Wistful Thinking

Acts 1:6-14

Carla J. Bailey, Senior Pastor

This past Thursday evening, Warren and I drove to Bangor, Maine for a meeting of Bangor Seminary Trustees.  It was late and we were both tired.  We found a radio station that played one old song after another from the 60’s and 70’s so Warren and I sang along, remembering as best we could lyrics that made little sense but were filled with deep meaning.  “California Dreaming”, “Light My Fire”, “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “A Horse With No Name”, “Mama Told Me Not to Come”, “Imagine”.  When we drove beyond the station’s range, we started to reminisce about the summer we first met, driving around the north woods of Wisconsin, falling in love while listening to 8-track music.  The old music, the late drive, the spring night, made us wistful for what seems to us now was an easier, happier time, a more relaxed time, when we didn’t feel burdened by life’s lessons or worried about our children, the economy, the election, the war, our health, our parents.  Singing those old songs transported us into our memory, which is a dangerous place to go, fickle and false.  Eventually, we arrived in Bangor and I entered the world of Bangor trusteeship, approaching the end of one fiscal year, saying goodbye to President Bill Imes and preparing to welcome incoming President Kent Ulery.  Struggling with diminished giving from churches who are experiencing rising costs, finding its way through the maze of the prophetic and the pastoral, doing the delicate dance with denominations that question a commitment to issues of racism and homophobia on the one hand and ecclesiastical preparation and authority on the other. Whatever wistfulness of the night before, by morning, it was gone as the work of living today descended.

Biblical and Ecclesiastical tradition tells us that forty days after Easter, having appeared to his disciples several times and having taught them all he could, the resurrected Christ ascended into heaven and left their sight for the last time.  Forty years Moses and the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, forty days Jesus fasted and prepared for his public ministry, and forty days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven.  The symbolism surrounding all these stories connect them one to another, reminding us, as they are intended to do, that Jesus was the fulfillment of the hope for a Messiah, that following the time of wandering, there was, at last, a place.  Following the time of preparation, there is, at last, courage sufficient to resist all temptation.  Following the time of aching grief, confusion, and dismay, there is the transfer of power from one, to many, from the Risen Christ into the living Church.  Symbolically, the story of the movement from Israel, the particular place of God’s revelation, to the Church Universal, is told Sunday after Sunday from the first Sunday of Advent, back in December, to the day of ascension, today.  Next Sunday is the day of Pentecost, when Peter, preaching of the power of the Holy Spirit, ordained the beginning of the Christian Church.

There is a moment in the story of Jesus’ ascension that catches the heart, and my attention.  It is a moment that flickers, briefly, in this grand sweep of the shaping of God’s community.  It is a moment of wistfulness as the disciples gaze up toward heaven, trying to look through a cloud into which the Risen Christ has disappeared.  They were watching, remembering perhaps when the days with him were exciting and warm and when they were protected emotionally by his clarity of purpose, his spiritual wisdom, his connection to God.  Gazing toward heaven, they must have known that something was now over and gone.  You can almost hear the sigh, can’t you, when the two men in white robes ask them why they are looking up into heaven, back, as if the end had come.

The Bible is full of resurrection stories.  Peter raised Dorcas the Book of Acts tells us, and Paul raised Eutychus.  Jesus raised Lazarus and the widow’s son and Jairus’ daughter.  Ezekiel raised a whole valley of dry bones and brought them back to life though it was God who blew the breath of the Spirit into their lungs.  In every one of these resurrection stories however, the revival back to life was only temporary.  They would all live again to die again.  The Greek word that described these resurrections was not the same as described the resurrection of Jesus.  Luke wrote of a new understanding, a new way to believe in the Resurrection of Christ.  Jesus would not live again to die again.  He lived again to live within the beloved community forever, taking a new form – the Body of Christ.  That is the message at the end of Luke’s gospel and repeated here at the beginning of the story of the acts of the apostles, the formation of the Christian church.  This Resurrection was not the same as all the others.  This Resurrection goes on and on and on, as long as the Church survives, as long as the Church understands itself to be the Body of Christ in the world, the Resurrection is everlasting.

But there was that moment, that wistful look back, when the work was clear and you could actually see lives being transformed, starting with your own.  There was that cogent time, when prophetic preaching didn’t get dissected by CNN commentators who don’t know the Scriptures.  There was that bountiful time when money flowed more evenly into the pockets of those who worked.  There was that dependable time when the public good was publicly supported and public safety nets were strong.  There was that judicious time when we felt as if we knew what we were doing and because we knew what we were doing, we could see what we should do next.  There was that sacred time…

This is the day, this Ascension Sunday, when we remember, sigh, and turn around to face the future, the community of believers here at hand, and get to work.  I’m so glad it is a Communion Sunday.  I for one need to be reminded that Christ is with us, in the breaking of the bread, ready to nourish our bodies for the work ahead.  May we turn toward that sacred time, and all the sacred days to come with all the hope and strength of our faith.  Amen.