Sermons: May 2009

7 Easter (Ascension Sunday moved)     

May 24, 2009         

Acts 1:1-11      Psalm 47 
Ephesians 1:15-23     Luke 24:44-53 

When Miriam and I were grad students at UC Santa Barbara back in the ’80s, we attended St. Michael’s University Mission near the campus. St. Michael’s parish hall was actually a small house, where several students lived and we met in the living room.

Students being students, one of the closets in the house was dedicated as a museum to “Bad Christian Art.” I don’t remember now exactly what was in there. But, in one of those segues our minds mysteriously make, Ascension Day, which we’re celebrating today, has reminded me of bad Christian art and that closet.

How do we understand Christ’s Ascension? Today’s readings offer us three possibilities:
  • In Ephesians Paul says that God raised Christ “from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.”
  • Luke and Acts use a different metaphor: Luke declares that while Jesus was blessing the disciples, “he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” 
  • Luke also wrote Acts, and in today’s reading from Acts, he adds one detail: as the disciples are watching, Jesus is lifted up, and a cloud takes him out of their sight.
You see my problem. And thus the need for bad Christian art. I once saw a painting of the Ascension. In it, there were clouds, and out of the bottom of the clouds, depicted as though they were moving, two itsy-bitsy feet were sticking out. Presumably the feet were those of Jesus, and not Icarus.

The Ascension is one of those feast days in the Church that lend themselves to “Bad Christian Sermons.” I’m afraid that the warehouse—or outhouse—for bad Christian sermons would be distressingly large. If there were such a warehouse, the sign over the entrance would be borrowed from Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”

What’s a preacher to do? If you take today’s readings literally, you risk silliness; if you take them metaphorically, you risk not taking them seriously.

I also gave myself today the advertised double whammy of preaching on why each of us should make a will and have a funeral plan. No matter how much I  

twisted and turned the readings, however, I just couldn’t squeeze a sermon on wills and funeral plans out of them.

To my surprise, I discovered recently that Title III, Canon 9, Subsection 5(b)(iv) of the Canons of the Episcopal Church declares “It shall be the duty of Rectors or Priests-in-Charge to ensure that all persons in their charge are instructed concerning Christian stewardship, including . . . the responsibility of all persons to make a will as prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer.” 

So here’s my sermon on wills and funeral plans: Make them. Or else. 

How’s that for a short sermon? 

I am, however, being a dutiful servant of the Canons and of Mother Church: (1) after church today, at 12 o’clock, LeAnn Thomas of Greenlawn will be here to talk with us about and take questions on making funeral plans. (2) I’ve gathered materials on the subject from Tom VanderWaal at the Diocesan office; they’re on the back table for you to take. (3) On June 28th, Bruce Jones from FCC will speak to us about alternative and economical funeral options. 

OK, I’m done. 

Well, not quite. 

I still have a few hundred words left on my self-imposed sermon limit, so I’d like to reflect with you not on the Readings but on today’s Collect. Actually, today’s Collects. For Ascension we have two Collects from which to choose. 

These Collects return us to the theme of the Ascension. 

The Collect we’re not using today reads: 

Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with him continually dwell . . . .

Now, here’s the Collect we’re using today: 

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages . . . .  

Do you hear the difference? 

In the first Collect, the one we’re not using, we ask God that “we may also in heart and mind . . . ascend” to heaven. The focus is on us getting to heaven. 

In the Collect we’re using today, we ask for the faith to believe that Christ “abides with his Church on earth.” 

This Collect focuses on the spiritual fact that Christ is with us here on earth, right now, at Grace, on this 24th of May, 2009. 

And that Christ will be with us “even to the end of the ages.” 

Scholars and theologians call the first Collect “otherworldly”: that is, its focus is heaven and heavenly salvation. The Collect that we’re using today is “thisworldly”: that is, it focuses on Emmanuel, Christ-With-Us, here and now. 

We need both. In Christian theology and thinking, the thisworldly and otherworldly are always in tension. Too much of the time, in my opinion, the otherworldly has dominated. My favorite—or least favorite—example of this comes from President Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. (You can’t make that up.) Butz said there was no need to conserve our land and soil and air and water because the Second Coming was going to happen soon. 

That was forty years ago.

Perhaps the greatest North American advocate of thisworldly theology and praxis—that is, action—was Martin Luther King, Jr. In his “I have a Dream Speech,” King declares the immediate need for such theology and praxis; he calls this immediacy “the fierce urgency of Now.”1 The fierce urgency of Now. 

Yes, acting because of “the fierce urgency of Now” will inevitably be political. But those who criticize mixing “religion with politics” make a tragic mistake: doing nothing is political. In Brother Martin’s day, doing nothing was more powerful than any policeman’s truncheon, more forceful than a torrent-spewing fire hose, more fearful than attack dogs, more murderous than the lynch mob’s noose.2 

Segregation was a violent drunk or addict. Doing nothing was its enabler. All too often the enablers were clergyman (yes, clergymen).

If we, like Brother Martin, are to keep our eyes on the prize, we always need to remember with him, we always need to recollect our Collect for today: Christ always abides with his Church on earth.

The “fierce urgency of Now” is always, and ever shall be, the fierce urgency of Christ’s Now.

The “fierce urgency of Now” is always, and ever shall be, the fierce urgency of Christ.

Amen.