2014.06.01 10am
Acts 1:6-14
John 17:1-11
Here's a phrase you shouldn't begin a sermon with; 'The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but...'
And yet that is how I want to begin this sermon. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but where do you go from there. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but it's a slightly awkward end to the story. God incarnate has come and raised up a group of disciples, he has taught them over a number of years and he has made the ultimate sacrifice to atone for their sins, this was the greatest and most important moment in the history of the universe, and then as if that was not enough, Jesus Christ returns from the dead to demonstrate how eternal life is possible for all people. And so what next?
This morning we are thinking about the ascension of Christ into heaven. This is a peculiar and dramatic story, and the way that we go about telling the peculiar and dramatic events in life is an interesting thing to consider. Memories of unusual events are complicated, and they are complicated in part because we lack the language to describe what is happening; we lack a set of similar experiences to compare it to.
9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
Clouds, heaven, sky and two men dressed in white - I wonder what it was they actually saw, how they might describe it if they had all the right words for such a situation. This was the early Church Struggling to find the words for a very special event; a dramatic event.
If you like big dramatic action movies you will probably be aware that the ending is the most difficult bit to get right. After the battle is won, after the disaster is averted, after the hero has saved the day, what do you do? Do you end the film right there or do you tie up all the loose ends. Do you land on the dramatic punch line and go straight to the credits or do you drag it out for another ten minutes with clearing up the love stories and the whatever happened to that guy who was stuck in the basement bits. Do you end on the high drama or do you end with the more personal more emotional stories, perhaps a joke or even a final twist in the plot.
Some films get this balance perfect, others get it horribly wrong. Often the ones that get it right are the ones that finish as soon as the big surprise ending hits you, 'the Usual Suspects' is a great example of this or perhaps the original Planet of the Apes from 1968. The ones that get it wrong are usually those ones that go one too long after the big event has happened, mission Impossible III springs to mind, perhaps The Lost World Jurassic Park II, Casino Royale, which is a great film but just out stays its welcome as it drags out the ending a little too far.
Very occasionally you get a classic film, a near perfect piece of cinema that manages to be so in spite of or even in part because it took the time to play out the story to the very end. The Wizard of Oz is one of those, perhaps not the most serious film on the world, but a masterpiece none the less and for 1939 the visual effects were stunning. And the full ending is completely necessary. You couldn't just have Dorothy click, click, click her heels and go home and let that be the ending, because you would miss so much of what the film is about.
The story of Jesus is no fiction, but people still needed to make decisions about how to tell the story, which details to keep in and which to leave out. They needed to make decisions about how much to join the dots between the various features of the story and how much to let the stories tell themselves and allow the reader to make up their own minds about the meaning. The two readings we had today came from Acts, written by Luke, the only guy who attempted to do a sequel to his Gospel, and John. And John has many of the marks of a remake, but something you don't see often these days, it's a good remake, a remake worth paying attention to. And you can tell this is a remake because a lot of the things you think you've read in John's Gospel aren't actually there.
He alludes to things, he plants ideas in your mind and he tells stories on the presumption that you will already know what he's talking about. He tells the story of the last supper without the supper; he convinces you that the Word at the beginning of his gospel is Jesus, without ever saying it directly. And most importantly for today, John gives us no account of the Ascension. Instead we have hints of it throughout his ministry and particularly in the reading we heard today which comes from before the crucifixion. As in this we hear Jesus say "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" and "I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you.
You could not have two more different Gospel Writers than Luke and John. Luke is a collector of stories, who places a light editorial hand on the text in the hope that we might be convicted of the truth of the text. Whereas John comes with a heavier hand, joining up the theology like a web or a map, leaving gaps where he wants us to think and placing brightly coloured flags where he wants us to pay attention. This was the early Church Struggling to find the words for a very special event.
It is important sometimes to look for the right words to describe the miraculous in the ordinary, like when we see the nature of God in the turning of the Earth and see his healing grace in the running waters of a stream. And there are times when we need to find ordinary words to describe the miraculous. Like in John Chapter 3 when we hear the words For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not die but receive eternal life. But there are times when we need to make some attempt to describe the indescribable, to find a set of words to capture a unique event.
The temptation is to say that the Crucifixion and the resurrection are the heart of the story; they come together to make the punch-line event, the plot twist to end all plot twist. Why bother with the ascension? Surely the story ends best with the empty tomb. Big Shock, awesome ending, roll the credits. But no, this is like the Wizard of Oz. There is time at the end of that film to reflect on what everything meant. How the characters and the themes connected up. How lessons learned in the fantastic and colourful story would play out in the black and white of day to day life.
If you end with the empty tomb you miss so much of the point. You miss that the story is not over, that the retelling of the story by the disciples to all the world, is part of the story. You miss that God has begin the process of handing the keys of his Kingdom to his people. You miss that the resurrection was not simply about a temporary physical reprieve from the Grave; it is about a move to a new life a new kind of life. Not the old one, rehashed to last forever but a new life that is eternal in its very nature And in Christ's ascension we see a glimpse of this eternal life played out before us. Not so much an ending as a teaser for the sequel; the beginning of what comes next, because as all the best movie trailors say, that was when everything changed. But then, we have that moment to reflect on the fantastic colourful event before the coming of the holy spirit at Pentecost. As this passage ends;
12 Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. 13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Fade to black, end credits. Amen.
Part ii: http://revpetebrazier.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ascension-pt-ii.html
No comments:
Post a Comment