The Blessed Ascension

On Ascension Sunday, we celebrate a holy day in the church that is largely forgotten. It takes place towards the end of the Easter season. It is called the Feast of the Ascension. It marks the fortieth day in the Easter season, when Jesus left us.

The event is recorded in the Book of Acts and in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus gathers his disciples together. He tells them power is going to come to them from on high. He blesses them. And then he is lifted bodily up into the sky. He never appears physically on earth again.

In the forty days previous to this, Jesus had popped in and out so often that the disciples got to thinking he might appear again. Wouldn't that be cool, if Jesus appeared to us in bodily form every now and again? It would be startling, but I would love to see him. I would probably be a bit more careful about how I lived my life too, if I thought he might appear at any moment.

Why did he have to leave? And why do we celebrate his departure? I find it so appropriate that the Feast of the Ascension comes right around the time of Mothers’ Day, because Jesus had to let the disciples grow up. They were dependent on him and he knew that if they were to become all that God called them to be, he must go. And he must leave physically, obviously, once and for all. His departure must be witnessed by many. It had to be made clear that he was not coming back.

When we think of a mother, mostly we think about nurture. We think of a woman holding a baby, or cooking or cleaning.  We think of a mother as holding on to her children. But one of the most important things that we can do as parents is let our children grow up and, very importantly, let them leave. I am not saying that you must never see your children again, but all parents put their children in bondage if they do not let them go.

I once knew a young man whose parents had not let him go. They loved him dearly and wanted to protect him from the evils of the world. The young man was very intelligent and so his parents had home-schooled him. They did not take him to play groups or let him participate in the usual social activities of most home-schooled children. They claimed he found it hard to socialize. He went to a local college while living at home and still lived at home at age 30. His parents related to him as if he were 10 or so, and his development was stunted. Because they never were able to let him go, he remained childlike and he had a sadness about him, as if he did not know who he is.

Not only did Jesus leave visibly and purposefully, but he showed us how to do it. If you need to leave someone you love, follow Jesus' example. Before Jesus leaves, he turns to the disciples and he blesses them.

You have the power to bless your loved ones. The word in the Hebrew is barak. It literally means "to kneel before someone." It means to spiritually empower someone else, to say, “I want you to prosper in every area of your life.” To bless is the opposite of cursing or crippling someone. Just as to curse means to disable, hurt or disempower, to bless is to empower a person to thrive spiritually, socially, physically, emotionally and in every other way.

When Jesus told Peter "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven," he meant what he was saying. Peter and all of the disciples were not created to be just followers. They were created to be leaders. And Jesus needed to leave for them to realize their potential.

There is immense confusion between the words disciple and apostle.  Disciple means follower. Technically, it refers to the twelve who followed Jesus during his earthy ministry. We also want to be disciples, we want to follow Jesus. But the twelve disciples, with the exception of Judas Iscariot, became apostles when they were sent out into the world to do the work of the gospel. And there were many more apostles sent out, like Paul, Timothy and Titus. To be an apostle means to be sent and anyone who experiences the risen Christ and is sent into the world by Christ can be called an apostle.

Because of the the Ascension, you and I are being sent out. "Time's up!" Jesus says. "It's your turn to do my work. You are all grown-up. Here is my blessing. I know that you are not perfect. I know that my work in you is not complete. But you have everything you need. Go out and bless others. Use your power to make this world better. Usher in the kingdom of heaven."

Have you blessed your children, physically placed your hands on their heads and blessed them? Do you realize that you have the power to do so? Have you blessed your spouse? What about your parents? You don't have to wait for a departure to bless someone. Have you named the ailments of this world and prayed with force that we all be healed? Jesus asks this of you. He has blessed you and he sends you out. You are powerful. You are apostles. Own it.

Let me give you interesting information about two American families dating back 200 years.

Max Jukes was an atheist who married a non-believer. From him, 560 descendants were traced; 310 died paupers, 150 became criminals, seven murderers, 100 were known as drunkards and half the women were prostitutes. The descendants of Max Jukes cost the U.S. government more than 1.25 million 19^th-century dollars.

Jonathan Edwards was a contemporary of Max Jukes. He was a Christian who practiced his faith with strength. He was known to have blessed his children. From him and his wife 1,394 descendants can be traced: 295 graduated from college, of whom 13 became college presidents and 65 college professors, three were elected U.S. Senators, three state governors and others were sent as ministers to foreign countries, 30 were judges, 100 were lawyers, one dean of a law school, 56 physicians, one dean of a medical school, 75 officers in the military, 100 missionaries, preachers and prominent authors, 80 held public office of whom three were mayors of large cities, one was comptroller of the U.S. Treasury and another was Vice President of the United States.

I know, there is a lot to consider here, genetics, behavior, etc. but Jonathan Edwards blessed his children. He blessed them when they were born, when they reached puberty, when they married. Over and over again, he blessed them and he let them go.

And you are called to bless, to teach, to heal, just like Jesus. That's why he had to leave, so that you would take up the mantle of his leadership, his ministry. It is time for you to accept your God-given gifts and work to usher in the kingdom of God.

Peter

Have you ever said no to God? Have you ever pretended that you simply did not hear God? Have you talked to God incessantly and forgotten to listen? I want to talk to you about Peter.

Peter is a gift to us. He was a disciple who made every mistake in the book, but who never gave up. And Peter became one of the greatest leaders in the church, despite all of his mistakes.

I bought an icon for my husband a few years ago. It is an icon of Peter. I had never seen one like it. I love the image because Peter is so strong. He has grey hair and lots of it. His beard looks unkempt. His face is weathered and brown. He looks like a big man who spent all his time outside and never once looked in a mirror. Though his hands are not depicted, I can just picture them: callused and brown from years of hauling in nets. I always pictured Peter as a large man, strong and worn by rough living. Peter was a man who could not be ignored. He took up some serious space.

I love how Peter develops. To watch Peter change and grow is to see how one man's life can be transformed by knowing the resurrected Christ. You see, before the resurrection, Peter thought he knew how to be a disciple. After all, he hit the nail on the head by recognizing that Jesus was the Messiah. But he messed up so much! He refused to believe that Jesus should suffer at all. Jesus actually says to him, "Get behind me, Satan!"

Being reprimanded like that by Jesus would have sent me running with my tail between my legs. But not Peter. He does not run. Peter sticks it out.

When Jesus transfigured before him and turned dazzling white, Peter spoils the moment. Instead of listening and just experiencing the moment, Peter decided that it was time to make three booths and he is so distracted by his project that God has to reprimand him. He won't stop talking! I think Peter must have been an extreme extrovert. Almighty God has to speak to Peter from out of the cloud and tell him to listen!

Peter is sure that he would never deny his Lord. But when the rubber hits the road and Jesus is captured, Peter denies him three times, lying and saying that he does not know his own teacher. Peter gives in to fear and denies that he even knows Jesus.

After all of those mistakes, I would have run away, but Peter does not run. He mourns and returns to the tomb and witnesses the resurrection. And when Peter realizes that Jesus is truly alive, he begins to do things differently.

Peter begins to live his life not according to his agenda, but according to God's agenda. Instead of just deciding what he thinks ought to be done next, Peter prays and asks for guidance. When he goes to a new city, he heals people and tells them about Jesus. It is as if he steps out of the way and lets Christ take control of his life. And he becomes so much more powerful. The bumbling disciple becomes a true leader.
He teaches people about Jesus, he heals people and he prays constantly.


But even as a leader, Peter still remains a bit stubborn. When Paul begins to preach the gospel to Gentiles, Peter does not listen and he does not agree. He believes that Jesus came to save the Jews only. And he will not hear otherwise. So God presents Peter with a vision. God shows Peter a sheet on which there are many animals that he has never touched, let alone eaten. And God says, "Get up and eat." Even now, Peter is so stubborn that he refuses God three times! He says NO to Almighty God! I can't decide if I admire him or just think he is stupid. But God does not seem to take no for an answer. When Peter opens his eyes, there are three Gentiles knocking on his door. They invite him to the home of a Roman soldier named Cornelius. This is a man who imprisoned Jews, a source of oppression and violence. This was a man whom Peter should have feared. But Peter realizes that God is doing something new. He goes home with the Gentiles, to the home of a centurion named Cornelius. He eats with them and tells them about Jesus. When they believe, he says the most wonderful sentence. Peter says, "Who was I that I could hinder God?"

"Who was I that I could hinder God?"

It is only after this final vision that Peter truly follows God's will. All of his life, he stumbled and hindered what God was trying to do. But with this final vision, Peter realizes that God has a plan beyond his own fathoming. And he puts his trust in that.

How often do you and I hinder God? We hinder God by not listening, by sticking to life as we know it and being unwilling to try new things. We hinder God by judging others and being unwilling to share with them who we are.

We live in a crazy age, in which many faiths mingle and there is great violence. But we should not let fear make us hard-hearted. Jesus still asks us to tell the world about him but he may be asking us to do this in new ways. We must be willing to knock on the doors of strangers who look and think very differently from the way that we do. We must be willing to reach out and get to know the stranger even though he frightens us. Peter was willing to be led to the home of people whom he previously considered less than human and to tell them about his love for Jesus. Are you willing to take the same risk?

Discipleship has always been a bit scary because it means letting God run your life. And God does not take the easy road. God wants us serving and sharing the love of Christ every day. And one more thing, and this is perhaps the scariest part of all, you never know what God will do next.

Two Steps to Repentence

A few years ago, I finished a book about repentance. It is called Get Over Yourself, which is my translation for repentance. The ancient Greek word, Metanoia, literally means to turn towards God. It is the opposite of paranoia, which means to turn inward to the self in fear. Metanoia is to turn out of the self, to God. But I have discovered something new, something more about repentance. It has two parts to it. Two very different, important parts.

The first part is simply forgiveness. Ben Clance told me a story this past week. Ben is a deacon who goes twice a week and spends all day at a maximum security prison. He walks the corridors until his knees hurt and his bones ache. He brings communion to murderers, rapists, drug dealers and other criminals.

Last week, Ben went to a cell in which there was an old man. His face was wrinkled and he had scars as well as tatoes. He was in isolation. This means that he was in his underwear in an empty cell with just a small mattress on the floor. He asked Ben for communion.

Now these men get mixed up about what to call Ben. They call him bishop or priest or pastor or minister or brother- it really doesnt matter to Ben, so long as they know that he is a man of God. This man told Ben that the officers would not lift the flap for him. Ben said he could get them to open it. And they did.

As Ben prayed, the man just stood there and wept. Great tears poured from his eyes. "Is it really true that God could still love me, after all that I have done? After everything that I have done?" And Ben said yes.

Moses was a murderer. He killed a man. Granted, it was a soldier who was abusing a Hebrew slave but it happened. He killed a man. And then he fled.

The first step in true repentance is forgiveness. Forgiving others and, perhaps more difficult, forgiving yourself. Moses was living in hiding. He was hiding from his crime and it's ramifications. He made a whole new life for himself, married and herded sheep. Then God showed up. God came to a murderer and told him to go back. God knew that he must return and do right in order to complete the process of forgiveness.
Go back to the scene of the crime, to the land where you committed murder. Do not run away. Go and look at your crime and understand that I forgive.

Its hard to believe that God can forgive our worst sins. It's hard to believe that heaven could be made up of people like us, people who have hurt the ones they love sometimes without even meaning it. I think all of us, at one time or another, have hurt someone we love. But God has infinite and immediate forgiveness. It is not human, this kind of forgiveness.

Salvation is not dependent on whether or not you have done bad things. Once you ask for forgiveness, your mistakes and failures are washed away, they are washed away. So why then do we still need to be concerned about salvation? Why isn't is just really easy to get to heaven? Because there is a second part of repentance. There is something else, something very important. Moses has to bear fruit. God says "Go back and serve me. You will bear fruit when you go back. This is what you must do to repent." And God tells Moses to return and lead the Hebrew people to freedom. This was a man with a speech impediment. And God told him to do something so hard it is almost unimaginable. All during the book of Exodus, Moses cannot believe what he has to do, it is that hard. But he tries. He takes one step at a time. And he sees God Almighty upon the mountain.

Jesus tells us that God does not punish people through tragedy or suffering. These things are just by products of our broken world. But there is one thing that does cause God to cut down the tree and that is if we never produce fruit. In other words, it is not enough to just let something go, which is what forgiveness means, to be free. It is not enough even to forgive yourself. You must take one more step in order to truly get over yourself. You must do something extraordinary for God.

Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree. It is not bearing fruit so the owner of he vineyard is going to cut it down. But the gardener begs for more time. Time to dig around the tree and plant manure. The owner gives the tree one more year. But if it doesn't produce fruit it will be cut down.

Your life must, in some way, become a gift to God. Fruit is meant to be eaten. Fruit spreads the seeds of God. How can you feed others in a way that teaches them of the love of God? How can your life become a song of praise to your maker? You must become like God in your actions in order to go to God when you die. Your salvation is not just about refraining from doing bad things, it is about DOING GOOD. And it is never too late to start.

Fruit doesn't have to rock the world, you know. It could be the simple but powerful act of listening. It could be an act of generosity, sharing your resources with others. It could be that you pray for people. What is your fruit? It has a unique flavor, you know. It is all your own. And I can tell you that, no matter what you decide to do, you will have to work hard. God challenges us as God challenged Moses.

When we ask you what kind of ministry you see yourself in, we are not asking to do it if you feel like it or what kind of preference you have like choosing ice cream or a pair of pants. We are talking about finding one of the keys to your life, the figs on your tree, the essence of your repentance. Service to God is not an option in this life. It is essential.

I pray for that man that Ben visited in prison. He has begun the first step of repentance, he is realizing that he has been forgiven. I pray that he now will have the courage to take the second step and bear fruit. Even there, in the dark cells of prison, fruit does grow and men do care for one another. Ben sees it every day.

About the Devil

I want to talk to you this morning about something difficult. It is a subject that most Episcopalians avoid.

I want to talk to you about the devil.

There is no denying that the Bible depicts another being. There is God and there is humanity but there is also someone else. From the Garden of Eden, where the snake lures Eve to conceive of disobedience, to the final book of Revelation, there is clearly evidence of a presence.

The word devil means the tempter. This presence is also called by other names: Satan, the adversary, the Evil One... I know that the word devil might sound medieval to you, too simplistic, like a caricature. But I want to use the word because that is the word that Luke uses in the gospel for today. And because, I do believe that there is such a thing as the devil.

Jesus had just been baptized. At age 30, everything that God had in mind for him was about to begin. He had so much work to do! There were people hungry for the word of God, people in need of healing, people who wanted to follow him. No one had more of an excuse to get to work than Jesus. No one had more important things to do. How strange that instead of launching into his ministry, instead of teaching and healing and rounding up his disciples, the first thing that Jesus does is nothing at all. He goes out into the desert, fasts and prays.

Jesus goes out into the desert to be alone with God, but someone else is there. If you read the gospel carefully, it says that the devil tempted Jesus for 40 days. I had always assumed that the devil showed up at the end, but that was not the case. The devil was there the entire time. Just as the devil is often there whenever we sit down to pray.

The work of the devil happens inside the human mind. You cannot even begin to identify temptation unless you get to know your own thoughts.

A thirty-one year old woman just died. From what? You ask. She died from drinking coca cola. You see, she drank it all day every day for a decade. If she did not get her cokes, she would begin to shake and get irritable. Her family begged her to stop, but she would not. She drank more than a gallon of coke every day. Eventually, all that sugar and all that caffeine made her heart stop. What in the world was she thinking? How could she justify pouring those chemicals into her body in such grotesque amounts? What was going on inside her mind?

We all are tempted, just like Jesus. We all can be not just distracted from God but tempted to do things that are not at all good for us or for others. How do you know when you are being tempted? Here are some clues for how to identify the tempter.

Clue #1 The devil always focuses on the self. It wants you consumed with yourself, either by feeling like a failure or feeling like a great success. If you are thinking about your success or your failure, whether people like you, how you are feeling, generally, it is temptation. Praying for others, well, that doesn't work so well for the tempter. Jesus is tempted in three ways. He is tempted to feed himself when he vowed to fast. He is tempted to worship the devil for power and success and he is tempted to kill himself. All of these temptations are about himself. Never does the devil suggest that he think of anyone else but himself.

Clue #2 The devil is not original. Temptation usually sounds like a broken record. Unlike God, whose revelation is always new and creative, the devil will say the same things over and over again. So if you are having a thought that you have already heard over again, it might be temptation. (You probably could rattle off some phrases that come up from time to time in your mind...or feelings that you are a looser or something like that, too fat perhaps, too stupid?)

Clue #3 The tempter tends to think everything is a crisis. Whatever is happening in your life is not just bad, it is awful! Patience, taking time, these are not things that the devil wants. The devil wants you to rush, to panic, to think that everything will NOT be OK. The devil does NOT want you spending time alone with God and you can bet that when you sit down to do so, you will be attacked by temptation. The devil does not want you to think about the meaning of your life or whether you are treating your loved one well or anything like that. The devil wants you so busy that you do not know that you haven't had a meaningful conversation with your spouse in a week. Or that your job is consuming your life, or that you have become desperately unhappy. The devil wants you to be too busy to notice.

Did you know that a frog, when placed in a pot of water, will stay in the water and allow its body to be boiled to death if you simply increase the temperature gradually? The frog never knows that his reality, the substance in which he sits, is becoming toxic, because he does not take himself out. If you never spend time alone, how will you know when your busy life has become toxic or when the tipping point has occurred and you no longer know yourself? If you fill your days with noise, how will you listen?

Final clue: The devil does not love. That means that if you are having a thought that is hyper-critical of yourself or others, something that has no connection to love itself, then it is probably from the tempter.

When Jesus went to pray, he was accosted. Naturally, we avoid quiet time too. Who wants to hear temptation? It's easier just not to listen. To be quiet is to walk into a battle-ground with our own minds. Even if all your thoughts center around is the laundry that you have not done, nevertheless, it is a battle as part of your mind tells you to get up and the other tells you to sit still. No wonder we are so afraid of silence, of doing nothing. Doing nothing means doing the most important thing, identifying the voice of darkness within our own minds and letting it go.

But the most important step in battling the devil is identification itself. Once you know that what you are hearing is temptation, it makes it easier to say no. So we must have the courage, like Jesus, to find time alone with God, knowing that devil will also come, at an opportune time, and we will have to learn to say no.

Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down

Did you say this rhyme as a child?

Ring around the rosy
A pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

I remember distinctly grabbing hands with unidentified friends and twirling around and around in a circle, changing the rhyme and falling down.

Ashes ashes we all fall down.

Today the season of Lent begins and we remember the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting and praying in the desert. He walked out there immediately after his baptism and he sat down in the dust and prayed to God. It is hot in the deserts of Israel, hot and dusty. Dust gets everywhere, in your shoes, all over your hands, in your pores. After a week or two of fasting, I bet Jesus began to think about how his body was formed of that dust and what would happen to his body if he died right then and there from starvation or exposure or something else. Nothing can change the fact that the human body turns to dust. Abraham Lincoln's body turned to dust just like the common man's body. That's what happens to the body of a human being. So we sit with Jesus in the dust and we remember that is what we are.

I am battling a strange phenomenon here at the Cathedral and at every church in which I've served. People always call the body or cremated remains of a person by the person's name. "Oh, Sally is in my office." "George was buried here." "Let's go visit Angela at the grave." But if you stopped at Ash Wednesday. If there was no cross and no resurrection, then those statements would make sense to me. But if we, who are nothing but dust, if we are risen, then surely we are not to be contained in a box under the ground. Surely it is inadequate to say that our loved ones are present in those remains. They are just the body.

But we must begin at the beginning, sitting in the dust with Jesus remembering that without God's redemption, we are are nothing but dust, and we all fall down.

It is only God who can make us more than dust. Only God.