An Open Table where Love knows no borders

Our Witness to the Risen Christ

A sermon on Acts 1:6-14 by Alison Sampson

It’s easy to get hung up on the mechanics of the Ascension. One minute, Jesus is teaching his disciples; the next, he’s zipping up into the clouds and the last thing we see is a flash of his ankles. And if we think that heaven is up, and earth is down, then the story looks a bit ridiculous, even cartoonlike. Superman, flying off into the wide blue yonder.

Or ‘Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck,’ as Lindsay would have said.

So let’s talk about heaven. And let’s get one thing straight. Heaven is not ‘up’. It is not a physical place in the sky that we will one day zoom to like interstellar rockets.

It’s better thought of as another reality. Earth is our reality. Heaven is God’s reality. They are two ways of looking at or experiencing the same thing. And we all experience things in multiple ways. For example, think of a good book. You could think of our reality as like a physical book: its weight, its smell, its shape. It has pages you can turn, and squiggles on the page. If you can read, then the squiggles turn into words; and those words on the page are part of our reality.

But then you start reading. And if the story is good, you become absorbed. You forget about the physical reality of the book. Your eyes are scanning the words, your hands are turning the pages, but it’s all happening automatically. The book has become invisible, and you’re living in the reality of the story, instead. Minutes fly by like seconds. You’re immersed in the perspective of the storyteller, or the central character. Your neurons begin adapting to the reality you’re experiencing through the dance of text and imagination; your brain changes in response; and you emerge from the story blinking, the same person, but different.

You see how the one thing, a good book, has at least two realities? And that one of those realities can change you from the inside out?

This is like our reality, and God’s reality which, not coincidentally, is written about in a good book. We can plod along, cooking, sweeping, working, shopping, driving, and keeping our awareness limited to our reality. Or we can learn to notice God’s reality, which is humming along like an undercurrent in everything we see and do. If we are lucky, from time to time God’s reality erupts into ours, forcing us to take notice, and we emerge from the experience blinking, the same person, but different.

The Ascension is a dramatic example of God’s reality erupting into ours. Jesus was walking along in our reality, talking with his disciples. Then he disappeared into the cloud, which, if you remember the Israelites and the pillar of cloud, you will realise is the presence of God. And then two messengers appear to the disciples and tell them that Jesus has been taken into heaven, which is God’s reality.

Ever since the resurrection, Jesus has been moving between the two realities: from ours to God’s and back again. He walked with disciples on the road to Emmaus; and just as they recognised him, he disappeared. He appeared to the disciples in the locked room; and then, again, returned to God’s reality. Time and again, we hear, Jesus moved between the realities. And in tonight’s story, the Ascension, he moved into God’s reality to stay for a while.

Jesus was the first person to live fully in both realities, although he gave his disciples plenty of glimpses of God’s reality. And as his disciples now, we are assured we will follow in his path.

***

This shifting between realities happened back then. But ours is not a static faith. We are not worshipping a history. The first disciples are not the only disciples. We are part of a great continuum of disciples; we are written into the same story. And this movement between realities that happened then is something that continues to happen even now.

It happened after the death of our beloved brother, Lindsay. Last week he died, before we could say good-bye, before most of us even realised that anything was wrong.

As Christians, we believe that at the end of time, the dead will be raised up and enter into God’s realm; and then we will be reunited with our brother Lindsay. But to focus on the end of time as if it means the end of the physical universe is to stay stuck in our reality. Just as God’s reality is not our reality, God’s time is not our time. Our brother Lindsay is already in God’s realm, that mysterious reality that shimmers in every nook and cranny of our reality here on earth.

Last week, I was granted a glimpse of this. And I want to share this experience with you, Lindsay’s brothers and sisters in Christ.

When I heard of Lindsay’s death, like most of you I was surprised. I felt shocked, and unprepared, and really sad. He had been a cornerstone of our church for over fifty years. He was the longest-serving member; and he was a good and faithful servant. Setting up the worship space. Collecting the liturgy books. Opening the door to arrivals. Lighting the candle. ‘Jesus Christ is the light of this world.’ Sprinkling us with water. Watching anxiously, turning the pages in the liturgy book to keep up. Eating cheese and drinking wine and saying, ‘Hollow legs!’

Week after week, month after month, year after year, Lindsay turned up, and worked, and worshipped, and broke bread and drank wine with us all. And now he is dead.

But is that the last word?

Last week, in the hours following the news of his death, I felt his presence all around me. Lindsay? We had never been particularly close. We exchanged greetings every week, and a sentence or two – but here he was, honouring me with his presence, in the room where I was working, and cooking, and chopping vegetables for tea.

The strangest thing was that, although it was Lindsay, he was no longer a damaged man saying, ‘‘Scratch Cocky!’ Instead, I was with a man made whole. It was Lindsay, and it wasn’t Lindsay. It was a mature man in his 70’s, who saw and understood everything. It was a man able to love expansively, and to stay with me a while and let me know how much he loved the church. The Lindsay we knew had a touch of slyness to him; but this was Lindsay blown wide open; any shiftiness had melted away.

The Lindsay we knew, the Lindsay of earthly reality, had a bit of a snigger; but the Lindsay I encountered was laughing with a great, joyful, full-throated laugh. He was pouring out love, and laughing until the tears rolled down his cheeks. He was laughing at the great joke of death and life and God. He was laughing at his trick of letting me see him while I was chopping vegetables in my kitchen; and it was the infinite, expansive, well-earned laughter of a man who has lived, and died, and returned to tell the tale.

***

More than that, I cannot say. I do not understand the experience. I do not know how or why it happened. But I believe that it is a gift to share with you all. That gift is a glimpse of the other reality, of Lindsay made whole, of earth and heaven reconciled, of death never having the final word. I saw Lindsay restored in the presence of love; and I felt Lindsay pour out his love for us all.

In this earthly reality, he struggled to connect; he struggled to express his love. But I can assure you now: Lindsay loved us all, and he loves us still with a great and enduring and big-hearted and good-humoured and mature and abundant love.

In God’s reality, Lindsay has been made whole. And, like the early disciples, we have been granted a glimpse of God’s reality in our reality, and in our time. Our brother Lindsay, a witness to the Risen Christ? Who would have thought!

During the last few weeks, we have heard again and again how the disciples met a man who was both like Jesus, and yet unlike. He was the same, but different, just like the Lindsay I encountered in my kitchen. And we have heard again and again that one day we will join Jesus and Lindsay and Frances and all the others we have known and lost, and that death shall have no power over us.

In our reality, we are not there yet. We will miss Lindsay terribly, and we will continue to miss all our loved ones who are separate from us now. At the same time, we have been granted glimpses of that other reality: through the stories in the scriptures, through the stories we tell each other, through the experiences we have in worship and in prayer, and while chopping veggies in our kitchen.

And we have a job to do. Like the first disciples, and like every disciple, we are to gather and to pray; and then when the time is right we are to witness to this incredible, unbelievable, but very real truth: that in God’s reality, love crosses every divide, even the chasm of death.

We don’t know when earth and heaven will be fully reconciled. We don’t know when the living will be reunited with the dead. We don’t know when God will wipe away the tears from all faces. But perhaps the time is much, much closer than we think. The time is then, and the time is now. Thanks be to God. Ω

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