Jesus is leaving. People do leave. They go on vacation. They change jobs. They go to new schools. They retire. They go to other churches. They die. It is in the nature of things that people leave.
Today in our liturgical calendar we observe The Sunday before Ascension, and we think about how Jesus left his disciples in the Ascension following his Resurrection five or so weeks before. In many ways it was unique because the disciples had thought Jesus had left them when he died on Good Friday. Easter dramatically turned all that around, and we have focused on those Resurrection stories during these Easter Season Sundays: Jesus’ appearing in the disciples’ midst when they were huddled behind locked doors in fear for their own lives, Jesus’ walking with two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, then to have their eyes opened in recognition when he broke bread with them, Jesus’ appearing to Peter and the others by the Sea of Galilee and sharing some breakfast with them. But then on the Ascension he is lifted up in a particularly glorious leave-taking, “to sit on the right hand of the Father,” to quote our creed.
All departures are difficult if only because we might have the tiniest fear that there’s a chance we won’t see each other anymore. And so we say “Godspeed,” or we say, “God be with you,” or we say “God bless you,” and of course we say “I love you.” We want God to be with those we love but who leave us for whatever reason. We want God to go with them because we want them to be safe and because we want God to bring them back to us. We also want them to know that we’re thinking about them, we’re praying for them, that the distance between us can be bridged in some connecting way.
For the disciples, Jesus had assured them that the Holy Spirit would be his continuing presence among them. In today’s gospel Jesus says, “The Holy Spirit…[will] remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” I have no doubt that the disciples must have been confused at this attempt to comfort them as he was about to leave. The whole concept of the Holy Spirit can be somewhat mystifying anyway. Personally, I’m a big fan of the Holy Spirit whom I believe will turn out to be just the hero we need to save us from the mess in which we currently find ourselves (however you want to define that). And yet there are lots of circumstances where we feel left to our own devices, where we feel very alone, or when we fear for the loneliness of others.
Fred Buechner tells a very personal story about how we are not left without the presence of God, no matter how abandoned we may feel. In speaking of his father’s sudden suicide when he was very young, he has this to say:
God did not will what happened that early November morning in Essex Fells, New Jersey, but I believe God was present in what happened. I cannot guess how he was present with my father—I can guess much better how utterly abandoned by God my father must have felt if he thought about God at all—but my faith as well as my prayer is that he was and continues to be present with him in ways beyond my guessing. I can speak with some assurance only at how God was present in that dark time for me, in the sense that I was not destroyed by it but came out of it with scars that I bear this day, to be sure, but also somehow the wiser and stronger for it.
Of course, this kind of language is faith language. To talk of the Holy Spirit and of God is to talk about faith, and so what better place can we do that but right here. In fact, priesthood aside, that’s one reason I come to church. To be sure, I like the music, I like the fact that there’s church school for my children, I like the sociability of it, but truth be known I can listen to my i-pod for music, I can read the Bible to my children at home, and I can find sociability in lots of other places. But church is the one place I can come Sunday by Sunday to hear and to celebrate how much I am loved and cared for by God in the person of Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, all of that stays with me when I’m listening to my i-pod, when I’m reading to my children, and when I’m otherwise socializing. It is the assurance that I am a part of something larger, and that no matter how difficult the circumstances of my life and how distant God may seem from time to time, that I’m not alone.
Last Friday night and this morning we have had and continue to have a chance to thank God for Melly Turner’s ministry at Christ Church. Melly is retiring after eleven years as our Director of Children’s Ministries, and while she is not ascending to be on the right hand of God, she and Joe will spend two weeks on the beach in North Carolina (which is pretty close). The fact that today Melly is still with our children downstairs is special because it is the last time she’ll be there. And although we hope and expect Melly and her family will continue to be part of our church family, she is leaving the role she has exercised for these past eleven years and that makes us sad. But this is Easter, and this is church, and this is why and where we can hear and deeply understand the answer to St. Paul’s rhetorical question,
What can separate us from the love of God? Can anything in life? Can anything in death? No, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor death, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
