Seventh Sunday of Easter/The Sunday after the Ascension
May 20, 2006
Acts 16:16-24
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26
What makes the church special in your life? What makes the church a unique institution in the world? What makes us believe the church makes a difference? And why, if the church is such a special and unique place which makes a difference in our life and in our world do so many people ignore us, or scorn us, or actively dismiss us? These are questions I often ask myself. I have asked them all of my life, and especially now that I am a priest of the Church. I ask them because I sometimes wonder why, throughout my own life, I have been drawn to the worship and ministries of the church. And I wonder why I came to answer a life-long call to religious vocation at a time and place in my life when I was at the top of my teaching career and looking forward to retirement.
I wonder why I left a vocation I loved, at considerable sacrifice to my life circumstance, to become a priest. My friends and colleagues thought I was crazy at the time, but they weren’t surprised. My students, on the other hand, did not think I was crazy at all. That surprised me because I had a fierce regard for separation of church and state in the classroom, but somehow they had perceived me as a person of religious strength and conviction. Perhaps it was because I did not shy away from teaching religious history and the ways the Church has impacted on our government and our legal systems, on political and social agendas, and on our arts and education. Perhaps it was because I was not afraid of engaging the religious issues or questions students raised in our learning together. Perhaps it was because of the risky public stands I took against injustice for the sake of honoring the dignity of all persons in a community and in an educational system which favored only some people, often because they had money or were well-connected.
Whatever the reason, it did not surprise people when I told them I was leaving teaching to become a priest. And that made me come to an important realization. I realized how much the church had always made a difference for good in my life, and I believe that all that I had been as a teacher and all that I would become as a priest was because of the difference it made. From a small child I recognized the church different from the world in ways that were important to me. My experience of worship provided a place of beauty and order in my life, and Sunday school was teaching me how to see the world I inhabited from God’s perspective. Church was the only place I could hear about God and talk about him. I could sing and pray; I could ask important religious questions and share my thoughts and feelings about them without fear of ridicule or scorn or contempt. Church is where I received the strength and courage to live a life of goodness in a world where evil seeks to prevail.
I came to realize that the church is a unique institution in our world. There are any number of reasons why the church is a special and important to the life of those of us who belong to a church and attend it regularly. But if you have ever wondered how or if the church has made a difference in your life, all you need to do is ask these questions: “How would your life be different if you did not go to church? What would your life be lacking if you had never gone to church at all?” How would not having a church in your community change your community? How would not having the church at all change our world?
The answer to these questions is clear, I believe, for those of us who attend church regularly. We who sacrifice our time, our talent and skill, our money and material possessions to serve God’s purpose for the church. It is because the church has made a profound difference in our life, and we believe it makes the same difference in our world. Personally, I don’t know what I would do without the church. I don’t know anywhere else I could go to receive the kind of grace and blessing she can provide. As flawed as she sometimes is, and as difficult as it can be sometimes for us to be together in Christian community, she is the only place we can go in this world to encounter God as God is meant to be engaged in worship, in study, in spiritual disciplines, in mission and in ministry to others. People who do not attend church and people who have never received religious instruction of any kind, will only have a perception of God and religious community as they come to us through the media. Imagine only knowing God or the Church by the agenda driven rhetoric of politicians. Imagine only knowing God or the Church by what you read or hear in news stories, accounts which are more likely than not to reports our failures. Imagine only knowing God or the Church only by the perverse ways they are portrayed in movies or in television programming. Not to say I oppose such media messages. I am a strong advocate of the First Amendment. In fact, I even enjoy a good joke on my Church or my religious beliefs. The difference is that I know the difference. I know the difference the Church makes for good in the life of a practicing Christian. I have seen it with my own eyes; I have heard it with my own ears; I have said it and sung it with my own voice; I have lived it with my own life. I know the difference between the God I worship and the god of political agendas. I know the difference between the God who lives and moves and has his being in me and the god of media hype and entertainment. And I can’t help but wonder if people stay away from the church precisely because their only experience of God or the Church comes from such secular venues.
Still, I wonder why people do not choose to engage in religious worship and ministries of the church. I wonder why only about a third of all people who live in Massachusetts even attend church. And yet, so many of the un-churched want the church to be here for them. They want the church to baptize their babies, they want the church to marry them, and they want the church to bury them. I also wonder about people who want the church to be here for them even though they will only worship in one at Christmas and Easter. I wonder, too, why so many community organizations hold their meetings, or social, or service events in the church’s parish hall. I wonder why people will come to churches for food and clothing and shelter when they are in need. I wonder why priests like myself keep discretionary monies to help people who need gas for their car or to help pay a heating bill before their heat is turned off. I wonder about so many other ministries the church provides in money and material aid and human resources to people in times of natural disaster, in war, in crises of health and famine. Most of all, I wonder why the church is so valued and necessary in a world where people have so little use for it; until they need to use it. I could go on wondering this morning, but it is time to make my point by all my wondering. It is time to reflect on what it means to be the Church in the world, despite the ways we are used, and abused and ignored. It is time to reflect on the Church as it became the body of Christ in the world after Jesus leaves us to ascend to his father in heaven.
In John’s gospel it is clear that Jesus’ ascension will be a critical moment for him and for his disciples. We might compare it to the moment our father took the training wheels off our bicycle and then let go of the seat as we rode by ourselves down the road on just the two wheels beneath us. It might be like the day mom let go of our underbelly as we swam alone to the other side of the pool. We might compare Jesus leaving us on our own in his ascension to the first time we drove a car by ourselves. Or we might compare it to the day a parent or family member or close friend died and left us to go on in this world without them.
A college professor tells about an experience which made him realize what the ascension must have felt like for Jesus’ disciples. Several days after the end of the semester, he walked onto a campus and into a classroom building empty of students. He felt their absence. It felt strange to him. He felt a loss, not just the loss of his students, but the loss of himself. He didn’t know who he was without his students. There was nothing he knew to do in this place without them in it. The professor had an important epiphany in that moment. He realized his life was not about this beautiful campus and these historic buildings. It was not about the classroom, or his books or his computer. His life was about his students. His love for teaching and for his students came from his relationship with them. For a moment he felt alone and empty by their absence. But in that same moment he also felt the deep love he had for them; he realized what a gift he had been given by their real presence in his life. It was a gift which would keep on giving as other students came into his life to share in the process of learning with him. It was in that moment that he came to realize that Jesus’ ascension was a gift. It was the gift of real presence.
Jesus knows that real presence is what will happen to his disciples when he leaves them, and he is preparing them for it. Jesus knows how scary it will be for his disciples to be without him, but he wants them to know that while he must leave them, he will still be present with them. He will be present with them because he is already a part of them, much as God was present in Jesus when he left his father to come to us at his birth. Jesus will no longer be a bodily, human presence to his disciples, but his presence will be no less real—in fact Jesus will become more real than the presence they experienced when he was with them. And Jesus tells us the reason why. Jesus makes it clear that real and lasting presence comes to people in intimate relationships nurtured in mutual love. Anyone who has lost a loved one in death or any other kind of separation knows what real presence feels like. We feel that person more deeply because of our loss, and we continue to honor that person by the ways their real presence continues to influence our life.
For Jesus, the sign of real presence is love. A love which can only come in deep and abiding relationship with another. The kind of presence which lives on in us, even when the subject of our love has left us. Even more because he has left us. This is the work of a disciple of Jesus; this is our work as the people of his Church. We are to be the real presence of Christ to others in the world. Jesus tells us that by our real presence with others we draw people into the real presence of Jesus, whether they choose to have a relationship with him or not. Jesus does not ask us to be successful in our work; especially by the world’s standards of success; rather, Jesus asks us to be faithful. He asks his church to be a reflection of his love and real presence in the world. He wants his church to witness to that love and real presence, so that we can BE the real difference which MAKES a real difference in our world. There is no doubt that the Church makes a real difference in the world. A unique difference. A difference that no other secular institution can imitate.
So, I wonder, why aren’t beating down the doors to come into this place to worship and to share in its benefits; to experience deep love and real presence of relationship with Christ and with each other. God knows how much people yearn for deep love and real presence in their relationships. And how they yearn to validate their life by ceremonies only a church can offer them—like the sacrament of baptism, a wedding ceremony and Christian burial. People know that the Church is often the only place which can and will serve their needs. And while it is true church can provide people with necessities which are absent from their life, and ceremonial rites which no one else can perform, only Christ can give them the real love and relationship they long for by his real presence with us in Christian community.
This is why the Church matters in our world. This is why Jesus continues to need his disciples, people like us in every age, to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world. His real presence. We are the only people Jesus has to be his real presence to others on this earth. We are the Church. We matter in this world. And regardless of what the world thinks about us we will always BE the difference which MAKES a difference in it.