It's Always Easier to Leave...

It’s always easier to leave than to be left behind

It’s always easier to leave than to be left behind. Right? I’m sure we have all experienced this. Family moves to a new town. A best friend moves on to a new job that takes them away. A friend in school who you’ve become good friends with the year before isn’t in your class for the next year. It can be an overwhelming thing. We like things the way they are. We don’t like things to change. Or maybe a better way of saying it is that we crave certainty, the assurance, that what things are like when we are happy or thriving will be the way things will always be.

I Remember

I remember the day I turned thirty. For a lot of people this is a really big deal, a depressing deal. You can’t make the excuse that you are just a kid anymore. I’m only in my twenties, you said before. All-of-a-sudden, you are in adult land and have to start putting back for your 401(k). For me though, it was JOYOUS. My twenties were hard. There was lots of drama and self doubt and school and introspection. When I turned thirty I thought wow. Finally, I can put all that drama behind me. I finally felt like a real person. And it was a beautiful moment of self-actualization. But I remember turning 35 that I wished I could just stay right there indefinitely. It’s okay, Time. You can stop now. We’ll just stay here. But no. Time keeps moving, and change keeps happening. Nothing stays the same.

So how do we deal with change. Especially big changes. Psychologists have noted a phenomenon in which people often times prefer a negative outcome or result as opposed to an uncertain one. We want certainty SO MUCH that we would rather just go early with the bad outcome than persevere and see if something wonderful comes from the chaos. Isn’t that remarkable?

Today’s Scripture

Our scripture readings today have a lot to tell us about this. We get two (yes you heard it, two for the price of one!) different tellings of the ascensions story, and from the same author! Luke and Acts were written by the same person. It was a two volume work. One that told all the things that Jesus did up to the Ascension and one that talked about the early church and the happenings that were part of it’s beginning from the Ascension. Luke ends his Gospel with the ascension and begins the book of Acts with the Ascension. And the story is a little bit different in each one, but maybe the similarities are more important than the differences.

Luke

In Luke, just before our reading, some undisclosed time after the resurrection, Jesus has appeared to the the disciples and is continually trying to reassure them that he is real and not a ghost. The Apostles are still very confused and he, “opens their minds” to the reality of all that has and is happening to help them understand what must be done, almost as if he is hurrying them along, like, “Okay, I tried this every other way, here just let me show you.” He gives them a mission to witness to the world beginning in Jerusalem. He then blesses them and is carried away into heaven. The disciples rejoice themselves all the way back to Jerusalem to await the Holy Spirit. It is a very beautiful way to triumphantly end the Gospel of Luke, almost with that distorted lens that they used at the end of Disney Movies from the 60’s and 70’s.

Acts

In Acts the tale is recounted a different way, again by the same author. This time we know it was 40 days from the time of the resurrection. However, don’t get caught up in literalism. 40 days is the biblical way of saying “in the completeness of time” or “the right amount of days.” It may very well have been forty days, but the number 40 signifies “the proper amount of time” whatever that is. This time the apostles are a bit more engaged with Jesus and in an sort of agitated assembly cry out for some clarity about all this. You were dead, then you weren’t. Now you’re telling us to witness for you. Are you the messiah of the prophets who will ultimately bring final justice and restore Israel to its former glory and liberate the world for the rule of God or not? “Stop messing with us.”

Jesus corrects them, basically telling them to cool their jets. It isn’t their place to know God’s time table. It is only for them to trust in God’s way and to be the witnesses of Jesus. But he spells it out specifically in Acts in a way that turns the traditional hebraic understanding of the Kingdom of God on it’s head. Acts 1:8 says:

Acts 1:8 NRSVue

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

In many ways this is the summation of the entire book of acts and is a remarkable moment. Traditionally, from the Jewish perspective, when the messiah arrived, God’s Kingdom would be established in the world with Jerusalem and Israel at it’s center. Redemption would be found in the direction toward Jerusalem, but what Jesus is telling the apostles to do is to take the witness to the gospel and spread Salvation to the world, first in Jerusalem, then in Judea and Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth. Salvation flows OUT from the city of God. People don’t GO to Jerusalem to find the kingdom, the Kingdom comes to them! This stands tradition on its head and transformed the world.

Having said this, Jesus is then lifted into the heavens, leaving the apostles dumbfounded and staring into the sky when they are greeted by two men who tell them to stop staring into the empty blue. Snapped out of their hesitation and wishful thinking, the apostles then head back to Jerusalem and wait for the spirit while doing some church business (like picking a replacement for Judas).

Beginnings & Ending

What is interesting to me about both of these passages, aside from the glorious gospel telling contained in them is that one comes at the end of a work and the other at the beginning. I don’t think this was by accident or merely a simple effect of function and elision. Luke is widely considered to be the great refined chronicler of the gospel. He used the fanciest language and was careful to craft his narrative using creative literary tools. The end of the Gospel is the beginning of the Church. The beginning of Acts is the beginning of the Church. The ascension is the closing act of one story and the beginning of a grand new volume. Beginnings and endings are the same.

In one of my favorite movies, “The Dark Crystal,” the wise old Augra asks the young naive hero about a great moment in their cultural mythology when their three suns will one day converge in the sky, called the Great Conjunction, when there was a chance to restore wholeness to their broken world. (Did you notice 3 there? Is that perhaps a Trinitarian reference? Theology can be found almost anywhere if you listen for it). Anyway, She says, “Go ahead ask me. What’s the great conjunction?.” And he dutifully follows her order asking “What’s the great conjunction.” “THE END OF THE WORLD,” she replies, “Or the beginning!” Begin/End same thing. Big change.

I think that is what Luke is trying to tell us here. Beginnings and Endings are both big changes and big changes can’t happen without beginnings and endings.

After all that had happened, all they had seen, how they had trusted and depended on Jesus, and then Jesus is just gone into the clouds, don’t you think that the Apostles might have felt like you sometimes feel when a great chapter in your life closes? When a time of stability and normalcy gives way to change and unknown vistas? They were frozen looking up at the sky. One could almost imagine them wishing Jesus would come right back and continue to guide them as the shared his gospel news. But the the angels told them to stop. “Get on with it. He told you to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Spirit. The next companion, the next guide, in the next grand design would be waiting for them there.”

When we look at New Hope, especially as long as I’ve been around. It’s very easy to look at the past and see things ending. There used to be this and that, we used to do this or that. But we can’t do new things without the old things ending. We couldn’t have the church and everything that happens in acts unless Jesus ascended into heaven. He had to leave so the work of the church could begin. When old things end, new things begin and God is always calling us to new things, to new life in the kingdom or kin-dom, or reign of God here on earth today, here at New Hope.

Rejoice in the endings as the spring board to new beginnings. If we stop gazing back at the endings and instead look ahead to the new beginnings, we to can spread the Gospel news, starting in Missouri City, and then to the tri-cities area, and then to the Houston Metro, and to the ends of the earth. Some of the people and things we depend on will inevitably leave us and we will be left looking around wondering what to do. Praise be to God for the opportunities God makes for us as we Joyfully and continually worship God and look to the bright possibilities that come with all the beginnings that follow all of the endings.

Amen.