"New Cosmology: Meeting God on the Way
Down"
I told my good wedding buddy Sue Roberts I was going to preach on the
old "three-story universe" this morning: heaven above, hell
below, earth crushed in between. She responded, "Well, I hope you
don’t leave us there!" And that seems precisely the way it was
for these apostles the Day of Ascension last Thursday. Suddenly Jesus,
-- to the end proving himself alive to us doubters, -- summoning us to
the "kingdom of God," to the life and the work of justice and
peace he is leaving to us, -- ordering us to remain in Jerusalem, big
bad city and scene of the crime against him, until we are baptized
again, "clothed with power from on high," by some mystery he
keeps calling "Holy Spirit," – suddenly Jesus, -- just as we
are hoping to get him to say that his resurrection means restoration to
national safety and security for us, -- suddenly Jesus, as we are
watching, is lifted up once again! (He told us that about his
crucifixion as well.)
Jesus disappears behind a passing cloud. Wyatt Hedrick took me to the
UNR baseball game Friday, where the weather changed every inning. I have
to say, when the fluffy white clouds finally nestled on top of "the
pea vine," I felt transported, too! The closest I’ll ever get to
ascending! Don’t you love how this note on our Call to Worship calls
the Ascension "a time to celebrate the clouds and the cycles of
moisture as it is drawn up into the sky and then falls again as
nourishing rain!" Anyway, Jesus disappears – Anyone remember the
exact time it was Thursday? Anyone watching? – into this cloud, and we
are left there with OUR heads in the clouds, gazing up into heaven, just
as Sue Roberts feared, waiting for Jesus’ next act, his next
sleight-of-life miracle for us from his heavenly dwelling-place up
above, -- whereas the only "up" Jesus truly is, is "up to
us!"
Jesus is up to us. We are "up" and at bat for Jesus. We are
all Jesus has to show for his life and his work. Somebody asks Jesus
what his plan-B is. He just keeps pointing to us. We feel like
last-minute, late-inning replacements, relievers and closers, hanging in
there with him for dear life. Without us, the body of Christ has no
eyes, no ears, no vision, no voice – We are it! Christ’s own
representatives on this earth! That is the promise of Holy Spirit: that
Jesus, the divine child, in communion with the parent we call
"God," will make their final dwelling-place in us! Literally,
to "re-mind" us, -- to give us the mind of Jesus himself –
"What Would Jesus Do?" "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" -- as
well as his heart, his body, his soul, – so that Jesus may be made
present again, re-presented, in the life and the works we do in his
name! And just as happened Friday, we never know when the home team will
score eleven runs in the eighth.
That’s why we call next Sunday, Day of Pentecost, the birthday of
the church: the body of Christ comes alive as Jesus returns, with God,
-- even a Trinity, a three-sided way of being, --no longer dwelling some
faraway place on high, -- with pie in the sky by and by -- but dwelling
right here in and with us, -- above us, below us, on every side of us,
and of all peoples, to the very ends of this earth -- by the invincible
and irresistible passion and power of Holy Spirit! So wear a "shade
of red," passionate, powerful color. When Julie and I lived in
rural northern Michigan just after the riots in Detroit, they told us
during the month of deer season in particular, when we took our trash to
the dump, WEAR RED AND WHISTLE each moment you’re out of the car! So
maybe no one will shoot you!
Last December I could not believe they were holding a gun show the
week before Christmas. So I stood out in front of the convention center,
all by myself, holding this sign as people drove in: "Guns +
Christmas = ???" I didn’t think, of course, I was doing any good,
only what I could imagine that Jesus would do. Then yesterday’s
headlines announce the arrests of a 14 suspects selling at gun shows
illegal things that kill us! Let’s at least kill and be killed
legally, – right?
So next Sunday, wear red and whistle – on the wind of the Holy
Spirit! Bring a gift for the church! Some kind of supplies, or some kind
of surprise. Please bring, if you are able, your "Estimate of
Giving" form, and remember, Jesus has no plan but us, to see that
the very life and works, the words and the deeds, of Jesus go on, -- not
only the works that he did, he says, but even greater works than his!
Precisely because. in this image of the Ascension, Jesus clears out of
our way! Jesus makes space for us to be his body, the Church, bringing
new life to the world, bringing the promise of heaven on earth, --
"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven!" – each and every one of us playing a part of that body,
taking a part in the ministry and the mission of every believer in Jesus
as the Christ. So come and receive a symbolic stole next Sunday, sign of
your very own place in the ministry and the mission of this
out-of-the-clouds and way down-to-earth "downtown,"
"progressive" congregation of the body of Christ.
For, sisters and brothers of the "new cosmology," -- of the
new story of who we are and how we get here, in relation to who the
earth is and how she gets here, and how our lives and hers are and
forever will be all-of-a-piece with each other, -- we know the God of
the "old cosmology" no longer hangs out far above us in heaven
somewhere and sometime. That old Soviet cosmonaut got it right! God is
not to be found "up there." God is once and forever "on
the way down," all the way down, -- to rise again only in the very
depths of both Earth and us. God, the creation and the resources of God,
are broken as bread, are poured out as wine.
We do not only ask, as in the youth column of the Visitor, "Whassup?"
with God, but also "Whassdown?" For we have been to the moon!
We have seen the pictures! We don’t even need to go there again. We
believe what we have seen! We have seen the earth as God made her, as
God has been loving and shaping and nurturing her, and us, for hundreds
of billions of years! We know there is nothing, no one,
"outside" the earth. Every last thing, every atom, that is of
the earth in any form now has been, and will be, of this earth forever!
Where else are we to go? Where else are we to go. We have seen how blue,
how small, how round, how fragile, how free-floating, how misty and how
mysterious our Earth is, -- with nothing inherent to separate us,
nothing for us to fight over, -- over and over again! Where else are we
to go? Where else . . . .
I understand the old saying, that if we do not stand for something,
we will fall for anything. There may even be something to say for that,
to be ready to fall, to be taken down, at least a notch or two, at any
time. Especially as we work out of the office here, we know we may get
"taken" at any time. It goes with the territory. And we would
rather, as we think Jesus would, err on the side of being too trusting,
too generous, too hopeful of believing the best of another. Is it not
also true, that if we stand for the "wrong" things, the
outdated, or disconnected, or self-serving, self-protecting things, we
will not matter much anyway in the end?
And is it not particularly true of today’s world, and of the church
in today’s world, that we are called and challenged to face so many
new things in new ways? Are we not dealing with whole peoples, as well
as whole parts and depths of ourselves, we never much knew or cared even
existed before? Peoples of color? Peoples of language? Peoples of faith?
Peoples of nation? Peoples of gender? Peoples of class? Peoples of all
kinds and conditions of life? Does not, in the moon’s-eye view of
Jesus’ ascension, everything under the sun look new? Is not another
world possible? Is not another way of seeing this world possible? Is
there not hope for this world? "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!" Amen.
