304 S. Elam Ave.
Greensboro, NC

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Greensboro, NC

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May 28, 2006 Ascension Sunday

Acts 1:1-11
"Living in the Waiting"

In the church year we celebrate Jesus' ascension into heaven 40 days after Easter. The number forty symbolizes a time of completeness. The Israelites journeyed 40 years between leaving Egypt and arriving in the Promise Land . Jesus spent 40 days fasting and praying in the desert between being baptized and beginning his ministry. The time Moravian congregations are between called pastors' averages about 40 weeks—between 8 and 12 months. Now we celebrate the end of the 40 days between Jesus' resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday and his returning to his heavenly home. Since Easter is always in the spring, celebration of Jesus' ascension always happens in the month of May. A month filled with the kind of relationship transitions the first disciples experienced with Jesus, as we watch our children and grandchildren grow up and graduate from kindergarten to first grade, to middle school, then high school, and then perhaps onto college, graduate school and hopefully eventually, the working world.

The most noticeable transition of course is the kind Ted and I experienced last May when we took our oldest daughter, Ryan, to board an airplane flying her to Hawaii for her first “real” job after college. If you had been at the airport last May and seen us, you would have heard something, mmmm, sort of like this:

“Ryan, when is the time you will return and restore the family by coming back to us?

“It is not for you to know the time and periods that my employer has set by his own authority. But you will receive emails and instant messages and downloadable video shots of me that you can access in Winston Salem and in North Carolina and Richmond and to the ends of the earth.”

And after Ryan had said this, as we were watching, the airplane lifted her up, disappearing into the clouds, taking her from our sight.

And while we were standing there with the reality that Ryan has left, sinking into our consciousness, wondering, when will we see our beloved daughter next, any of you could walk by us and ask: “Why do you stand there looking up toward heaven? Ryan who has left, will come back in the same way you saw her go into the heavens.”

While she is still our child, Ryan is no longer a child, but an adult. She completed her school requirements and was eager to get out on her own. Perhaps some of you remember that feeling when you finally had the wherewithal to strike out on your own and get out from under the rule of your father and mother. How did that feel?

Many of you know first hand what I'm talking about-- the change between parents and children as children grow into adults. The child is still your child, and you are still your parent's child, but the relationship has changed. And sometimes you will long for that sweet little boy or girl who gave you the handmade mother and father's day cards, sat in your lap and snuggled. . .

Instead of the adult who lives a couple of states away, doesn't call you nearly enough, and who you hope you'll see at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Parents want their children to finish school, move out, and be independent adults, positively contributing to society, but their absence from home leaves a great emptiness. We and they want the new, but we grieve their absence. Absence hurts.

In today's scripture lessons we hear about another transition of relationships between loved ones. Jesus has been warning his followers for months that he would leave them, but he also reassured them. “I will not leave you orphaned. I am going away so that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, will come and dwell in you. And one day, when the Father is good and ready to send me back, I'll return from heaven.”

From the early letters Paul and Peter wrote we know the early church hoped, as we hope when our loved ones leave, that Jesus' absence would be short, that they would indeed see him face to face again in a few months and certainly again in their lifetime. But here we are 2,000 years later, still waiting for Jesus to return as the angels told us he would.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes that on Sunday mornings a great division takes place among American people, as some of us go to church, but most stay home. And most of those who stay at home, are not taking a week off. Rather going to church simply isn't part of their lives. As far as they are concerned, churches are little more than pretty antiques, fussed over by wishful thinkers who do not know when to admit they are wrong and go home. Going to church Sunday after Sunday is, Taylor continues, one of the most peculiar things we can do in this day and age, to come together week after week with no intention of being useful or productive, but only sit on hard wooden benches for an hour and declare things we cannot prove about a God we cannot see.

Our word for what we do is called worship, and it's hard to justify in our consumer, time is money, do-do-do culture.

But we who come week after week begin to count on it. It's how we learn to whom we belong and how we belong to God and to one another. It is where and how we proclaim the reality that God raised Jesus from the dead and from then on everything has changed. Violence and death are not the last word. Sin is not the last word, but God's triumphant love and new life for us and our world will be the final word. God will prevail in the end. That is what we come and proclaim every week and look hopefully toward coming to full completeness in the fullness of God's time as the writer of Ephesians reminds us.

Anne Lamott, in her book Travelling Mercies, tells why she makes her son, Sam, go to church. She started going to the St. Andrews Presbyterian church early in her pregnancy. One Sunday at the end of the service Anne stood up and told the congregation that she was pregnant and the people cheered. She wasn't married and didn't expect that reaction. Anne reported that even folks raised in Bible thumping homes in the deep south clapped and clapped. Even the old women, whose sons had been in jail or prison rejoiced with her. They reached out their arms and they adapted Anne. They brought clothes and blankets for the new baby. They baked casseroles that she could freeze and use later. The church members kept telling her that this new baby was going to be part of their church family. And then they began to slip her money. A bent over woman on social security would sidle up to Anne and stuff her pockets with tens and twenties. Old Mary Williams who sat on the back row brought Anne baggies filled with dimes week and after week. Anne brought Sam to church when he was five days old. The other church folk stood in line and called him “my baby” or “our baby.” People in that congregation kept Anne going. They cared, reached out, prayed and loved her and saw her through some rough hard days. Why does she make Sam go to church, when none of his other friends do? Because as she looks around her congregation, she sees the face of God, present in the loving actions of the folks she worships with each week. Who know that hope is embodied in acts of loving kindness and relational community.

Just this past week I heard three different stories from church members here who described the love and care this congregation had given them when they were in need of it. Just as I been impressed with the leadership Mandy Wall and our youth have given us in mission outreach to the poor in Appalachia , I am also impressed by how you have reached out and cared for the sick and grieving among you, those of you bearing heavy burdens, when the need was made known and communicated appropriately.

We come together on Sunday mornings to connect with one another and to the Holy. We sing and we listen. We praise and petition God together. We hear and speak prayer concerns and thanksgivings. We peer into a dim mirror. Here is where we locate ourselves between our past and our future, between our hopes and our fears, between the powers of this world and our faith in the world to come.

We may baffle our unbelieving friends and neighbors, and even surprise ourselves, proclaiming good news and thanksgiving when the immediate news is really bad, trusting that when life is at its darkest, the light will still come. Trusting, continuing to wait on Jesus coming again in our midst when all the evidence the world values points to him packing up and leaving for good a long, long time ago.

But we who have experienced the presence of the risen Christ as Anne Lamont did, we who take to heart the stories about Jesus we read in scripture, we who are obedient to the command to love one another, we who have claimed the blessings God has freely bestowed on us, like a loved one off in Hawaii or other distant heavenly places, we know that in their absence they are still present to us. And we wait for their promised return assured that in God all will be made well.

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