On the Way to Wonder

We have reached the end of the Easter season.  We have looked at the testimonies of those who saw the risen Christ.  With Mary, we exclaimed “Rabi, Teacher” when she met him at the empty tomb.  We joined Apostle Thomas who cried, “My Lord and my God,” when Jesus appeared behind closed doors and invited Thomas to put his hands in the wounds of Jesus’ hands and side.  We too long to see Jesus!  The two on the road to Emmaus felt their hearts burning in them as the scriptures were opened and they met the risen Lord in the breaking of bread.  John concludes, “Jesus did many other things as well if every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world could not have room for the books that would be written.”  We stood with the followers and watched Jesus ascend to heaven and waited with them in Jerusalem for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

         I chose as a hymn, a putting to music of Scripture, Isaiah 40:25-31.  “Those that wait on the Lord will rise up on wings like eagles.”  Please enjoy.

We have come to the end of the Easter season.  Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost.  Between Jesus’ ascension and Pentecost the disciples pondered what the future would look like, they stayed together in community, they prayed, they chose Matthais to return their number to the familiar twelve that we associate with the apostles but they did one more thing.  Luke shares in Luke 24: 53, “And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.”  It is so easy in in-between times to give way to fear about the future but it seems that the followers clung to Jesus’ yet to be fulfilled promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit.

         In those uncertain times, what do you cling to?  What keeps you going?  Fear of the future drives some to immerse themselves in videos about happy endings, crimes solved, bad guys defeated.  Others hide in alcohol, drugs or sex. Busyness so that we live in exhaustion is common.  We have many ways that we can avoid the anxiety of waiting for yet unseen promises.  I’m sure the followers had no real idea what the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit meant.  We debate today if that means speaking in tongues or some other esthetic experience and search our lives looking for signs of which gift of the Spirit we have been blessed with.

         Waiting is hard. The followers waited in the Temple worshipping what they already knew and praising.  Praise focuses our attention from the anxiety and problem to the character of the God who will help us walk through the in-between times.  I suspect they might have focused on Isaiah 9:6,7,

“For a child has been born for us,
    a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
    and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ His authority shall grow continually,
    and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
    He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Choose one of the titles describing Jesus that brings you comfort during anxious times.  Counselor? God? Father? Prince of Peace?  Each is powerful and comforting.  Spend a few minutes focusing and praising God for these.  This God cares about you!  Thank you, Lord.

During in-between times it is sometimes helpful to revert to the familiar.  As the followers of Jesus, men and women, tried to get their minds around what the future would look like, as they gathered in community and as they prayed, Peter took the lead with about 120 people present (Acts 1:15).  He suggested that since there had originally been 12 disciples but Judas had hung himself after his betrayal that the next step was to choose someone to take his place from among the people who had followed Jesus from the beginning.  Mathias was chosen.  Staying with familiar patterns while we wait for the next phase provides stability and predictability.

         One morning as my oldest son was leaving for school while we were in the States, he asked, “Why don’t you cook any more, Mom?”  I was surprised for I fixed three meals a day.  His response was that I no longer made the coffee cake I always made on Sunday morning when the children were home on school breaks.  We have certain “traditions” that provide rhythm to our family.  We say a family prayer we know at meals.  We do evening devotions and “pray around the world”, or at least around the room on Sunday evenings.  A simple “thank you” for one thing during the week was sufficient.  There are traditional foods for holidays, perhaps a personal stocking for Christmas, and also certain songs I associate with singing the kids to sleep as infants.  Traditions provide a backbone during times of change.  A basketball team with only four players just isn’t right so if one is out, a sub is sent in.  I love Tevy’s comment at the beginning of Fiddler on the Roof.  “What keeps the fiddler from falling off the roof? he asks.  Traditions.  Traditions tell us who we are and what God expects of us!

         What traditions give structure to your life?  When our five children, twins at the end, were young, I was overwhelmed and had no time for spiritual disciplines like reading the Bible.  Just keeping up with diapers and meals in the “bush” was full time work.  We started the habit of my husband reading a passage of scripture to me while I nursed the twins.  Then it became while I worked on knitting.  Now we start the day with reading and he still reads to me.  Spiritual disciples are those habits that provide a predictable rhythm to our lives and provide a foundation for our souls.  I would suggest you take a moment to reflect on the disciplines you have.  Perhaps there are ones that you may have become sloppy about, or ask yourself if there is a discipline you would like to add.  Life just was not right for the disciples without that twelfth person.  Traditions help us keep a steady course into the future God is about to reveal.  Blessings!

“They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. (Acts 1: 14)”  “They”, the eleven original disciples and the women turned to prayer in that in-between time.  We all experience in-between times when God feels so distant and we can’t see him or touch him and are not sure what to do next.  I often joke and say, “I wish God would send a fax!  It would be so much easier and clearer.”  But that is not how God works.  Often there is a lull, “a calm before the storm.”  During those times we imagine and wonder what life is going to be like after….  We lean on community.  But we also have the gift of prayer.

         Prayer can be like writing a list for Santa Clause but as we grow, prayer becomes a form of communication.  Have you ever found that as you are trying to explain something to someone, that if they are quiet, the tendency is to keep talking and explaining.  Sometimes we call that the gift of presence.  Just sitting with someone as they sort through their thoughts and feelings and quietly listening, without judging, is a great gift.  My friend is a “listener.”  She will be allowed back into the prisons this week to be an official listener.  She sits with women and gives them the gift of listening and letting them tell their story.  I sometimes fear that in our hurry, scurry world today that we do not have time to just sit with friends.  God has time and the disciples needed to spend time in prayer, sorting through their experiences in community and in prayer, conversation with God.

         I took a class on meditation as a young adult.  20 minutes a day of just sitting calmly and meditating on a “mantra” or on Scripture, and slowing your breathing, lowers the blood pressure and adds health to your life.  Some people like to form a picture in their mind that helps them focus on a truth about God.  Perhaps it is of the Good Shepherd.  Perhaps it is of Jesus welcoming the children.  I love the picture of Jesus standing with a youth at the helm of his boat on a stormy sea and Jesus has his hand on the person’s shoulder directing.  Prayer helps us focus on eternal truth.  Our lives are in the hands of God and he is present with us and he cares.

         Prayer can help me stop focusing on my problems as I think about all the other people I would like to talk to God about.  We call that intercession, when we pray for the world and for others we are concerned about.  As my thinking broadens to others, my problems shrink from their enlarged size and become more manageable.

         I don’t know what you are facing and what in-between zone you are in right now, but I do know that as you think about what the future will be like, as you join together in community, and as you pray, God will be present and listening. As you allow him help you carry your load, hope begins to bubble up in your soul.  A brief story.  A driver picked up a hitch hiker who had a large backpack.  The driver told the person to put his pack on the floor but the person felt he had to carry it.  The rider insisted on carrying a load that the car would have carried so the rider could rest.  Prayer is allowing God to help us carry our load.  Blessings as you journey.

The followers of Jesus stayed together in community between the ascension of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost.  Acts 1:12 tells us “Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city.  When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying.”  Isolation, quarantine is our modern day solution to “viruses” that we do not understand and that seem to threaten our health. While working in East Africa, I often visited hospitals and visited the sick and usually there were four to a hospital bed with the relatives who brought food sleeping under the bed on the floor.  Grief and changed were handled in community.  We see that with the apostles as they attempt to sort out how life was changing for them.  Community is one way to handle those in-between times.

         As the person deals with the emotions of the transition, others join together to do the work of the transition like preparing and feeding the guests and well-wishers.  We say many hands make light work.

         Similarly, I find as an “idea” person, I function best when I have “detail” people helping me as I tend to not think about important details.  I’m sure there was “group think” as they sat around and shared what each noticed and as they put their heads together to understand.  Every witness at an accident will remember it slightly differently and will remember details slightly differently.  Sharing helps to see the big picture.

         Community confirms the report from our senses.  Perhaps you have seen the classroom experiment where volunteers are blind folded and then given food.  The volunteer may have difficulty telling an apple from a potato because the texture is the same and without the eyes to see, it can be confusing.  Community expands the perception of the experience but it also confirms the experience.

         Have you heard the saying, “Count to ten before you respond”?  Withdrawing into community provides a buffer time for healing from grief,  sorting out experiences, and affirmation before the next task is undertaken.

         So perhaps the question to reflect on today is to ask, “Where is my community?”  Who has my back?  Who helps me sort through life when I am confused?  Church worship functions in some ways like this, like community.  Church is a place where we can retreat on Sunday and recenter our thinking, be challenged with the pastor’s perspective on a scripture that reminds us of a bigger picture involving a God who loves us and a Savior who travels with us.  Before Covid there was often a coffee hour and fellowship.  Community is important and valuable.  The apostles withdrew to community.  We still need community today.  Blessings.

In-between times are some of the most dynamic times.  In-between the proposal and the wedding lots of planning and dreaming occurs.  Colors for the wedding, dresses, invitations are all chosen.  In-between conception and birth lots of growth and dreaming takes place.  Names are talked about, cribs organized, and friends informed.  In-between graduation and a job, lots of worry and dreaming takes place.  Resumes are sent out and job applications filled out.  Last Thursday, Jesus ascended, returned to his pre-incarnate existence in heaven, promising to return.  In-between the Ascension last Thursday and Pentecost this coming Sunday when the followers were waiting in Jerusalem to receive the Holy Spirit, what happened?  Luke writes to his friend Theophilus another letter that continued on from Luke’s gospel and that gives us a peek.

         We have the advantage of two centuries but these first followers were still sorting out what was going on.  They had questions. Between times are not voids but opportunities for creative thinking and planning.  One of the first questions the followers asked was, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? (Acts 1:6)” That seems to me to be the question, “What is life going to look like now?”  Moving from one country to another involves learning a whole new lifestyle.  In the same way moving from Jew to Christian was a transition.  Choosing to believe in the risen Christ involves a change in lifestyle even today.  Perhaps our question is not about restoring Israel but we do need to reorient ourselves from the kingdom of “me” to living in the kingdom of “God.”  The rules are different.  We learn to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength and learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We learn to pray.  We learn new music.  For some it means breaking old bad habits and addictions to what we eat and do.

         Is life after the risen Christ going to be about restoring a political kingdom, a social kingdom, or a physical kingdom that we will all become citizens of?  Jesus says that is not for us to know.  And so we have people today focused on social justice for all and we have people focused on piety.  How do we spend the time between faith and heaven?  It is not an either or question but a both-and.  How might I improve my faith walk this week and how may I improve the life of those I encounter?  Both require faith and love and an awareness of Jesus who promises to walk with us.

 Annie Sherwood Hawks (1835-1918) was one of four women who wrote hymns prolifically in the 19^th century.  It was a time when women were not given leadership in the church, when women often were home with children, and when women had little voice in the public arena.  Annie wrote over 400 hymns, encouraged by her pastor who recognized her talent.  This hymn was written at age 37 as she went about home tasks in Brooklyn, NY, and as she felt very strongly the presence of the Lord.  She wrote about the inspiration she felt in writing this hymn.

         “One day as a young wife and mother of 37 years of age, I was busy          with my regular household tasks during a bright June morning [in    1872]. Suddenly, I became so filled with the sense of nearness to the         Master that, wondering how one could live without Him, either in joy      or pain, these words were ushered into my mind, the thought at once taking full possession of me — ‘I Need Thee Every Hour. . . .'”

It was not until years later when she lost her husband that she realized how the hymn was such a comfort to so many.  Jesus promised to be with us always, in good times and in bad, even to the close of the age.  This hymn captures that sense of his presence that we can experience at all times, even today.

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)” are Matthew’s last words in his Gospel before Jesus ascended.  We call yesterday Ascension Day because Jesus disappears from sight in a cloud.  “Ascend” has a double meaning, though, that is important to see here.  Often we think of it as Jesus returning to God the Father, that is going up in a cloud.  But then we have a problem because that puts God “up in the heaven” along with Jesus and so the promise of presence becomes complicated.  I offer a second interpretation. 

         When the king dies, the son “ascends” to the thrown.  The heir assumes the title and privileges he was born to.  Jesus’ ascension is not a trip away but a return to his pre-incarnation status as God who spoke at creation, who has specific physical appearances in the Old Testament and who promises to always be with us.  We will look at two post-ascension encounters with Jesus next week.  As with most things related to faith, an element of mystery is involved.  Faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)”

         According to Luke in the book of Acts, as the followers are on the mountain top seeing Jesus disappear in the cloud, two angels address them, “’Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky?  This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’” For sure, people have split hairs over what the ascension means and just where Jesus is now.  Jesus says he is with us always and forever.  Perhaps the angels’ question is what we should focus on today.  Where are we looking for Jesus today, in the clouds or with us?

         Often the answer is that the living word, Jesus, is found in the spoken word, and the written word.  As we read Scripture we have holy encounters.  In church we worship.  Others find the sacred in nature as they contemplate God’s creation. They encounter in nature the God who created life.  Many love the words of music that reminds them of Jesus eternal presence with them.  Many times we are healed by the hug of a friend.  The list goes on.  Jesus has promised to be with us always so wherever we are, he is with us, seen or unseen.  This promise grounds us for facing any challenge that might face us today.  Blessings!

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)” Forty days after Easter, as Jesus finishes his farewell to his followers with these comforting words, he is taken up to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father to intercede for them and us.  We call today Ascension Day and remember with gratitude.  The promise of presence “always” was Jesus’ closing words.

         The gift of presence is one of the most wonderful gifts we can give another.  So often words are inadequate.  The pain of grief is too deep or the ecstasy of joy is beyond words. We try to capture a sunsets in paintings or sounds in music but somehow it always is a bit short and words are no better.  We cannot explain how the awareness of God’s presence is possible.  Often we use the word “miracle.”

         Romans 8: 38 expresses this presence, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus or Lord.”  This truth does not depend on my feelings.  It does not depend on my ability to see or touch or hear or taste.  Likewise it is not conditional on my good behavior.  God does not reward us if we’re good like Santa Clause does and then give us coal in our life when we are bad.  God walks with us through the ups and downs and “through the valley of the shadow of death.”  He is with us always.

         This promise is not place specific.  Many like to have designated “sacred spaces” where they focus all their attention on God and their spiritual ears open to listen.  That may be a church or a designated chair with a cup of coffee where we regularly meet with God.  Jesus does not name a place but promises to be wherever and whenever we want to meet with him.  Perhaps we are uncertain because of the silence but perhaps that is when he is listening the most intently.

         This presence is not age bound like social security.  We don’t have to qualify or wear a mask.  We do not even need an intermediary present.  God’s presence is with us “always.”  We are not alone.  We are not abandoned.  We are not forgotten.  We are not orphaned.  Jesus promises presence “always,” even to the end of the ages!  Thank you, Lord.