Seventh Sunday of Easter/Ascension
May 4, 2008
Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11
“Famous last words.” You’ve heard the saying I am sure. Maybe you have even said these words to someone in a fit of sarcasm. But the saying itself literally refers to the last words people really speak before they die. I recently read somewhere that Elvis Presley’s famous last words were, “I’m going to the bathroom to read.” Well, I didn’t think I wanted to use that example in my sermon, so I went to a website called “Famous Last Words.” I looked through pages and pages of them thinking that I might find one for this sermon but I spent so much time that I finally decided I just had to stop and start writing it. I can’t say that I recommend this site to you, unless you really are interested in the last words of famous and not-so-famous people. But I highly recommend the famous last words of Jesus, the words he spoke before he died on the cross, and the words he speaks in our gospel account today just before he ascends into heaven. I am particularly moved by the last comment Jesus makes in this passage from scripture: “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.”
Last Tuesday at our weekly clergy bible study these words leapt at me from the page. I told my clergy colleagues how particularly moved I was by Jesus’ final petition to God to watch over his disciples. Jesus’ last words show us how deeply Jesus cared for them and how concerned he was that they would be okay after he left them to ascend to his Father. As we discussed other passages in our lectionary text, I kept wondering why I remained so fixed on these words; why they continued to have such an impact on me. Then all of a sudden it hit me. These last words of Jesus were so much like the last lucid words my own father spoke to me shortly before he left me to go to God.
I remember the day well. It was the day I took him to the hospital for his liver biopsy. I remember that I waited anxiously for the results. It didn’t take long for his surgeon to come to me to tell me the bad news. Extremely aggressive and invasive cancer. He estimated that my father had six weeks to six months to live. He died six days later. For the last five of those days my father was in a medically-induced coma brought on by the large amount of drugs he requested to relieve his pain. But on the day of his biopsy, my dad was still very much present to me and well aware of the gravity of his prognosis. As you might imagine, I was beside myself about what I might say to him. I had no words. I just didn’t know what one should say to someone who had just been told he would soon die, no less my own father. And I could feel myself becoming more stoical with every step as I walked toward the recovery room to see him.
As I entered the room it was obvious that my dad was anxiously waiting to see me. He looked straight at me, and before I even got to his bedside he said these words: “Honey, are you going to be all right.” “Are YOU going to be all right.” Of all the words my dad could have spoken to me, I could not have imagined these. After all, he had just been given a death sentence, but the only thing he cared about was whether I would be all right without him.
As you might imagine, this was a profound moment of grace for me. A moment which continues to make me feel so totally loved and deeply cared for. It is a moment which seems to transcend the capabilities of human love to show us a love only God can give. And yet, it is a love we humans are capable of. I felt it in that moment when my father spoke to me. The kind of love which is selfless and self-giving; a protective love concerned for our safety and well-being. A love which puts aside its own needs for the needs of others. The kind of love Jesus has for his disciples; the kind of love my father had for me. And I have come to realize that at that moment, when my father said to me, “Honey, are you going to be all right,” he became Jesus to me. And then he was gone. But he left me with a moment of grace which will last throughout my life. A moment which continues to remind me how much I am loved by my heavenly Father, a Father who continues to bring his love to us by the ways we bring his love to each other.
In our gospel lesson today Jesus shows us that same love for his disciples. We are privileged to overhear his conversation with God just before he leaves this earth. It is a private moment, a tender moment in which Jesus lets God know just how much he loves his disciples and how much he wants them to be all right when he leaves them. But if we listen closely, we can hear how much Jesus loves all of his disciples; the ones who journeyed with him in his life and each of us who journey with him by faith in our own life. His last words are a prayer of petition to God that he will watch over his disciples as we carry on his mission and ministry to the world without him.
Jesus asks four things of his Father for the sake of his disciples. He asks God to protect them; he asks God to help them take ownership of the ministry he has modeled for them and given to them. He asks God to care for them so that they can care for each other and for the people God gives to them to care for. Finally, he asks God to make his disciples one as he and his Father are one, and he wants them to be unified in their vision and their purpose for serving God in the world, even when they disagree about how God’s vision and purpose might be fulfilled. Jesus asks all these things so that his disciples can bring honor to him and to God by the ways they reveal them to others by their own life and ministry. One thing is clear to me in Jesus’ last words; he wants his disciples to love the world as he loves us, so that we can bring the world to love.
Imagine what the world would be like if we all knew we were so absolutely loved. Imagine how we might treat one another if we cared for each other as God cares for us. Imagine a world where diverse people of race and color, creed and ethnicity accept each other for the many things we have in common, rather than dismiss each other for our superficial differences. Imagine people honoring each other for who they are, rather than for who we think they should be. Imagine a world where people strive to live as one people, in unity with each other for our common good. Well, Jesus does not want us only to imagine this kind of life; he wants us to live it. But he knows how difficult that can be in a world like ours. This is why Jesus asks God to watch over his disciples. Jesus wants us to know that when the world cannot love us God loves us unconditionally; when the world does not care about us, or for us, God continues to care deeply about us, and for us; when the world cannot honor us for who we are, Jesus wants us to know that God honors us completely for the person he created us to be. And when our divisions and our divisiveness are tearing us apart, God wants us to know that we are one in him and one with all people, because he created us. Like a father, we belong to him, and like brothers and sisters we belong to each other. Most of all Jesus wants us to know that when the world cannot live up to the good that God wants for us in Creation, we are still going to be “all right.”
Jesus knows it is not easy for us to remember how completely God loves us and how deeply he cares. And it’s difficult to believe that we are going to “all right” when we suffer the uses and abuses of our world. But this is the same message Peter feels he must get across to his new congregations of believers who gather in Jesus’ name not long after his ascension. And it is no coincidence that Peter’s words echo the last words Jesus speaks to God on behalf of his disciples. Words meant to assure Peter’s new and vulnerable converts to Christianity that even as they suffer and die for the sake of the Gospel; even as they are ridiculed and scorned for bringing God’s message of love and hope and salvation to a world desperately needing to hear them and live by them, they are going to be “all right.”
“The Spirit of God rests upon you,” says Peter. “You are under the mighty hand of God.” Peter address the people of his congregation, “Beloved,” a name which identifies people who belong to each other because they are loved. He reminds us that God has given us “authority” to speak and act on God’s behalf—to take ownership of our faith and to live boldly in it. Peter addresses our fear and anxiety in living the life of a disciple, a life so countercultural to the values and beliefs of our world that we can and often do suffer various kinds of persecution. And he reminds us that we can lay our fear and anxiety on our God who will bear them with us because he truly cares about our well-being. And finally, Peter reminds us of the glory that we are being called to when we honor God by living a life of faith. He wants us to know that God’s glory is revealed to the world every time we say the right thing, every time we do the good thing and every time we resist the hurtful, or harmful, or deadly thing. When we are able to live our life to the honor and glory of God’s name, we not only reveal God to others, we can feel God’s glory in us. And that is a moment of grace. A moment when we truly know that we are “all right” because we are right with God. This is the message of The Ascension.
Today, on this third day after he returns to his Father, we revisit Jesus’ ascension, to remember that God loves us and honors us more than we could ever ask for, or imagine. Because by taking Jesus back to himself he shows us that Ascension is not so much about our faith in God as it is about God’s faith in us. Faith that once we are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism we will one day awaken to that Spirit within us to become the disciples Jesus is calling us to be so that we can do the work God is calling us to do to bring his kingdom closer to our world. So what are we waiting for, we who are already sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism?
Two men dressed in white robes ask the same question as they observe Jesus’ starry-eyed disciples gazing up at the sky after his ascension. “Why do you stand here looking up toward heaven?” You ought to know that people who stand around gazing into heaven are no earthly good. So, get busy. You have work to do. Jesus may be gone from us, but we’re going to be “all right.”