Up Up and Away

We’ve reached Ascension Sunday and we’re nearly to Pentecost. It’s the ‘not yet’ time at the tail end of the Easter season. Jesus gives the disciples instructions (some on that hillside with Him are still doubting) and then He is taken up into heaven. They are told to wait. Wait for the Spirit to come to Jerusalem in full force to baptize them in a different way. Wait for the Kingdom of God.

They want specifics and timelines. They want to know when they can finally return home again. They want to know that the revolution they’d hoped for, in whatever format they saw it in their own minds, was coming. And they’re put in their place: that’s God’s business. It’s not for you to know.

After Jesus disappears up into the clouds they stand staring after Him until two angels nudge them to move along. It’s rude to stare, after all. All they know is that He will come back in the same way that He left at a time unknown to them. And we’re still waiting.

I want to turn to the lectionary’s accompanying scripture from Ephesians 1:15-23. Normally I get caught up in the Ascension story, so to speak, but after preaching on it several times I want to turn to what Paul is saying to the church in Ephesus. Like us, they are living in the post-Ascension time and trying to keep their spirits up. Pentecost has come and gone, and with it that moment of the Spirit’s explosive power to spread the Word throughout the earth in all languages. That was a while ago now. Things have probably become a bit ho hum.

Paul wants them to have the Spirit’s wisdom and revelation of God because He wants them to know their Creator. This isn’t about head knowledge but relationship. He wants them to have the hope to which they’ve been called that will bring them blessings and power because of their belief. Paul compares the power available to them through faith with the power that raised Jesus from the dead. Paul affirms that all things in heaven and on earth are under Christ’s feet. His power is that great. The Church is His body and completes Him.

I’ve read these words before but, perhaps because of what’s happening in the congregation where I serve right now, I’m seeing them a bit differently. Because I feel that at least some of our people are actually tapping into that power. They are starting to think beyond their comfortable pew to how God might be wanting them to use their faith to spread the Spirit and bless others outside our doors.

It’s easy to read those words and assume that they are only for the early church, but I believe they are inclusive of the Church of Christ in every age. If we truly believe and open ourselves to receiving God’s blessings and power, what could happen? I wonder if the thought, if that loss of control, is terrifying enough for us to close ourselves off. Presbyterians in particular do things decently and in good order. It wouldn’t do for an unpredictable Spiritual force to be let loose among us. It may ask things of us and expect us to deal with people and situations that make us uncomfortable. Worse still, we may like giving up control to God and then when would we ever be able to take it back?

If we read this passage on Sunday, I wonder if we will truly believe it for ourselves - that the power available to us is as mindboggling and massive as the power that rose Jesus from the dead. Are we brave enough to embrace it and to say, “Here we are, Your church. Use us as Your body to do whatever you want!”? Are we willing to let Christ complete His work through us? Or do we want to just do the work we’re already doing with waning enthusiasm and fewer people to do it because it’s safe and what we know?

I would like my mind to be opened. I pray that in my worship leading I will allow the Spirit to work through me to open the minds of those gathered so that they don’t see restrictions and fear but rather the incredible hope and calling from God that we’ve been given, filled with blessings. I hope that they believe that the King is more powerful than any obstacle or worry or seeming impossibility because of His unmatched power. What if that became true for the church everywhere? How amazing would that be!

May we stop looking up at the sky and at what we think we’ve lost. May we start looking around for Jesus made present in His body, the Church, and in the stranger who we’re called to serve by God’s grace and through the Spirit’s power. May we all be blessed because of it.