Look with the eyes of your heart

May 25, 2017

Ascension Day

For the ancients, the heavens were the ultimate untouchable and unknowable place—and thus clearly God’s domain. But now we fly through the clouds; we have satellites and space probes that send back pictures; we have seen the heavens and there is no sign of God’s throne.  Where is our God now? In Acts, we hear two men in white robes ask the disciples, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” We keep looking up—but where is he?

Where is God right now? Where is God when I need him? Where is God when people suffer? Where is God when bad things happen?

In all times and places, humans ask this fundamental question, “where is God?” It is a question which marks us as human, and summons us to a moral life.

Perhaps, if you are a parent or a grandparent, you have been asked this question by a small child. We often tell children that God is everywhere.  And children may respond by challenging us to be more specific, because everywhere is not a place, is it? They want a real, concrete answer-- is God in this table? Is God in my sandwich? Is God on the ceiling?

Our children are right to challenge us to think deeply about this question.

The story of creation describes how God made the places we know and see-- earth and heaven, water, and land. God and Adam and Eve walk alongside one another in God’s Garden of Eden. But within the garden God sets apart a place just for himself, a tree, and tells Adam and Eve that they must not touch it. We all know the story… Adam and Eve eat from the tree right away. And what happens next? When Adam and Eve hear “the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, … the(y) hid(e) themselves from the presence of the Lord God…” (Gen 3:8)

And so, Adam and Eve are cast out into the world, and the rest of the Bible can be read as an extended story of hide-and-seek—God and human beings searching for one another, looking for places and ways to safely and meaningfully connect with one another, or, when things go badly, hiding from one another.

The narrative sweep of Scripture describes how God makes himself known to Abraham, chooses a people, Israel, and makes himself present to them-- lives with them and among them, in tent and cloud and fire. Together they tromp through the desert wilderness—a wild, open, expanse. God tells Moses: “I am who I am,” which can also be translated, “I will be who I will be.” This mobile, rootless, unpredictable God is free and unconfined. Eventually, God’s people build him a house, a Temple. God’s time there is temporary.  With the birth of Jesus, God once again shows up among his people, this time in human form. But God can’t remain in a human body for long. God cannot be constrained by death, that ultimate fixed boundary on bodily life. God spills out beyond death itself, and shows up in a new kind of body, a resurrected one…. Which leads us to where we are in today’s Gospel.

In Luke we hear Jesus “opens the minds of his disciples to the scriptures”. He explains the semantic arc of his life—what it all meant and where it is going. Jesus makes clear that his life and death and resurrection are a fulfillment of prophecy. But let us take note that, although the Ascension may be a fulfillment, it is not an ending. Jesus does not say to his disciples, “Well done. Go home and take a rest.” Jesus’s Ascension is a triumphant new beginning. “Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in God’s name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” Jesus is now enthroned as the Christ. Christ is not Jesus’s last name; it is a royal title—the anointed one, the king. When we claim his name, when we call ourselves “Christians,” we declare ourselves his subjects. The disciples, and all of us, are now part of God’s royal purpose—an active purpose, larger than ourselves, that extends to the very ends of the earth.

At the Ascension, we are reminded that salvation is not just something that Jesus didforus, but something that God is still accomplishingthroughus. When we look for God in Scripture, we see a pattern. God reveals himself to us, reveals his presence and his truth, in order to advance his purpose for the world. Revelation of God’s presence always leads to responsibility.

So, Jesus is enthroned in heaven, but we are told to stop looking for him up there. Where shall we look?

We worship a God who will not be contained—not in Temples, not in churches, not in the sky. God will come and go as God pleases. He will be who he will be. And that is why the Ascension leads inevitably to Pentecost—to the moment Jesus promises in our Gospel today: “See, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; …you (will be) clothed with power from on high.”

Where is our God? God is surely in many places I do not and cannot know. God is also in places I do know, the places God sends us to find him—in prayer and in Scripture and in community with one another. And God hopes to grow and reveal his presence in each of us. We hear in John 14: “the Father will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth… you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

Just as we continue to look for God, God continues to look for us. God is always looking for people who will let him in. Jesus tells us he is the “gate” to the father. Jesus teaches us to open the gates of our hearts, to open our minds and spirits to God’s presence and power, and let him in.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer—“thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying that God might rule as king here in our hearts, in our earthly, bodily lives, just as God reigns in those places and times beyond our understanding, those places we term “heaven”. When we let God in, when God dwells in us, our lives witness to his presence.

The word witness, in Greek, is "martyrs"; it means “one who bears testimony.” There is a richness to this word. It means more than just talking. When we give testimony to God’s grace we do so, “not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to (His) service.”  We witness with our actions, with our whole lives.  Despite the many things that stress and scatter us, we are called to be a community of witnesses. So, look with the eyes of your heart. Look for God. God is always looking for you. The world is asking the question, “where is God?” And it is our job to show them.