Some while ago I belonged to a local Astronomical Society which frequently conducted ‘school nights’. Several of us would set up our telescopes in an open but reasonably dark space in the school grounds on the chosen night (cloudless skies permitting) and the school community – students and their families – would gather to view the night sky. To the naked eye that sparkling dome overhead is vast and awe-inspiring. Seen through even a modest telescope it becomes breath-taking. The universe is a big place. As one young child stood with her eye ‘glued’ to the telescope eyepiece and her mouth wide open her mother asked me, “Is there an end to it?” “I think it just keeps going,” I replied.

On that basis, taking the Ascension at ‘face value’ presents a few problems. Luke’s narrative has been literalised long ago: many regarding it as happening as described. Wesley may well have been writing theologically, ‘Hail the day that sees him rise to his throne above the skies’, but it’s easy to hear those words in a literal sense. Artworks through the centuries entrenched a literalised understanding even as they were intended to ‘tell’ the Bible to the many who could not read. Many songs and hymns, even today, reinforce the notion from earliest times that heaven is a place, a drestination ‘up there’, ‘above the skies’, sometimes visually caricatured by fluffy white clouds and blue skies.

But if the universe just keeps on going…? We don’t have to think very long or hard to realise that it was a nice idea while the earth was flat. But… it isn’t flat any more! Heaven is not a celestial location in geosynchonous orbit, a destination somewhere ‘up there’ in the sense of “When I get to heaven …” Perhaps heaven is rather more a ‘theological destination’, our ultimate relationship with God and in God.

The Ascension is problematic at one level and essential at another. Luke writes about the raising, the exaltation, of Jesus to the right hand of the Father; the culmination of being “raised from the dead”. It’s an essential part of the universal dimension of Jesus’ divine power, that is, Lord of heaven and earth. Luke describes the Ascension in a physical way but let me describe it another way. I once worked in an organisation in which the managing director had started his career as a storeroom assistant, accepting deliveries, stacking boxes, sweeping the floor. Over the years he was ‘raised up’, promoted, eventually to his position of managing director. In the Ascension Jesus is glorified i.e. filled, saturated with the presence of God and raised up to God’s right hand – Lord of heaven and earth.

The Epistle reading for Thursday (Ephesians 1:15-23) got me thinking more about that brief conversation over the telescope. A finite universe suggests a finite God, a “clockmaker God” who having created, sat back and watched. I do think universe just ‘keeps on keeping on’ because the eternal God, who raised the one who fills all in all continues to speak a creating word… This is the God who weeps with us and laughs with us and gives us hope, whose rich and glorious inheritance among the saints is ours through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus: Blessed are you, O Lord Our God, sovereign of all that is.
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.
  More for Easter 7B…

We need friends. Friends guide us, care for us, confront us in love, console us in our pain. We sometimes look to a friend for wisdom in making important decisions. We make the decision but we take account of that friend’s advice. Sometimes it takes a friend to say, “Take care of yourself!” When life hurts a friend can provide great consolation in the simplest but most profound way; simply by ‘being there’, crying with us. Friends have limitations and weaknesses, be incomplete and faulty, but for all that friends can be signposts on our journey toward the love of God.

The Gospel writer outlines a chain of love: the Father loves Jesus, Jesus loves his disciples such that he calls them his friends. In response these friends love one another. In previous weeks we’ve read of metaphors and images – the good shepherd, vine and branches – each helping us understand God’s love and offering direction in our relationship with God. Another way to engage today’s readings is the metaphor of a group of musicians who take cues from one another and create music out of sense of trust as they make music.

Perhaps in our discipleship we are like a group of musicians, with Jesus setting the rhythm, inviting us to work together, to respond creatively and fruitfully to God’s love. What “music” does this relationship make possible? In a community of faith there are myriad ways in which we can improvise on the theme of God’s love. Being available and open to the Spirit; being moved to love, caring for others with a phone call, a visit, a letter or email, a meal, a bed; being and doing what is ordinary or usual, being about our daily activity, however ordinary it may seem; being open to God’s grace through others; receiving their care, accepting their signs and acts of love can all happening separately but in ways that happens together, in ways that we make “music” together on the theme of God’s love made known to us to us in Jesus.
(Adapted from a sermon from many years ago, which may have drawn on material from other, long-forgotten, sources.)
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.
  More for Easter 6B…

It’s easy to interpret “bearing fruit” in terms of good works but it’s the life that comes from Christ that is the fruit. Simply living in Christ is to “bear fruit”. Allowing the life of Christ to shape our own life is to “bear fruit”. In this weeks’s gospel passage Jesus goes on to talk about loving one another in the way that he has loved his disciples; this is “becoming [his] disciples”. It’s primary importance is within the context of the community of faith: it is essential to the unity of that community, essential to the unity and inseparability of the vine and the branches.

Reading this passage again I was struck by its connectedness to our action in gathering around the table of the Lord’s Supper. in the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving we sometimes use the words
“Blessed is the Holy One of Israel, Sovereign of all that is, who creates the fruit of the vine.” The fruit of the vine is not our doing it is God’s creation, God abiding and working in us. We symbolise that abiding in the sacrament of the Holy Communion. We eat the bread and drink the cup, itself the fruit of the vine, and feed on Christ in our hearts: we abide in him, and he in us.

Each time we gather share this meal we are again, as the branches of the vine, fed and nourished by the vine and offered healing, and wholeness life in its fullness – that our joy may be complete. In our bearing fruit, living the life of Christ living in us – in our life of “becoming disciples” – we offer the wholeness of Christ to others.
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.  More for Easter 5B…

Jesus, the good shepherd, had a special relationship with the flock he tended for the sake of the one to whom they belong. “The Father and I are one”; so Jesus can say “my sheep.” This Jesus is the Shepherd who restores my inmost being; who heals; makes whole; whom we might encounter in worship; in reading the Bible or devotional material; in prayer; in an encounter with another person or group; and who refreshes and renews our life in God. The shepherd who brings me back to a right life, back from rebellion andwilful waywardness (Hebr.); a situation which reminds me of sheep on the side of the road – on the wrong side of the fence, frightened and skittish with no rest until the shepherd/owner returns them to safety. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, ventures into our deepest darkness with us to lead us through it, gathers and leads the flock along right paths – authentic, true paths – from darkness to life and light.

Twin traditions of shepherd and king lie deep in Israel’s theology, its understanding of God’s chosen one, the one to be instrumental in God’s great saving acts in history. The shepherd/king ushers in the kingom of God, the hospitality of God.
Despite our present difficulty, distress or suffering he spreads a table, a banquet at which experience a taste of the banquet that is to be: which marks final consummation of all things which he will bring:
This is my body…
This is my blood…
The good shepherd, the risen Christ, offers provision, protection and hope… to all.

        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.   More for Easter 4B…

The disciples’ world had descended into total confusion: crucifixion, betrayal, denial, burial, horror, an empty tomb, fear for their own lives – then two friends arrive hot-foot but heart-warmed, from Emmaus, with the news of their risen Lord. None of what had happened made sense… Amid their confusion Jesus stood among them: ‘Peace be with you’. Not, ‘Where were you when I needed you?’ but, ‘Peace be with you’, a very normal greeting; the gift of normality in an abnormal situation. And Jesus shows them his hands and feet; the reality of his suffering and death.
Amid their disbelieving and doubt (‘still wondering’) Jesus asks, “Have you anything to eat?”

The reality of the risen Christ is more than broiled fish. It is peace but not as the world gives.

Breathe, O risen One,
peace on our disbelieving,
doubt and wondering.
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.
 
  More for Easter 3B…

Whenever Saint Crispin is celebrated,
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian:
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vig’l feast his neighbors,
And say ‘Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Scars can seem to make a person “more human”, real, believable. But our deepest scars are not always visible: they are deep and not openly acknowledged.

The story of Thomas and how Jesus was present to him is the story of the church. Jesus appears to friends, shows the scars of his living, suffering and death. He shares his woundedness with his friends. Thomas’s response to Jesus’ invitation to touch his wounds is profound:. His words witness to his risen Lord, to the presence of God in the risen Lord.

Echoing the ending to Mark’s gospel in which the women, terrified, rush from empty tomb, run home and, out of fear, tell no one, John’s story describes a group of disciples huddled in a locked room in Jerusalem, afraid to venture out. Yet, within a generation or two they have taken their message to distant lands. There’s a strong tradition that the church in India grew out of the missionary work of Thomas.

God, in the risen Christ, stands among a fearful huddle of people and offers “Shalom”, an offer embracing wholeness, healing and release from fear. In risen Christ the scars remain but our scarred God comes to be with us, with scars we bear, the wounds we carry, the doubts we harbour. In our woundedness and fear behind doors we lock and barriers we put up, the Wounded One finds us and offers us wholeness – life in all its fullness – and sends us out.
This is the good news of Easter!

EASTER HAIKU
Time-tested, certain:
the risen One among us,
even in our doubt.
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.
  More for 2nd Sunday of Easter – 32B…
 

Mary gave birth.
She wrapped him and laid him
in a manger:
no place in the inn.

In the dark
Nicodemus came to Jesus
alone
seeking the Light.
In the dark
Judas came to Jesus
with many
seeking to betray.

At Caesarea Philippi
Peter confessed:
“The Son of the living God.”
In a courtyard
Peter swore:
“I did not know the man.”

In the governor’s HQ
soldiers mocked:
“Hail, King of the Jews!”
On a hill
a soldier confessed:
“Truly, this man was God’s Son!”

Good and righteous Joseph
(from Arimathea)
wrapped the body and laid it
in a tomb.

Early on the first day of the week,
when the sun had risen,
the women went to the tomb.
“Who will roll away the stone for us
from the entrance to the tomb?”
When they looked up,
they saw:
the very large stone – rolled back.
Entering the tomb,
alarm!
A young white-robed man:
“Do not be alarmed;
you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth,
who was crucified.
He has been raised; he is not here…”
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.
  More for Maundy Thursday 28B…
  More for Good Friday 29B…
  More for Easter Day 31B…
 

The crowd cheered
but some asked:
“Who is this Jesus?”
From one age to the next,
this man from Nazareth
speaks to their need and their hope.
Some saw Jesus as prophet,
an Elijah, Amos or Isaiah.
For some the long-awaited Messiah.

The cloak:
a large square of cloth
with armholes
and one for the wearer’s head.
A vital garment:
without it a man was naked.
And it served as a covering at night.
Different cloaks for different folks;
one’s identity, occupation, social status
and one’s most important possession.

If you take your neighbor’s cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down; for it may be your neighbor’s only clothing to use as cover; in what else shall that person sleep? And if your neighbor cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate. (Ex. 22:26,27).

Many people spread their cloaks on the road…
their material, moral, social identity
as Jesus passed by.

This Jesus:
who is He?
Master, Teacher?
Light for the journey through a world
that seems to have lost direction?
The Troubler of your peace,
moving you to action
alongside the hurt and broken?
The One in whom you see
the nature and presence of God?

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…. (Philippians 2:5)

Throw down your cloak,
give up your own identity
and self:
take on the self,
the identity of the Christ.

Who is this Jesus?
Will you throw your cloak before him
as he passes by?

(Adapted from a sermon from many years ago, which may have drawn on material from other, long-forgotten, sources.)
  More for Palm Sunday…
  More for Passion Sunday…
 

Jesus calls us,
each of us
to give up our old lives
which cling to the past,
to attitudes and objects
which enthrall us.

Jesus calls us,
each of us
to bury all that,
allow it to die
germinate,
and bear fruit,
much fruit.

Jesus calls us,
each of us
to follow him,
to join his reconciling journey
to Calvary;
not just a Lenten journey
but a whole life
(heartbeat and breath)
and whole of life journey
following the Reconciling One
in the divine hope
that we no longer teach one another,
or say to each other,
“Know the LORD,”
because we shall all know God
and be reconciled in God.
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.  More for Lent 5B…
 

For all our supposed 21st century sophistication there are some striking similarities with the ragtag wilderness people, not the least of which is that we also are “on the way”. But what is our destination? Where are we headed? Mostly, if we do know, it’s only in the most general, perhaps abstract, terms. Our lack of knowledge requires of us an openness and patience. Our journey takes patience and grace. Yet there are times when we impatiently want to press “Fast Forward”.

Patience is a hard discipline. Patience asks us simply to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present in the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are, to engage in what really matters in life, unconcerned with whether the future will bring better or worse times.

In our journey towards Easter it’s easy to lose sight of the Cross, obscured by merchandise in the shops, by the catalogues stuffed into mail-boxes, advertising on TV; all projecting confused messages rushing us to Easter.
But…

There is no “Fast Forward” button.
There is no life without death.
There is no Easter without Good Friday.
There is no resurrection without crucifixion.
… as Moses lifted up the serpent,
so too must the Son of Man be lifted up.

This is how God loved the world:
he gave his only Son,
so that the world may have life,
life in all its fullness.
        © Jeff Shrowder, 2012.  More for Lent 4B…