“Up! Up! But Not Away”
As disciples of Christ we are called to do a lot and we are equipped by the Holy Spirit to do it.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, May 5, 2002
Texts: Luke 24:50-53; Ephesians 4:4-13
Though not on the front page of any paper this past week, there was hidden within two of the daily papers a remarkable story. It is the story of the Hubble telescope and how, through its lens, scientists and astronomers have discovered the vast expanse of the universe and the galaxies beyond our Milky Way. The Hubble has, in fact, shattered many preconceptions of what were natural laws or truths, and is daily exploring the world and its vastness, the universe and its constant expansion, to the awe and the wonder of all who are looking through it.
This was particularly poignant to me because I only realized this last week, when somebody who attended my book-launching asked me what is depicted on the cover of the book.
Well, I didn't know until very recently. Now I am informed: It is a shot from the Hubble telescope itself. It is a stellar nursery in the Trifid Nebula. This stellar nursery is creating stars from clouds of dust and gas. There is this cataclysm, this expansion and this mystery. It's a powerful thing that happens in the universe.
I suspect the publisher has done this to describe the wonder, the mystery, the creative power of God, the Trinity. It is that very image of God and the wonder and the awe of what God can do that I believe should be gripping all of us every single day.
Very recently I read a book by Mark Buchanan, who is a Baptist minister in British Columbia. His book is entitled: Your God is Too Safe. It's a splendid book.
I met Mark a couple of weeks ago and I told him that one of the papers that he had written in this book, on discovering wonder and where it has gone, had really caught my imagination. In this passage, he tells the story of E.B. White of the New Yorker.
E.B. White one day said: "Today the world has shifted."
The day in question was when, for the first time in the history of humanity, the vast majority of people watched a lunar eclipse on television rather than going out into the fresh air and standing on the green grass and looking at the eclipse with the naked eye.
He said: "This is a sign, in many ways, that the world is being interpreted for us; that there is something between our experience of reality and reality; that we rely on someone else, or something else, to do our interpreting, to do our imagining, and even to describe wonder for us. Everything seems to be mediated."
Mark Buchanan argues in this very profound book that one of the things that our society is losing is that sense of wonder and with it our imagination. We are wanting someone else to do our imagining for us.
This got me thinking back to a conversation I had with a young child in our Sunday School a few weeks ago. He told me about this battle that he had created on his computer and how he had created all these different beings and morphed them into various forms that collided in this great battle on the computer, and how excited he was about this.
It reminded me of when I was a little boy (when of course there were no computers). I had no-one else to make up my characters for me. I was thinking of Spiderman this last weekend, and I remembered that I used to dress up as Batman. Do you remember Batman? I and my little friend [Robin] would put on our masks and our belts and our hoods, and we would charge around the neighbourhood on our bicycles. For the life of us, we felt we were really Batman and Robin.
I'll never forget going to a local park just outside London, and all these teenage boys laughing at me. They said: "Hey, don't you realize Batman doesn't look like you? Batman is much slimmer than you are. Batman does not have a belly on him."
Well, I'm sorry but I can't help it. Those buckles that they had were just 'way too small. That was all. And because they lay a little low on me was no reason to think that I wasn't Batman. I went away from that confrontation saying to myself: "I am still Batman, but Batman with a weight problem, that's all."
In my mind's eye, I was Batman. It didn't matter what anyone would say. Even when Batman went home and met his mother and was told to take off the ridiculous outfit and do his homework, still I was in my own mind's eye Batman. There's a powerful, powerful virtue in having that sense of imagination, in having that sense of wonder.
Now, I am not a Luddite. I am not saying that there's no role for computers. On the whole they do marvellous and wonderful things, but there is a danger (and Buchanan is right) that in our highly scientific, highly interpreted society where people do our thinking for us, we can lose that sense of awe, imagination and wonder.
He says this also affects the way in which we look at our Christian faith. We want someone else to do it for us. And when we do that, we lose our imagination. We lose our sense of wonder and we do not rely on the Holy Spirit as much we ought.
This morning, our passages on the Ascension from Luke and Ephesians really call us to use our imaginations and to wonder all over again. They are marvellous passages. In Luke, the story of the Ascension of Jesus is nothing more than that at the end of Jesus' ministry, he died, he was raised from the dead and he left his disciples and ascended into Heaven.
According to Luke, this was his farewell statement. This was his last goodbye. And, as his last goodbye to the disciples, after he had appeared to them in many different places and situations, Jesus is causing the disciples to think about the life and the ministry ahead. Without him, they are going to be challenged to carry on that ministry.
In the Book of Ephesians, we have something different. The church has now developed. What the writer of Ephesians is doing is capturing the Ascension and saying that this is really about empowerment. He talks about the ascent of Jesus, but also the descent of Jesus: that he went to the lower parts; that he came and he dwelt on earth; as the Creed says, that he descended into Hell. This is the sense in which the writer of Ephesians sees the whole cosmos, in the language of his time, the whole cosmos filled with the glory and the presence of Christ: that with his ascent and his descent there isn't a part of the world, there isn't a part of the universe that is not covered or touched by the presence of the living Christ.
But what he does (and this is so clever, in a classic form of Jewish midrash) is that he shows us that this ending of Jesus' earthly ministry was the beginning of the empowerment of the disciples; that Jesus had to ascend in order that the disciples might be able to continue his ministry.
And so this morning I want to look at this because, as we receive new members into our church, as we examine in our own hearts our own role within the body of Christ on this Ascension Sunday, this passage is an inspiration.
Years ago, I used to think every time Ascension Sunday came along of a passage from a song by the Fifth Dimension: "Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon!" It's hardly an image that you want of Jesus ascending to the heavens, but it's the one that always comes to my mind. In a sense, the Gospel message is a song. It's a song that needs to be sung. It's a song that needs to be heard. It's first of all, though, a song that goes everywhere. It goes everywhere.
When Jesus departed from his disciples, he gave them a commission. The commission was to continue the message of Heaven on earth. We say it every Sunday:
Our Father, Who art in Heaven,
hallowed be Thy name,
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
on earth, as it is in Heaven.
As Jesus is both the descended Son of God and the ascended Son of God, the mission and the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was to bring the message of Heaven to earth. By calling these disciples and bringing them around at the moment at which he is to ascend to Heaven, he is saying to them: "I want you to carry on this message. I want you to continue what you're doing."
One biblical scholar put it (this is a beautiful phrase) that Christ exchanged his presence with the disciples in Jerusalem for his spiritual omnipresence with disciples everywhere. In other words, what Jesus is doing at the Ascension is saying to the disciples that they must now carry on his ministry; that they are to go to all four corners of the earth; that they are to go into all the world; and that they are to do so to carry on the ministry of Heaven as it was manifested on earth in the Son. It's a beautiful passage.
Time and time again, throughout the New Testament, Jesus tells the disciples this. He says in Matthew: "Lo, I will be with you always, even at the end of the Age."
In the Gospel of John, he says: "I am going in order that I might send the Spirit and the Father may bring the Spirit upon you."
Jesus says: "I will not leave you comfortless."
In other words, when Jesus was about to ascend he made a series of promises that the church of Jesus Christ would be given the power and the authority to carry on the message of the song everywhere, that as it is in Heaven, so it might be on earth to the glory of the Son.
But it is not just a song that is to be sung everywhere. It is a song that is to be shared. When Jesus appeared to his disciples he promised them something. The promise was that they would receive power. In the Book of Ephesians, the writer picks up the same theme: But to each one of you has been given a gift, to each one of you has been given the means of continuing the ministry of Jesus Christ.
In other words, Jesus doesn't just say "Follow my example." Jesus is not just an ascended teacher who leaves behind a legacy of wise words. Jesus bestows on the disciples who follow him the power of the Spirit in order that they might have the gifts to carry on the ministry.
Now unfortunately, and all too sadly, the gifts of the Spirit have in many ways had a bad review recently. On the one hand there are those who look at the gifts of the Spirit, draw out particular ones, and suggest that if all people don't manifest all these gifts of the Spirit then they are ipso facto not Christian. I have had people say that to me on numbers of occasions: that if I don't exhibit a particular gift of the Spirit then somehow I am less of a Christian.
On the other hand, on the other side, there are those who look with a degree of detached properness at those who exhibit the gifts of the Spirit and they look down their noses at them as if somehow they are nothing more than a bunch of ecstatic, mad people.
The New Testament is abundantly clear. There are gifts of the Spirit. There are. And the gifts of the Spirit are for the building up of the body of Christ, and different gifts have been given to different people according to God's call on their lives and that is the end of it. The fact is that so many of us are not seeking the gifts of the Spirit and we are not asking Christ for the gifts of the Spirit and therefore the church is often impoverished because of that.
Although this is not about the gifts of the Spirit, I read a lovely story not long ago of a 38-year-old scrub-woman. All she did was clean houses and shopping malls. That was her job. But at night, she would go and watch the movies. She would watch all the glorious movie stars and think "If only I were beautiful I could be a movie star." But she didn't feel she was beautiful. Other nights she would go to a nightclub and hear musicians sing. "If only I had a great voice," she said, "then I would be able to entertain people, but I don't have a great voice."
Then one day she was given a book entitled: Why Not Believe? The thesis of the book was that every individual in his life (and we are talking now about earthly lives) should find out what he is good at and do it. And so she thought about all the things that she was good at and she remembered her childhood, and how she used to make everybody in school laugh, and how whenever she was at a party people would gather round her and she would make them laugh. She was in awe of this and thought, "Oh my goodness, I now know what I can do. I can make people laugh."
And so this 38-year-old scrub-woman, although she had poor looks in her own opinion, and an extremely scratchy voice in everybody's opinion, decided she would give up her job and she would start to make people laugh.
Do you know who that was? Phyllis Diller, who made millions in her prime. She started out as a scrub-woman. But she went out and found the gift that was within her.
The same is true, my friends, in terms of spiritual empowerment. There is a need for us to seek the gifts of the Spirit in order that the church may flourish.
And when Jesus ascended this was the purpose. This is what he said. Oh, he lists many different things. He said some are to be preachers and some apostles and some evangelists and some pastors and some teachers, and he lists all these different ministries that existed in the church at the time. But the real point is that when Christ ascended he gave the gifts for the church to be able to carry out that ministry.
Now, not all of us are called to be ordained ministers. Far from it. And sometimes as ordained ministers we make colossal mistakes that are no example to anyone.
I was thinking, as David was making his presentation on stewardship this morning, of how in a church back in Nova Scotia I used to stand up every Sunday and invite people to bring their offertory. I used the same words every single Sunday. I would get up and say: "Ladies and gentlemen … something, something, something … Your free-will offertory will now be received."
After I had been there about four years, the Chair and the Vice-Chair of the Board of Stewards paid me a visit. They said: "Andrew, we would like to have a little word with you about this because we really think that you are insulting the congregation way, way too much."
I said: "Insulting them! How could I possibly be insulting them when all I'm asking for is their free-will offertory?"
They said: "Well, Andrew, we are afraid to tell you that most of us think you are saying, 'Your feeble offertory will now be gratefully received.' Would you please use another phrase?"
Sometimes even we clergy lead people astray! But I think that regardless of our calling and regardless of the nature of our ministries, each of us has been given the gifts of the spirit for the building up of the body of Christ. We need to seek that gift.
Finally, it is a gift that must always be heard. It's a song that must be heard.
The writer of Ephesians talks about the Ascension with one purpose and it is singular. The purpose is that the church of Jesus Christ might be united as one body and that it might serve Christ in the world. That is the purpose.
When I look at our new members this morning and I think of the great confession you are going to make in a little while, I want to encourage you to think about the nature of Christ's call and of what you can do to share that with the world.
There is a wonderful story of the Stradivarius Society of Chicago. They are the people who preserve the great, magnificent Stradivarius violins. They were told once by a very famous musicologist, John Von Rhein, that if they didn't play these instruments they would lose their quality. But the violins were worth millions of dollars, and they were afraid of what would happen if they lent them out to be played.
But they made a decision and they stuck by it. Not only were they going to preserve the violins, but they were also going to get the best violinists in the world to play them. They would loan them out with one condition: that they would make two command performances a year playing the Stradivarius. If they were willing to do that, they would be allowed to keep them.
So it is with the gifts of the Spirit. It is not only that the church is the preserver of them, but the church must be willing to play them. The church must be willing to sing them. The church must be willing to open itself to them.
This was born home to me many years ago in Cape Town. In the church in which my father ministered there was a gardener named Joseph. The gardener was Xhosa and spoke very broken English and a little bit of Afrikaans. He was the gardener at the manse as well.
Every day Joseph would work in our garden, and he never wanted to come into our house and have lunch with us, although my mother invited him many times. He always felt he was too dirty from the gardening and so he would sit on the steps outside and eat a sandwich. I noticed something about Joseph: Before lunch he always bowed his head and said a prayer. But more than that, in his back pocket there was a New Testament and when he was raking the New Testament would pop out of his pocket and he was always returning it, but every single day Joseph had this New Testament in his back pocket.
After a while I talked to Joseph about his faith and in his broken English and my broken Afrikaans we started to talk and I said: "You know, sometime I would love to worship with you."
He said: "I would love that too, but are you sure you want to come to our township? They are dangerous places and you are not really allowed to be there."
So one day, I managed to get a pass from the government (because it was during the days of apartheid) and I went into this church in Gugutetu in the evening, because so many of them were having to work on a Sunday morning and the only time they could worship was at night. I found the church and I walked in and I presented my pass to the police and I sat down in the pew and there was no Joseph. I looked around. The service was about to begin. I couldn't find Joseph. Finally the choir started to march in. I thought, "Oh, Joseph must be in the choir." No Joseph. Then all the elders came in. As they processed, "Oh, he must be an elder." No Joseph. Then the beadle came in - It was a Presbyterian church and they carried the Bible up the aisle. No, no Joseph. Finally the minister came in, but I couldn't quite see him very well as he was walking quickly down the aisle until finally he came to the pulpit and turned around and began with the call to worship. Who do you think the minister was? Joseph.
To my astonishment, Joseph worked as a gardener to support his ministry and he never told anyone. That's the commitment that this man made. Forty, 50, 60 hours a week gardening in other churches. He was a minister.
Here was a man who knew and understood that no matter what the cost, the song needed to be heard. The song needed to be sung and he would do anything to make sure that continued.
My friends, not all of you are called to stand in pulpits and preach. Not all of you are called to administer sacraments or to do pastoral care, but all of you as members of the body of Christ have been given spiritual gifts to use for the building up of Christ's body. I implore you and I encourage you to seek the gift of the Spirit, to seek your calling as new members, to find your place in order that Christ, as the writer of Ephesians said, may be all in all.
feeble
To the glory of God the Father. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.