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Anticipating God’s Presence
Vicar Mollie Hamre
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year A
Texts: Acts 1:6-14, Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35, 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11, John 17:1-11
Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Dropping my husband off at the airport is always a challenge.
As someone who has terrible flying anxiety and who has a spouse that flies frequently for work, you might be able to imagine why sending your spouse on a plane could be nerve racking. By the time we get to the airport, my heart is pounding, I am anxious and dreading the drive back alone, knowing he will not be in the car with me anymore. It is a quiet time I usually dread because I am transitioning into a week on my own.
For our readings today, the men and women in Acts that follow Jesus are in a similar situation, except the person they are missing is the Messiah and it is long term. The person who has been their guide and walked alongside them. He is gone and they are living in a space where they do not know what the future holds.
Alongside them, Jesus is mirroring this sense of absence in the Gospel.
We find him as he is praying to God, in front of his women and men followers knowing he will be leaving his people soon. I can’t help, but wonder what that felt like for Jesus.
These people that have been his family surrounding him–he has to let go, trust he has done what he can, and know his followers can take it from there. Everything we have been talking about the past seven weeks of Easter.
Jesus states all of this in his prayer with hope that his disciples might find eternal life through knowing God in their present moment. That in being present in their world they see that they are surrounded by community, loved, and hear the dreams that Jesus has for them.
Hearing this intimate prayer between Jesus and God is crucial for the days ahead so that everyone knows Christ’s presence, even when he is physically gone.
But this must have been strange for the men and women in ancient times.
What’s coming Jesus? No longer in the world? Protect us from what? I imagine a build of anticipation, with confusion and disorientation. Jesus who they have experienced the whirlwind of death, resurrection, and ascension is now physically gone. These men and women are looking in the unknown. Living where we are–in the days between. The time between Jesus ascending and his followers not knowing what is coming next.
What are we supposed to do now?
These views comparing the reading from Acts and Gospel are important to hear as we live in that in between time.
We experience these liminal spaces often whether it be before a big trip, when closing a chapter of our lives, or whenever we enter into any place uncharted. We live in a world of unknowns and as much as we try to predict, anticipate, and listen–we are like the people in Jesus’ day. Waiting in the in between, unsure, and praying for God to guide as we search for what is next.
For the women and men in Acts, this time meant gathering in a prayerful community with a sense of anticipating that God might be doing something new within and through them. They lived into the space of tension, and at some point, had to trust that God would be with them in it.
But living into the moment is not that easy.
It asks us to release control, to reground ourselves in the moment, and to be present in that tension alongside Jesus as we live in the transitioning spaces of our lives. Change and the unknown are difficult to live into. It comes with big emotions of excitement, anxiety, stress and scariness that can all exist together. And yet, Jesus calls us back to the community and his prayer, telling us that Jesus, God with us, prays for us, journeys alongside us, and is within us. All of these lessons we have been learning throughout the season of Easter come to life.
Jesus tells us that we are God’s creation and hopes that we will embrace what that means–eternal life. Eternal life is not something far off in the distance but what unites us with the Triune God back into the present. Embracing it and letting it bring you back into this moment with God and with the community.
I think I will always have anxiety when dropping my husband off at the airport.
And that is okay. I know I do not have control of the pilot, or the weather, or the outcome of the trip. But at some point as I live in that transitioning space, I find myself praying. I feel a shift inside of me and I realize I have to let go. I have to trust God will care for my husband, keep him protected, and bring him home from his trips. I find myself trusting that my husband knows how to navigate his trip, that the pilot knows how to fly, and that God carries all the intricate pieces in between.
And in that moment, that prayer changes me. It focuses me back into the present. It reminds me I am not alone.
The Triune God is found within those moments, within you, within the community. Even though Christ is no longer in the world and we anticipate what is to come, we trust that God moves us, changes us, and renews us as we boldly enter into our futures.
What do you hear in these moments of anticipation?
In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Worship, Sunday afternoon, May 21, 2023
Holy Eucharist, and the funeral of Carolyn R. Mowery
Download worship folder for this liturgy, May 21, 2023, 3:00 p.m.
Presiding and Preaching: Pr. Joseph Crippen
Readings and prayers: Claire Thometz, Neil Hering, lectors; Kathy Thurston, assisting minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Worship, May 21, 2023
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year A
In our worship, the Triune God prays with and for us and for the whole creation through Jesus’ prayer.
Download worship folder for Sunday, May 21, 2023.
Presiding: Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Preaching: Vicar Mollie Hamre
Readings and prayers: Al Bostelmann, lector; David Engen, assisting minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Download the readings for next Sunday for this Tuesday’s noon Bible study.
Looking In a Different Direction
We don’t look up to the skies for God to save all things; we look around at each other, filled with God’s Spirit, and see God bringing healing and hope to all through us.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Ascension of Our Lord
Texts: Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:44-53, plus John 16:7
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.” (John 16:7)
Much of what Jesus says in John’s Gospel on the night of his betrayal is words of encouragement to these women and men who follow him. He tells them he’s leaving them, but they’ll be alright. The Spirit will be with them, they will be one with the Father and the Son, they will not be orphaned.
But in the midst of that encouragement are these strange words, that Jesus leaving them is to their advantage. Not just “you’ll be OK when I’m gone,” but, “you need me to go.”
And that’s hard for us to understand, much less to trust. It was hard for this group of followers, too. In fact, angels feel compelled to appear and ask them just why they’re standing there, gazing up to heaven. They’re looking where Jesus disappeared because they don’t understand it yet.
We’re not that different from the disciples, or anyone expecting help from God.
Don’t we look up to the heavens – if not literally then spiritually – when things go wrong, wondering where God is, why God allowed this or that, what God intends to do to make things right? Like most humans throughout history, we tend to hope for magic more than relationship from God. Prayer is a way to get God to do what we want.
Some of the Jewish people expected a Messiah who’d restore Israel, end oppression, kick out Rome, and Jesus didn’t do any of that. But we who follow the risen Christ didn’t really learn from that.
Even after they faced the reality of Jesus’ death, once he is raised, Luke says, the disciples ask, “Now will you restore the kingdom to Israel?” It’s as if they’re saying, “OK, we missed that part where you were going to die. That’s our bad. But now that you’re alive again, we’re back to you fixing all our problems, right?
Little wonder they gaped at the sky when he left.
But we should answer the angels’ question, too.
Why would we stand idly in the world wondering why God isn’t fixing all the oppression and suffering, ending the rise of authoritarianism and fascism, bringing all peoples together as one? Wondering when God’s Son will return to fix things? Jesus says leaving us to deal with this ourselves is to our advantage.
This is the heart of Luke’s theology of today. He ends his Gospel with this story, and begins the sequel, Acts, with this story again.
Because in the Gospel, he tells of God’s Son, who, filled with the Holy Spirit, did amazing wonders, taught of God’s love and unlimited grace, sacrificed himself in love and rose to new life. The world began to be changed in this Spirit-filled Son of God.
And in Acts, Luke says we’re the same as Jesus. We’re promised the gift of the Holy Spirit and become, like Jesus, like the first believers, Spirit-filled children of God who change the world. Who do wonders in Christ’s name. Who love the world with vulnerability and so transform death into life, make God’s reign happen here. All with the power of God’s Spirit.
Jesus had to return into the life of the Trinity, or we’d just keep looking in his direction every time something needed doing.
After all, he’s the Son of God. He’s got all the power and ability.
But tonight it becomes clear: God’s transformation of the world will happen in the same way Jesus began, continued in us, through self-giving love, through re-creating relationships between the people of the world and God. As more and more of God’s children are transformed in that love, all the broken things, the oppressive things, the evil things, all that work against God, will crumble and fall. Unless we all just keep looking up at the sky.
It’s not terribly efficient, but the means are as important as the end to God. Forcing the world to love each other and God wouldn’t be worth anything. Jesus showed the power of God in his sacrificial love. And now for us in the world, the only way to show God’s power is by our sacrificial love. By the Spirit making us new from within so that we can love others, because in that love everything can be changed.
Tonight Jesus says, “tag – you’re it.” Or, “keep up the good work I started.”
Jesus promises that if we trust in him, if we abide in him and so in the life of the Triune God he’s opened up for us, we’ll do even more amazing things than he did. Because spread throughout all God’s children, the Holy Spirit can be working in every corner, every crack, every broken place in this world, bearing God’s redeeming, vulnerable love for the healing of all.
Because Christ has ascended, we don’t look up for God to fix everything. We look at each other, filled with God’s Spirit, the power of God, and say, “What can the Triune God do through us, now that we are Christ, now that we are called, now that we are sent?”
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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