So, I know I've told you this story before, but it's such a weird take on the Ascension of Christ, that it bears repeating. If you ever have a chance to do a church tour around England, make your way to Norfolk. The motto of the village of Walsingham, in a reference to it's pre-Norman Conquest roots, is “Welcoming Visitors Since 1061,” and it is home to the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. And it is there, in the Chapel of the Ascension, that you will find it. Typically English, and typically weird.
On the ceiling is a circle in the shape of a cloud, and sticking out of the circle are two ceramic feet, dangling down. The last things the Apostles would have seen as Jesus ascended through the clouds. And as you stand there, looking up, a docent will often walk up behind you and quote Acts, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Then she will wink at you and move the tour on to the next stop.
It's funny. After all these centuries, we are still looking up. Waiting for Jesus to come with Clouds Descending, saying, “OK, I'm back. Move aside and let a professional do this.”
But remember what Jesus told the apostles: “. . . you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you..."
We can forget that it is humanity, our humanity, which is in Jesus as he ascends to heaven. If it were not tied up with our humanity, then the Ascension would be no more than a pleasing story of a god who comes and goes as he will, and would have little to do with us.
I think that from time to time we do, indeed, catch glimpses of it, and I can begin to understand the yearning evident in the disciples’ plea today as they stand on the edge of an unknown future.
We'll never fully know why they accompanied Jesus for all those years in the first place, but I bet some large part of that was rooted in looking for a different world from the one they had known. And they got a glimpse of this in him.
Jesus promised something more than these followers could ever have imagined, something other than what their lives had held before. And now here at the end...a second end, since they thought the crucifixion was the end. And here at this second end after the resurrection, they wonder again, what will happen next?
And Jesus probably doesn't make them feel any less anxious when he says it's all on them now. This promise of freedom from all that would bind, from all that would destroy, from all that would lead to death...it's now up to them. And I bet they wished they had listened better.
With his next breath he sends them back out into the world, with the assurance that power would be theirs to bear witness to a world yet to come. The world that Jesus had begun to bring with his teaching, with his healing, with his serving, with his suffering, with his dying, with his living again...that was now up to them.
I don't know about you, but just like those disciples long ago, I often hope for a different world than the one I find nowadays. One where the most vulnerable are cared for – the young, the old, those who are afraid, those who are persecuted, those who are ignored and forgotten.
One where we are not defined by race or gender or sexual orientation, by wealth or poverty, or by which side of a border we are born on. But by our shared humanity.
One where we see and experience all this created world as vulnerable, as in need of so much loving care.
When I was at St. James Knoxville, I remember driving into work to find the police all over the parking lot at the Fellini Kroger, poking around in dumpster on the side of the building. I've mentioned this Kroger before, and it is locally called the Fellini Kroger because you will see so many strange, weird, and grotesque people (in the artistic meaning), like a Fellini movie from the 60's-70's-80's.
I went back that evening to find out what had been going on. Now here's the thing. The Fellini homeless are a closed-in lot living in a wooded area on the side of the parking lot. Almost like gypsies. They live apart unless something happens that is so bad that they can't fix it themselves.
So, I stood on the fringe of their encampment until one of them recognized me as a priest in the area. He came over and asked me for money. I gave him ten bucks. And he told me what happened: A homeless fifteen year-old girl had been found in the dumpster, strangled, and tossed away.
Earlier that day the police found out that she had been taken under the wing of a homeless man twice her age. They got into an argument and this was the result. The man was known to everyone around the Fellini Kroger, and he was quickly caught.
More people recognized me, came over, and we just stood there that evening, speculating on this story, on the verge of tears because once again the forgotten people were finding themselves in another devastating cycle of violence, while the rest of humanity completely ignored these gifts of God which are living and moving all around us and beside us and among us...but unseen by us.
At St. James, Fr. John Mark and I organized a vigil the next night, wondering when Jesus would do something to make it right. To make it all right again. And we prayed for those who knew her by her name and saw her in her humanity and loved her as a person.
And then we noticed something. The door to the church kept opening. Slowly, one at a time, or maybe in twos and threes, the strange, weird, amazingly brave homeless that lived around the Fellini Kroger – and around our church – they began to drift in and sit. Pretty soon we had something of a crowd. And you could feel it. With presence and with prayers. With silence and with sobbing. With outbursts and anger, dismay and fear. With hand holding and hugging. And the belief that together, we would endure what had happened, and that tomorrow, we would get to work to remember this woman and try not to let it happen again.
You could feel it. The promise of Jesus coming true. Because I think, in that dark time, and in our souls, all of us began to hear what those disciples heard. That with the gift and power of the Holy Spirit, WE are the ones who are sent into the world with the word and the promise of another way.
We are the ones who are sent.
Y'all, this world will not be ‘restored’ as the disciples beg in our lessons from Acts today unless WE are a part of that restoration. You and I are called to be witnesses to something more, even as we struggle to hear it for ourselves, especially now when we swerve from one outrage to another. Because in our stepping out and bearing that witness, our own healing begins, and maybe the world sees and the world hears, the promise of the healing and the powerful love which God intends for us all.
Or at least I hope this to be so.
Amen.