Author: Kerry

 

If you were here last week, you will recall that we left things at a cliffhanger. How, we asked, is it possible for Jesus to be present with us to feed us? How is it possible that every Sunday we are called upward into God’s presence and forward into God’s future to participate in the life of Christ communicated to us through the sacraments? How is it possible that, having eaten at the Lord’s table, we are then sent to take that life into the world? This past week, I felt a little like the narrator in the old Batman TV show. Come back next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. Well here we are, next week has come, and you’ve come back.

You’ll recall that the answer to all these questions was embedded in part of Jesus’ departure speech in last week’s Gospel: “See, I am sending you what my Father promised.” Christ has ascended, and the first act after his coronation, the earthly echo of his exaltation, is to send the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Christ’s Ascent is verified by the Spirit’s descent.

The sending of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost is our Acts lesson this morning. Try to imagine being there. In the Upper Room. With the 120. Having been told by the risen Lord to wait, they had been. Worshipping in great joy. Worshipping in anticipation. And then, Sunday, at nine o’clock in the morning, heaven and earth, eternity and time, intersect. The taking up of the risen One is now complemented by the descent of his Spirit. True to his word, he has sent the Promise of the Father. The Spirit of God who will, the prophets of Israel said, would renew the face of all creation at the end time. We have quite a good depiction of the event in our Pentecost window. With the disciples praising God, arms upraised, the tongues of fire dancing above their heards. What that picture cannot capture, however, is just how noisy the scene is. Immediately, the Spirit inspires them to proclaim the Gospel (you will be my witnesses) in the languages of all those Jews who had come to Jerusalem for the festival (already, the implication is that the Gospel is going to explode beyond the borders of Palestine). What are we to see here? Three things.

First, the sending of the Spirit is the undoing of Babel. That is the story that is our Old Testament lesson today. The story of a human race united in culture and language and aim—to make a name for themselves by building a tower. By ascending—note that—on their own terms to the level of the divine. Humanity, it seems, has an inbuilt desire to become divine. We encounter this desire innocently expressed in the Garden, when the tempter says to the woman, eat the fruit and you shall be like one of the Gods. We find it less innocently expressed in our OT lesson, the story of Babel, where on the plains of Shinar, humankind decides to make a name. To build a tower into heaven. To be joined with the divine.

Now, it is tempting here to get tangled in debates about what actually happened. Was this some sort of Ziggurat, the ancient near eastern structures similar to the Egyptian pyramids whose ruins we still see today? Probably. Was the entire human race really once so geographically limited, and to this place? Well, things get more thorny there. Fortunately, that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is, even after the Flood, human beings are still hardwired both to seek after God and to insist on doing it their own way. Let us make for ourselves. Let us cross the barrier between creator and creation. Let us make him pay us heed. And God does. As humankind plans and plots to ascend, God descends. He confuses their languages and he scatters them.

At Pentecost, after the ascension of the one human to God’s right hand, God descends again. This time not to confuse our language, to separate and counfound and frustrate our utopian dreams, but to draw all languages into the saving scope of the Gospel. To begin the exaltation of all humanity that was begun in the ascension of Jesus Christ. To create the space in which all human beings might ascend to their rightful place in a new creation. And because the Spirit descends to undo Babel, there is no language in which the Gospel cannot be proclaimed. On the contrary, it seems that, for the Gospel to be faithfully proclaimed, it must forever leave the language of its founder behind so that it can be told and re-told in many tongues. And that task—the task of translation and proclamation in the language of the people—continues up to today.

At Pentecost, God descends again. Not to scatter humankind across the globe, but to draw them together, Jew and Gentile, into one people. The drive to become divine that seems hardwired into us is planted there by God. But it will be realized not on our time and in our own power, but by the God who seeks us out in the sending of the Son, who finds us in the sending of the Spirit, who sends us in that Spirit. His Gospel—the sending of the Son to redeem the world—is the means that will undo Babel And now, empowered by the Spirit, we have been sent to announce this Good News to all. The sending of the Spirit is the undoing of Babel.

Second, the sending of the Spirit makes the many one. Which is to say, the sending of the Spirit is the fulfillment of human hope and destiny. The desire to become one of the gods—the desire embedded in us as expressed in both the Fall and Babel narratives is not wrong. It is part of the fabric of our make up. It is implanted in us in by our creator. It is part of what it means to be made in his image. Corporately, this desire is found at the heart of every human utopia—whether ancient as the story of Babel, or medieval—Christendom or the Caliphate, or modern—the stories of fascism and communism in the twentieth century, the stories of unbridled capitalism or radical Islam in the twenty-first. And yet, in the working out of each utopia, horrendous evil results. Why?

Because even as much as we might want to deny it, the gift of a renewed creation is just that—a gift. It is not something that will ever be accomplished by human endeavor but can only be received as God’s crowning of God’s own work in creating and redeeming what he has made. Think about John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The construction of a perfect world with a united and peaceful human race is not easy if you try. It is, short of the coming of Christ, impossible.

It is only the Spirit who can and does make the many one by uniting them to Christ, who reigns even now and whose kingdom will never end.

Finally, the sending of the Spirit makes the one, many. The overcoming of Babel is not the reduction of the world’s many languages to one especially holy tongue, but the proclamation of the Gospel in every language. One people of God is, at the end, made up of many peoples, many nations, many tongues. This, Pentecost proclaims, has been God’s plan from the beginning. This is what was accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is what is being proclaimed now even as we are sent in the power of the Spirit into the world to proclaim, to love and to serve.

And now, we gather again in the power of the Holy Spirit to be drawn further into Christ, to hear again the Good News, to feed again in our hearts with faith and thanksgiving, in order that we might be sent again as announcers of God’s kingdom and agents of its coming.

Today we celebrate the Christian feast that, St. Augustine tells us, fulfills the rest. Without it, Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and the almost innumerable Sundays that follow, make no sense. It is the feast of the Ascension. What does Augustine mean? He means that the Feast of the Ascension marks the climax of the Gospel. It underscores the truth of the Incarnation that we celebrate at Christmas. It completes and discloses the meaning the Resurrection that we celebrate at Easter. It points us toward and gives the rationale for the Pentecostal coming of the Spirit and the sending of the Church into the world. And it does all that work because the Feast of the Ascension is, at the end of the day, the church’s declaration that Jesus is Lord.

Three little words. Jesus is Lord. For the early Church, those words or the conviction that they encapsulate could end a promising career as a soldier or government official, could send someone to prison, could even send someone to the arena to die. For if Jesus was Lord, then the accompanying, if unstated conviction, was Caesar is not. And the powers Caesar embodied could not hear that their reign at best a mere servant of reign of Christ and at worst, a beast whose blood-lust for the saints of God would ultimately be its downfall.

Both Jesus and the Emperor claimed Lordship, authority, rule, to the same space. And the martyrs were those who wagered their lives on the hope that the true King was King Jesus. That the true King had ascended to the Father’s right hand. That the true King could bring them through death into resurrection. That one day, the open secret on which they based their lives, would be made plain to all. And that King Jesus would reign without interference.

The Ascension was not about Jesus’s soul going to heaven, but about the exaltation of a human being to reign as God’s vice regent over all the world, and all of its Caesars, both great and small.

Now, we don’t believe that, of course. We believe something quite different. We—notice that I am including myself in this—we believe something more like this: “Jesus is Lord, but that is just my private opinion.” Now what kind of a community produces a speech act like that? Perhaps one that has grown tired of the public invocation of Jesus’ name and lordship to justify the most horrendous of evils that one human being can inflict on another. Perhaps one that has become too comfortable in Caesar’s world and would rather live under his dominion; a community that has found a way to serve money while keeping the Jesus vocabulary to soothe us in our sinfulness. Either one is a community that does not know just what to do with the Lordship of Jesus over this world.

And the Ascension is given to us, I pray, to jolt us out of just that way of thinking. So what must be said about the Ascension? Negatively, we must say this: The Ascension means that the kingdoms of this world have been decisively overthrown. Positively, we must say this: The Ascension is the day that Christ in his humanity, fulfills not just his destiny, but all of human destiny as God the Father’s vice regent. He reigns in his humanity. And if and as we have been united to him, we reign too.

Now, let’s unpack this a little more. First of all, we need to be clear about that Jesus did not go to a secure undisclosed location somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn. This is not a tale of pre-atomic age space travel. Nor was his ascension a flowery way of saying that he left his body and his humanity behind so that he could go back to what he was before: God. The incarnation is not an interruption in the being of God the Son.

Where did he go? He went to that space where creation is fit for the full presence of God. Can we go there now? That’s a good question, and one that I’ll get to in a moment. But before I do, I really want to stress that in his going, he did not leave his humanity or us behind. He took his humanity with him. Where he is now, he is in—as the theologians put it—the unity of his person, fully God, fully human. He is the God who descends to our level, to take up our humanity. He is the man who ascends to God’s level, so that we might go with him.That we might go with him. Think about that. That we might go with him! Now back to that question I just put off. Can we go there now? The answer is, We do! Every Sunday, we go there with him.

Here’s how Thomas Cranmer put it “Being like eagles in this life, we should fly up into heaven in our hearts, where that Lamb is resident at the right hand of his Father, which taketh away the sins of the world; by whose stripes we are made whole; by whose passion we are filled at his table; and whose blood we receiving out of his holy side, do live forever.” (Thomas Cranmer)

I can tell you exactly when that moment happens—we go to where he is every Sunday when we are bidden to lift up our hearts. The sursum corda, as it is called, is actually a command more than it is a polite request. It would be an entirely appropriate translation of the Latin were I to say this morning, “Hearts UP!”When we come to the Lord’s table, we come into the heavenlies, where Christ himself is seated. We come to the table where he feeds us with his very life. There, in that very instant, we are given a glimpse of God’s future, given a glimpse of our humanity made fit for the fullness of God’s presence, given a foretaste—literally!—of the heavenly banquet that is being prepared for us even now.

Imagine how our attitude toward Sunday service might change if we really believed that. “Sorry, I can’t make that tee time, that restaurant, that long awaited date with my pillow and duvet. King Jesus has invited me to his house for breakfast.” Can you imagine? That’s not a fair thing to say just as we’re getting ready for our summer slump is it? And yet, that’s what happens every time we gather at the Lord’s table. We are called upward and forward by him. Called to a place where creatures can and do commune with God, a place where creation is made fit for his presence. In that place, we are placed before Jesus’ table, that place where he reigns as the Lamb, and he feeds us with his very life.

And then, we are sent. You are witnesses to these things. These things—not just a past teacher who gave us an ethic, but a present and living Lord who reigns, and who is transforming this world even as we speak. As he who reigns not as the Pantocrator commanding the armies of heaven, but as the Lamb who was slain for the redeeming of the world.

We are—like the first followers of Jesus—sent back into the world not mourning a martyr, but celebrating a living King, who has made us—us!—the vanguard of his reign. To rule not with violence, but with patience and joy even in the midst of suffering. Sent to tell of his Kingdom’s coming and to live in its presence even as we wait for the rest of creation to be transformed.

Which brings us to our last stop. How is all this possible? It is possible because of the promise. The promise the risen Lord alludes to in our Gospel lesson. “See I am sending you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

What on earth does that mean? Come back next week! Right now, I have to get ready for a banquet. And so do you.

 

I’ve fought with how to open the Gospel to us this morning.

I’ve tried out history—stories of the lapsi—of Christians who had lapsed under the 3rd century persecution commanded by the Roman Emperor Decius; stories of the traditori—Christians who handed over (traditore—from which derive the English words tradition and traitor) Scriptures and other books for worship to be burned under the last great persecution of the 4th century commanded by Diocletian. In both cases, the question, “What do we do with people who have abandoned the faith?” was intense, immediate, and very practical once the persecution had ended. In both cases, the Church tried to navigate between a message of grace that was tantamount to ignoring the history and a message of holiness that could not move past it. Some wanted to readmit people with only very minimal penance; others wanted no readmission at all.

Do you want to hear about the lapsi, about Novatian of Rome and Cyprian of Carthage? No? How about the traditores and the Donatists and Augustine of Hippo? No? I didn’t think so.

I tried out testimony—stories of Christian leaders who have had to undergo sometimes painful processes of restoration. Points in my own life where I have found the story of Peter’s restoration to be particularly moving. Don’t worry. This is not going to get awkward. I am convinced that clergy across denominations who take their ordination vows (or their church’s equivalent) seriously are very aware of their failures to live up to, in to, and out of those vows and find great hope in our Lord’s restoration of his disciple on a Galillean beach. Peter is not let off the hook—his betrayal mattered. Peter was restored—he was commissioned again to love and tend and feed the sheep whose well-being Christ had entrusted to him.

But that didn’t work either. I don’t think you want to hear about my lapses or those of other clergy; I’m quite certain you can recall lapses of mine and those of previous rectors without too much difficulty at all—some with a wink; others with a chuckle; and still others far more difficult. And we don’t need to rehearse those. For they, after all, are not the point.

So, I’m not quite sure how to open up the Gospel to us this morning. I’ll come back to that. First, let’s look at the story itself.

Notice, first of all, that this is not the first encounter between the disciples and the Risen Lord. In the Gospel of John, it is the third. We read about the first two last week—one on Easter day, with the 10 in a locked room; the other one week later with Thomas present. This is the third.

Why didn’t Jesus restore Peter immediately? Why did Jesus wait until some time after his resurrection? Those are interesting questions. They invite us to pay attention to the details of the setting.

Peter’s restoration took place in Galilee. Isn’t that interesting. It took place at the site of Peter’s first call to lay his nets aside and to fish instead for men and women, to proclaim to them the Gospel of the Kingdom of God come in Jesus. Indeed not just to the place, but to the act. Peter has gone home to go fishing. Does this mean that Peter has given up his calling to be an apostle? Some have thought so. Does this mean that Peter, knowing that Jesus would meet the disciples again in Galilee, went there and well, had to eat? Some have thought so. I don’t know that either explanation matters. What matters is here is Peter, in the place and plying the trade when he first encountered the master. And again, the master calls to him and his companions. He reveals himself to them by repeating the miracle of the fish. And he calls the seven disciples to shore.

Peter’s restoration, second, took place by a charcoal fire. Isn’t that interesting! (no really it is interesting!) Where do we last see Peter named? Standing, warming himself by a charcoal fire in a courtyard in Jerusalem. And what does Peter say? three times he says, “I do not know the man!” Jesus brought Peter not simply to the place of his first commissioning; he also brought Peter to the place of his betrayal. Jesus does not set aside Peter’s sin as though it does not matter. Jesus does not wink at his betrayal. Jesus does not say to Peter, “See, I won. So we’ll just overlook that little betrayal business. After all, you’re only human.” No, he brings Peter to the fire to warm himself. He brings him to the place of his lapse.

Third, Jesus lovingly and searchingly and deliberately undoes Peter’s lapse. “Lovest thou me more than these?” Sometimes it is the most gentle of questions that can undo us. And this one undoes poor Peter. John’s Greek here is ambiguous. Lovest thou me more than these? Jesus may be asking, “Peter, do you love me more than your brothers love me?” And that would make sense. After all, Peter boasted, did he not, that “If all forsake you I will not,” on that awful Thursday night just a few weeks before. Lovest thou me more than these? Jesus may be asking, “Peter, do you love me more than your nets? More than your old life? More than your security?” And that would make sense too. Here we are, Peter, back in Galilee. It’s time for you to choose, once and for all. Will you follow me?

And it is a broken Peter, the boastful disciple long dead now, who says “Lord, you know I love you.” And Jesus commissions Peter again. Feed my sheep.

Two more times the question is repeated. Two more times, Peter answers. Do you hear his repentance in his final answer? I do. “Lord you know all things. You know my heart better than I know it. You know that I love you.” Two more times Peter is commissioned to be a shepherd of souls.

And so it is that the threefold betrayal is searchingly, painfully, systematically healed by a systematic act of restoration. And Jesus knows his disciple will now be faithful. He indeed assures him that he will, from this instant, be faithful unto death.

Now, why is this Gospel difficult to understand? I wonder if it is difficult to understand because we have lost a sense of the divine holiness and accordingly, the divine mercy. We have come to the conclusion that God is obligated to forgive, to restore, to absolve regardless of whether we intend to follow or not. We have come to believe that we can never lapse; and so we never need to be restored. I’ve met people like that. Have you?

Or perhaps it is difficult to understand because we have convinced ourselves that God is so remote, so aloof, so holy, that no matter what we do or desire, we are beyond restoration. We are far too aware of our own inadequacy and far too unaware of the depths of the divine love. I’ve met people like that. Have you?

I do not know how you greet the Gospel this morning. I do not know whether it is closed to you or not. But I know—I know it in my bones—that it is good news. The Lord who commissioned us at our baptism will bring us back to that place, confront us with our failure, and question our love not to humiliate us, but to restore us. To commission us again. To call us to follow. If he would do so for Peter, who fell so far, then he will for you and for me. Amen.