesus, beating consistently with the prophetic hope that each moment seized in love is a moment of holy transformation for a broken and bewildered people, with the hands and feet of Jesus, never tiring of waiting in line, never giving up to the despair, or pride or envy or greed...working continuously as a shepherd caring for the sheep in his care. Friends, as we wait upon the Lord, let us wait boldly, not spending our moments wishing we had been there, had done that, had looked closer, listened longer, been moved to action.
If we listen, right now, there are dazzling white robed voices all around us, calling us to the front lines of our lives, pleading for us to open our eyes to stop yielding our present to the past: some are perched on our shoulders, some peering up at us with childlike wonder, some looking back at us through the rearview mirror as we continue to drive right on by.
Friends, Pentecost is coming! It will be here before we know it, the trumpets will sound, tongues will confess, red flowing robes will mark the church's birth. But on the dawn of this great day is an opportunity to live the "in between life", to put waiting to action, to allow your subconscious to lift into the sky, to seed the Earth one tiny moment at a time as witnesses to all that was and is and is to come.
This is what I know: The big moments are the tiny moments. The breakthroughs are often silent, and they happen in the most unassuming of spaces.”9
Go now into life’s tiny moments, giving yourself one seed at a time.
May it be so this day and all of our days. Amen.
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Bibliography:
1. Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (New York, Harper Collins, 1989).
2. Ibid.
3. Goins, Jeff. The In Between: Embracing the Tension between Now and the Next Big Thing. (Moody Publishers; New Edition,
July 23, 2013), forward by Shauna Niequist.
5. Matthew 1:23, NRSV
6. Acts 1:1-8, NRSV
7. Goins, The In Between, Forward by Shauna Niequist.
8. Peterson-Davis, Jeffrey, Ascension of the Lord, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, Lent through Eastertide: Preaching the
Revised Common Lectionary (Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).
9. Goins, The In Between, Forward by Shauna Niequist.
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