Instructions for living a life:
Pay Attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. [1]

My favorite poet, Mary Oliver, has a way of encapsulating a sentiment, or a lesson, or a day, or a life, into something you can hold in your mind, repeat to yourself over and over, like a mantra, until you have learned something yourself, something about yourself, something to help you be more of who you are created to be.

To me, she has the power over words that the Biblical authors had – the capacity to evoke a remembered or future glimpse of God, a brief revelation of what is truly good, actually meaningful, and even helpful for taking on the pain we encounter each day and moving forward into the next.

The Gospel writer Luke tells the story of the Ascension to us. The disciples are amazed at the lifting up of Jesus, the love and grace of God, made flesh, embodied once more, and raised to something higher, all before their eyes. Their minds are opened. Their understanding is transformed. They are changed.

They have learned a new lesson, something to help them be more of who they are redeemed to be, to be witnesses: witnesses of God’s love and grace, witnesses to something more than the quotidian, day-to-day routine of our lives, the patterns which lead us just to expect that things will never change, never get better, never be anything other than what we have seen before – that coercion and violence (even if they don’t resolve a conflict) will always be used to silence opposition and protestation. As Christians we are reminded every time we look at a cross that Christ was a victim of unjust coercion. But he was restored, and then raised, not just to where he was before, but into something new, above, in the heavens, where the Name above all names dwells and reigns. Jesus sits enthroned in power and honor at the right hand of God. Christ, the one who was despised and outcast by the people of God, is now and forever exalted, vindicated, confirmed, and accepted beyond all doubt. That’s what the scriptures tell us.

In the book of Acts, Luke’s sequel to the Gospel, he tells what the disciples did with this new understanding of the world. For their part, they have to face down a feeling of loss, grief, and uncertainty about what to do next. They begin to live with the same boldness of spirit that their teacher had shown them. They live. They pay attention. They allow themselves to be astonished and truly touched by the beauty and wonder of the world.

And they spend their days in the Temple, blessing God. They spend their days in the place their rabbi was interrogated. The disciples walk in the brightness of day, not hiding in the night, not cowering behind closed doors, but standing in the midst of the people who rejected and condemned their messiah, Jesus. The disciples are moved to worship God, even in the seat of corruption, even in the presence of their enemies.

Theirs isn’t a story of defeat. Jesus’ ascension is the beginning of something new, the beginning of the Church. His ascension a transitional event in the early lives of the Apostles. It’s the story that ends Luke’s Gospel, and that same story begins Luke’s next book, the Acts. The disciples from the Gospel of Luke are no longer followers of an itinerant rabbi. Now, they are witnesses to the world of God’s unyielding love and grace, and they are given a Spirit to proclaim truth to power, reconciliation to those in conflict, and hospitality to those wary of newcomers and to those needing acceptance. They preach the good news that Jesus taught, and it spreads beyond Galilee and Jerusalem, to the corners of the known world. 

The Apostles preach a new name for God, that Jesus Christ is the deliverer of salvation to the world. Our names for God often reflect who we believe God is leading us to become. To some, God calls them to be holy, to be a shining example to the world, that all might forsake evil and turn to righteousness. So, they call God the Holy One of Israel. To others, God calls them to welcome everyone into the church, so that we would be authentically hospitable and reconciling. So, they call God the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords. Some are drawn to study the teachings of the early apostles, in order to have the same deep faith they had. So, they might call God eternal and everlasting, perfect and unchanging.

All three of these tendencies are good; they’re marks and signs of the Church. The Church is holy, catholic, and apostolic. But the fourth mark, that the Church is one, is something that no one can accomplish by themselves. It’s something that requires all of us to make an effort to preserve.

Before his ascension, before his resurrection, before his crucifixion, Jesus prays that we all may be one. And, as if in anticipation of our question, “What does that look like?” Jesus clarifies that we should be able to reflect each other in our own actions, just as Jesus reflects the quality and nature of God to the early church and to us.

Would that we could all reflect that Spirit of God, that life, that freedom and light, in our everyday lives! Would your days look any different from how they appear now? What outlook or attitude might you be able and willing to change in order to live that kind of life, that kind of unity?

The hard part about staying together is that, as people, we disagree on a lot of things, even under normal circumstances. The trouble with a crisis is that it amplifies our tendency to disagree: Our divisions deepen. And a pandemic turns our frustration at what we cannot control into something worse – a hatred of others we believe we can abuse or reject, despise or coerce, much as the people of God treated the Son of God, perhaps out of their own frustration under Roman occupation and imperialism. We end up vilifying people who bother us, people who offend us, people who don’t look like us or who don’t appear to be easily controlled by us. It gives us an illusion of power and might that we long for, because we’re running from our own vulnerability.

We project blame, because we feel powerful when we put others down. We say, loudly, that the problem is this person over here, or those people over there, when we become filled with rage at someone and keep telling ourselves the same tired story, that they’re the aberration, that if they would have just gone away, then we’d end up where we want to be.

When we keep our attention focused on whatever shortcomings we can see (or imagine, or engineer) in others, then we’re able to blind ourselves to the pain and weakness we have within us. We’re able to ignore for a while the uncomfortable truth that we don’t have it all together; we aren’t invincible; we aren’t perfect, and our lives and circumstances aren’t perfect. And that’s the allure of living a combative life; everyone else is incompetent and at fault, and we are never in the wrong.

The trouble with finding fault in others, though, the problem with casting blame, is that it hampers our ability to find or offer solutions. It destroys our teams, it sows suspicion among people when what we need is trust and goodwill, and it leaves us hoarding resources and protecting our own interests, which historically have prolonged and deepened a crisis, rather than help people recover and move forward.  

And conflict isn’t limited to people who are working and trying to lead in the world. It’s also in the church. Ironically, those who strive to avoid accountability and never take responsibility for their actions also regularly pray to Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who became incarnate, unmistakably, as a brown-skinned, brown-eyed, Jewish Palestinian. This is the image of God for us. But hardly any of us remember the racial and socioeconomic particularity of Jesus, when we commission stained glass windows in our churches, or proudly hang devotional oil paintings in our homes, or envision in our minds the One to whom we are praying.

And that ties in to the ascension of Christ, the end of Jesus’ time on earth.

When God became incarnate in a baby, God took on flesh and tabernacled among us. In an uncertain and inhospitable world, God’s love and grace took the form of an infant, who taught us to focus on the gift that today brings and the potential that tomorrow holds. God came into the world, unexpected and inconvenient.

At the birth of Christ, God’s only means to affect creation was to cry for help, and God’s only defense was to disarm those nearby with a gaze or a giggle. The Son of God came into the world, truly meek and mild. Whatever you want to say about God, I pray you remember that God does not come demanding us to live in a certain way or forcing us to give up a certain thing. God comes into our lives to be loved, without coercion or manipulation. The gentleness of God shames our obsession with power and might, violence and bloodshed. God accepts us so much that God becomes like us. God affirms our humanity in the incarnation. 

And in the ascension, when Christ is taken up by the clouds, God accepts Christ. God accepts the brown-skinned, brown-eyed man whose feet are covered in dust and dirt, with scars unhealed from wounds inflicted out of hatred and oppression. In the ascension, God accepts humanity in its frailty and embraces the stuff we are made of – the clay, the earth, the world, in all our imperfection, all our vulnerability – that whether we are male or female, young or old, brown-eyed or blue-eyed, able in one way or another – we are accepted by the One who was rejected by the world, and we are embraced with a love that will overcome every difference, reconcile every hostility, welcome every single redeemed child of God, no matter what. That’s what the ascension means.

No amount of politics will limit God’s love for you. No amount of discrimination and strife in this world will stop God from welcoming you to join with Christ in celebrating the salvation of the world. Nothing the world can throw at you will hinder God’s grace in your life. No amount of trouble will get in the way of God making something new in you, something to amaze you, something to give you hope, something to fill your heart with joy and love all over again.

Because God’s promise will never be broken, and it’s a promise of inclusion, acceptance, guidance, and empowerment toward a church that welcomes all, heals and perfects all, and nurtures faith in all – until at last with Christ we all get to heaven. And what a day of rejoicing that will be.

But for today, for now, will you keep looking at the clouds waiting for your salvation to come down? Or will you decide to face down your feelings of loss, grief, and uncertainty? Will you live with the kind of boldness of spirit that our Lord shows us? Will you allow yourself to be astonished and truly touched by the beauty and wonder of the world? Will you live as part of the beginning of something new, something for which your participation is required? Will you be a shining example for all the world? Will you open the doors of the church wide open for all to find welcome? Will you nurture the same deep faith that has sustained the saints through the centuries? Will you try to stick together, with loved ones at home, with one another in the pews, and with your neighbors both near and far? Will you accept God’s acceptance of you – all of you? Will you?

I pray you will. Amen.

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[1] “Sometimes” in Red Bird by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press, Boston: 2008).