Look Up? Look Around!
From the film “Field of Dreams”: “Is this heaven?” “It’s
Iowa.”
From the movie “Bruce Almighty”: “You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle.”
And it all began with these five cinematic words: “There’s
no place like home.”
Or did it?
“While (Jesus) was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’”
These men were not dumb. Twenty centuries in advance of our computer age, they had discovered that when things are up, all is good; when they are down … not so much.
Such is the theological aberration nurtured for us,
sustained by us, and virtually branded upon us all: When in trouble, look to
“The Man Upstairs.” God is large and in charge – upon his throne, Jesus at his
right. And all is well with the hierarchical cosmos.
And yet, we hear the ascending Jesus cry, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.”
“You” – plural you – “will receive power …”
I’m outta here, Jesus is saying. Welcome, dear church, to the life and times of the Holy Spirit – blowing where She may!
Having been a pastor for nearly two decades and a wavering follower of Jesus’ for three decades more, I can state with some degree of assurance that most of our problems of faith rest in our lack of trust in those four words of the ascending Christ: “You will receive power.” Again: That’s a plural “you.”
“You will receive power.” After all, we don’t trust power – especially, power given to us!
For how much easier it is for us to dwell on the most timeworn and vexing question of all: “Why?” – one traceable to the oldest of our scriptures, the Book of Job – than to take communal responsibility and ask ourselves Jesus’ question: “Why not?”
And how much easier it is to direct our pleas as
well as our resentments toward a God “up there” than to direct our efforts to
an empowerment of life “down here”?
And how much easier it is to ask God why there is so much famine and war and pestilence in the world – than to allow God to ask us the same question?
And so, we take our stand with the first disciples: looking up to the heavens. Even after Jesus, in his farewell address, has promised us what seems at first blanch a perilous truth: “You” – plural you – “will receive power.”
Which begs the question: Power … for what?
The power Jesus promises in his farewell address – received on the Day of Pentecost, our next Sabbath service – is the power to consummate the theme of his inaugural address: the proclamation of the kingdom – the reign – of God. In fact, restoring the holy community was fixed in the disciples’ sights when they pled with the ascending Jesus today, “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Note that Jesus does not dissuade them from this kingdom focus. He does change the “subject” – turning the discussion from himself to them. They – not he – would usher that kingdom in.
For beginning here on Ascension Day, the players change … but not the central message. As nearly every New Testament scholar of every stripe recognizes what frankly most believers of most every stripe still do not: Jesus’s Good News message was not about looking up to Jesus! It was about looking out for the kingdom of God. A reign around us, among us – as other English translations put it, “near” us … or, “at hand.”
I wonder if we are prone to stray from that kingdom task today. We who would look up in God-faith rather than look around in Spirit-power. We who would look up to Jesus as our Lord and Savior rather than sacrifice our lives for the kingdom of God he proclaimed.
Alas, alas: Our Presbyterian Hymnal hardly helps us. As rapturous is their poetry and as glorious is their sound, most of these hymns invite us to look up to God in gawking glory rather than look around for the kingdom in Spirit-power. They follow, quite frankly, a traditionally hierarchical Trinitarian focus: praising God the Father, then God the Son, and – if we are lucky – God the Holy Spirit. If we are lucky: For in our hymns as in our theology, our poor Pentecost cousin to Christmas (God with us) and Easter (Christ for us) frightens us merely by its imminent presence. The Spirit alarms us, uncontrollable in its fury and wholly communal in its demands.
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come”: That is Christ’s ascending promise to us. Taken as a whole, our hymnal does little to claim it. I invite you to pick up your blue hymnals for a moment, and turn with me if you would to the Topical Index in the back, which begins on p. 691. Once you find this opening page, then turn with me to p. 694. Note the nearly three full pages of encouragement to adulate God in many diverse forms. And moving to p. 697 now, we find more than two pages of Jesus Christ-this and Jesus Christ-that.
And there in the alphabetical middle, she lonely sits. The Holy Spirit. First column, p. 697. Tucked quietly – coyly – almost unnoticed between the voluminous God and Christ listings. Less than one column of hymns dedicated to the feminine partner in what we obviously consider the Holy Trinity’s third wheel.
Friends, on this Ascension Sunday, I begin to wonder. I begin to wonder how we can possibly prepare to spend the next six months of the church year in the Season of Pentecost – passionately rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit in God’s kingdom midst – when this is all our standard hymnal gives us to work with?
As for hymns about the kingdom of God: Turn back one page, to p. 695. Holy Spirit, take your solace. You have company. For there we see – on p. 695, left-hand side –less than one full column as well of kingdom hymns.
Sadly, the emphasis of our hymnal tells us so much about the emphasis of our theology. A theology across the ages that has resisted the biblical pages where Jesus practically cries out to us: Don’t look at me … and don’t look for me . Look with me! I am not your object of faith but your way of faith. I am but the firestarter. You can look up all you want to me: you can worship me; you can adore me. But only you can create the Spirit-fires! Only you can proclaim the kingdom of my God conveyed through the Holy Spirit – for She’s the one that really counts for you now!
Why look up – for me as your God? Look around! She will soon be in your midst! Even if we cannot find that much to sing about her.
“(For) you will receive power,” Jesus says. “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Bethesda, in Montgomery County, and to the ends of the earth.”
His witnesses.
That’s all he wants. That we be his witnesses.
Not world-beaters. Not world-savers.
His witnesses. Witnesses to God’s kingdom. That the Holy Spirit gives us vision to see, and the power to proclaim.
FOR BPC MEMBERS & FRIENDS ...
Many of us by now know our church’s new vision. The vision the Spirit gave our Session recently for all of us to see. Can’t miss it; it graces our bulletin cover every Sunday. “A Place For Healing”. Our yes to our God of grace, leading us into how we bring that healing about: Personally, Passionately, Progressively.
Our task now is simply this: Where do we get the power to proclaim that vision?
Do we stand, like these first disciples, gazing up at our beautiful sanctuary rafters? Do we look up to God for dozens of new members to flock into these pews, not knowing where they would come from, just … praying that they do?
Do we look up, or do we simply … look around?
A week from tomorrow our newest tenants, the 12 Step Del Ray Club, plans to hold its annual Memorial Day cookout in the back of our empty parking lot, enjoying table fellowship with one another in their new clubhouse – right outside this door, on the second floor. They moved in most of their stuff just yesterday.
Del Ray will hold their Memorial Day cookout … when none of us is around.
Not usually.
And yet as one of our Session number reminded me this past Tuesday – referring to another matter altogether: If we wish to get to know the stranger in our midst, we do one of two things. We do a mission project together. Or we simply sit down, and share a meal.
I have talked with Del Ray board members. They invite us to join them for their Memorial Day cookout, and to bring a plate to share. So join me if you’re in town – at 1 pm sharp – and help our newest neighbors being healed to people this place for healing.
The choice is ours: Do we look up to God to find us people who will look to us for healing? We can certainly do that – and that is certainly commendable. Or perhaps our call is more like this: to take Jesus’ lead and simply look around, enjoying the Spirit of healing joining us in our place.
Look around. Look around. Simply … take a look around.
Hear
what the Spirit is saying to our church.
