As we move into the next, quieter part of the year, we also move into the time of contemplating the Holy Spirit’s call and pull on us, and are drawn into the action God needs us to do for the healing of this world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Day of Pentecost, year C
   texts:  Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Today and next Sunday, Pentecost and Holy Trinity, mark the end of the busiest, most intense time in our liturgical year.

The year from Advent to now is packed with festivals, seasons of anticipation and repentance, extra liturgies and devotions. It’s beautiful, fulfilling. But it can be draining.

So, in our life together, the coming of Pentecost always signals quieter, calmer times ahead. Ordinary Time, green Sundays, summer. Fewer meetings, almost no festivals. Just life in Christ, steady, peaceful.

If you’ve been paying attention this morning, that’s a little ironic. We just saw that Pentecost isn’t the end of busy time. It’s the beginning of the explosion of Christ’s life and grace into the world in the lives of believers. We celebrate the beginning of unsettling times today, not quiet times, times of the Holy Spirit burning in hearts, moving people of God to action, to begin the transformation and healing of this world we have broken.

Maybe there’s wisdom in this intersection. Moving into a simpler time right when we receive the promise of the Spirit might help us better hear the Spirit’s call, feel her nudge. Today we realize we’re not heading into a time of lounging around for six months until the schedule fires up again. But this quieter time is a chance to listen, learn, center. So when the Spirit calls, when she begins to give birth to new things, we can hear, and be ready to act.

In these coming weeks and months we can take time, catching our breath, to be open to what the Spirit is doing.

These women and men speaking in languages and proclaiming God’s life in Christ spent nearly two months after the resurrection doing little but listening to Christ. Action came today. But first they listened, learned, began to understand.

Christ’s path we are called to follow isn’t about running forward all the time, never resting. The giving of our lives in service to God, learning self-giving love for all, isn’t a non-stop activity. In fact, our ability to see the road ahead, to help each other navigate the turns, the forks in the road, potholes and threats, is severely reduced if we’re constantly in motion, doing things. We’ll miss exits and risk all sorts of damage if we always drive at 70 miles an hour.

So this coming season can be our time to pull over to the side, check the map with each other. Slow down and look both ways, listening for guidance as to our turns. Allow quiet time that’s hard to find in the busy seasons of life, quiet time for opening our hearts and minds to the Spirit’s wisdom.

This is the ancient way of contemplation, and it’s essential to our clarity of vision, our ability to help each other see and act, our wisdom about the path going forward.

Because we do at some point move forward.

Today the Triune God fulfills the promise that all God’s children will share God’s healing power for the life of the world.

As we heard on Ascension Day, God’s plan all along was not to use power to force the world into love of God and love of neighbor, the way of life God dreams for the world. In Christ, God released the need to use power to dominate, giving it all up and facing death to show us our true way of using power. The power of God’s sacrificial love, breaking the power of death, is the gift the whole world is given in the Spirit. And that gift is so that action will happen. Healing will come to the world. Transformation will begin.

That is, we’ll learn a lot when we pull over and listen, when we slow down and look. But at some point the Spirit comes to us and says, “now it’s time to act. Now let’s move.”

And there are great things expected of us, of those filled with the Spirit.

In fact, Christ says today we will do greater things even than he did.

Somehow, we’ve missed this promise. Maybe because we don’t trust we can do the things God needs. Maybe sometimes we don’t want to. But we act as if we believe things just don’t happen the way they did when Jesus was walking among us. We look at the miracles, the transformed lives, and think, well, that was then, not now.

What if we took Jesus seriously instead?

What if Christ really means that through us, through God’s people throughout this world, the whole world will be transformed and healed? That in fact, what we see happening in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost is only the beginning of what God intends to do through us for the sake of the world?

It’s a little frightening to consider.

It’s daunting to think that the Triune God who made all things actually needs us to be a part of the making of the new creation, that God’s power is only going to work in this world when it is shared through us and all people.

It’s also frightening that we can’t control God’s Spirit. Look at that first day – blowing through 120 women and men, setting their hearts on fire, sending them out of the locked room – they had no vote in the Spirit’s direction. According to Acts, this kept happening. The Spirit moved in people they weren’t ready to welcome, and the Church had to catch up. The Spirit led some to open up the rules for being a part of the body of Christ, and the Church had to catch up.

It’s frightening that we don’t get to tell the Spirit where to go and what to do. We Lutherans like our doctrine neat and tidy and boxed up. But what if the Spirit moves people to do things we’re just not ready for, then what do we do?

Today God is saying, how about be open to this radical gift that my Spirit blows where I want and does what I want and it will be life and grace? Even if you aren’t in control. That’s why once again Christ says today, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

This is the beginning of the completion of God’s plan in coming to be with us.

The transformation of this world begins from within, and in Christ, God-with-us, we see what it looks like when our human life is infused with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Now we see this is to happen to us.

Today we sang with the psalmist that the Holy Spirit comes and renews the face of the earth. That’s what begins today. As we take the time to listen and sense the Spirit’s movement in our lives, we hear the direction, we find the action, we sense what is being born. And when we join in that birth, we participate in God’s renewing the face of this earth.

But don’t be afraid. The Spirit who comes to us brings the comfort and joy of God’s presence to the very center of your being and life. This is the One who moves in us and with us always on our journey, so we are never alone.

This is the One who gives us God’s power to be a part of the making of God’s new creation. And astonishingly, will help us do greater things than even Jesus, help us complete Christ’s mission, until this world is once more blessed to be whole and healed in God’s life and grace.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Jesus draws us into the life of God and into the life of community. United in a common witness to God, we ourselves become witnesses for one another.

Christ Jesus goes away on this day so that we can be filled with the Spirit and continue the ministry of self-giving, wounded love that is the only way the world will be healed.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
   The Ascension of Our Lord
   texts:  Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24:44-53

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Having Jesus around was great for the disciples.

Whenever there was a crisis, Jesus could handle it. If decisions needed to be made, Jesus would make them. If someone needed help, bring them to Jesus.

It was good. These women and men spent their time being taught by God’s Messiah, surrounded by God’s grace and love. They didn’t have to worry about much if they stayed close to Jesus.

The crucifixion was a horrible blow to this peace of mind. But then Jesus was alive, raised from the dead. They had him back. All would be right again with Jesus in charge.

This is to say, it makes sense that after Christ ascended into heaven, the disciples, women and men alike, stood on the Mount of Olives gaping at the sky. “He’s leaving? What are we supposed to do? What do we do now when things get challenging?”

And that’s precisely the point.

The Church from the beginning has struggled to grasp why God became human.

We want answers as in the days of Jesus’ ministry, answers that neatly give God all the world’s problems, answers that say, when someone comes to us we can turn to God and say, “here you go,” answers that say, in a crisis we can look to the sky and say, “now what?”

Except the point of God taking on human life and living among us was to show us in person God’s way, the way of love of neighbor, so that we would do it. To teach us in person how we could love as God loves, so that we would do it. To save the world not through a transaction over sin but through a transformation of human hearts, healing the creation through us, who from the beginning were supposed to be caring for this creation and for each other.

And if that was the point of the Incarnation, there would have to be an Ascension. At some point, the Son of God would have to return into the full life of the Trinity and say, OK, folks, now it’s up to you.

The Church also has an enormous problem understanding God’s role in suffering and evil.

We usually set this scenario and despair: “if God is all-loving, and if God is all-powerful, and if there still is horrible suffering and pain, then God’s the problem.” There are lots of ways Christians rationalize and explain this, sometimes in defense of God, sometimes in prosecution of God. None help. Because there’s a fundamental flaw in the whole argument: the equation is incomplete.

Yes, God is all-loving. Jesus taught us that again and again. Yes, God is all-powerful. The Triune God made all things, universes, galaxies, mitochondria. That’s a lot of power. And yes, there’s enormous suffering and pain in this world that causes us, and all people, to feel grief, sadness, anger.

What’s missing in the equation is how God understands power and how to use it. We assume that since God has the power to make a universe, God has to use that power to deal with human suffering, sin, and evil. When we see all that causes pain to so many, we look up at the sky and say, “Where is God?”

But we already saw God’s answer to human suffering and pain when we looked up at the cross.

On the cross, the God of the universe set aside all that power and became vulnerable, helpless, before human evil.

The Triune God set aside all weapons, chose not to exercise brute force, and, bearing our own body, faced humiliation, torture, and death.

We get angry with God for not intervening in human suffering because we imagine the only way God would intervene is the way we would: by exerting force, domination, punishment.

But on the cross the God who can do all that says, “That’s not my way.” My way is to redeem all things by offering myself. My way is to save you by loving you until you destroy me, and then coming into life again and continuing to love you. My way is to show you in my very life and death that this is how all of you will also end human suffering and pain. By taking it on yourself. By standing with those who suffer. By loving those who hate. By getting in the way of evil to keep it from someone else. By being my loving presence to those who are in pain.

We may want God to act as we would act if we had all God’s world-making power. But we cannot say that God has not acted just because God chose a different way. We can only try to understand, and see if we are drawn to follow.

This doesn’t mean we can’t ever look up at the sky and yell at God.

We don’t need to defend God or God’s choices to anyone, and God’s big enough to handle any criticism. Sometimes God does intervene, and miracles happen, and sometimes God doesn’t. It’s legitimate to scream our frustration to God when that happens. If Jesus, the Son of God, could do it, as he did on the cross, it’s fair game for us.

But we don’t stop there. Because there’s always that angel from God standing next to us who, at some point, will say, “Why are you just looking up to heaven? Go back to the city and wait, and God will give you what you need to change this. To begin the healing of the world.”

That’s the grace Jesus gives in leaving: the Triune God is sharing this world-making power with all of us, to heal all things.

In Christ’s ascension, we, like those first women and men, wonder “what now?” We, like they, ask: Who’s going to help these people? Who’s going to figure out what to do in this next crisis? Who’s going to sort out the problems that we have?

And today God’s answer is, “well, you are.” That’s been the plan all along. That we would be so changed by God’s power-relinquishing love that we would bear the power of God’s love into the world on God’s behalf. We would carry God’s vulnerability, God’s willingness to be wounded, into the world to bring life to our sisters and brothers in pain. We would share God’s strange way of using power by setting it aside.

Christ trusts us a lot in leaving us in charge. We’re going to mess up some of these crises. We’re going to find wrong answers to problems sometimes. We’re not always going to know what to do to help someone who comes to us. But Christ trusts us with this ministry. And that’s enough to go on.

And there’s one more grace we have.

Those women and men were sent back to the city and told to wait, because the Holy Spirit was going to fill them with the power from God they needed to do this work their beloved Jesus had begun.

We have ten days until our celebration of Pentecost. We’ve already experienced the coming of the Spirit, all our lives, so it’s not exactly the same for us. But these ten days are a good reminder that sometimes we have to wait before we receive all we need from God. And they’re a reminder that we’re not in this ministry alone, ever. That the Triune God’s answer when we look to the skies is to send us the Spirit so we can have the strength and grace we need to carry on as God’s love in the world.

Jesus once told us it was to our advantage that he went away, so that he could send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. (John 16:7) That’s the gift. By leaving us to continue the healing of the world, Christ also makes it possible for us to do it by coming in the Spirit. And we also get this: in taking on this ministry of wounded love to save all things, we get to become the people we were always meant to be.

So wait, and listen: you will be clothed with power from on high in the Spirit, and then, well, anything can happen!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen