Communion Meditation

Undated

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Scripture: Acts 1:1-11

In the days of the early Church, the 2 cardinal events that were celebrated each year following the Crucifixion were the Resurrection and Pentecost. We still observe them in that sequence today.

We celebrated the Resurrection, of course, at Easter, the last Sunday in March. And we celebrate Pentecost next Sunday, 50 days following the resurrection event. The period we’re in now, the period between, is Eastertide; the liturgical color is white, and the mood is one of both rejoicing and expectancy, as the Church stands amazed at the power of God to overcome sin and death, and awaits with eagerness to see what He will do next.

This past Thursday, 40 days into Eastertide, but typically observed the Sunday following, is the day the Church has come to call Ascension Day. Luke is the one who describes it in most detail.

The Ascension is when Jesus, the resurrected Christ, alive and reunited with the disciples for a period, departed from them visibly to go to the Father, promising as He left that He would soon

return, in a new kind of way, with a new kind of power, and with new and fresh instructions for what they were to do and be.

The story is told in the first 11 verses of the Books of Acts:

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Now I know....the language here seems strange to the modern mind. The images seem foreign to our way of thinking. It’s based on a First Century cosmology....ascended into heaven...up there, somewhere...clouds, lifted up.....what kind of talk is this?

What are we supposed to make of it? Remember, THIS IS PICTURE LANGUAGE, religious language, more to be heard as poetry than as prose.

Isn’t Luke saying to the early Church----AND TO US---look! Now the physical, geographical

restrictions on the person of Jesus have been lifted. We no longer have Him here with us in a

tangible way. We’re no longer able to touch Him, to see Him with our eyes, to eat a meal, literally, at the table with Him, to reach over and put our hand on His arm.....

He has gone to be with the Father, beyond the reach of our physical senses.

BUT HIS GOING IS FOR A PURPOSE. There’s something magnificent here. For one thing, His going is to lead us into a deeper, mature faith. His withdrawal is for the purpose of calling out of us a greater commitment of trust.

His absence makes us step out in faith toward Him forces us to utilize latent, spiritual resources we might not use if He were visible and obvious. HIS GOING IS FOR OUR GOOD, TO HELP US GROW.

No parent enjoys leaving the child on the first day of school, alone in that big room, to cope by him or herself in a strange, mysterious environment. What parent ever did that without apprehension? But the wise parent knows they can’t stay with the child forever, to fight every battle, to defend against every enemy. To do that for the child wouldn’t be good for them, it

would be devastating. The going away, even if painful, is in the best interest of the child, so the child can learn to live with contemporaries, can learn to carry their own load, can learn to be a person.

The story of the Ascension in large part is a story about the parenting love of God. Jesus said to the disciples, even before His own death, “It is expedient for you that I go away.”....and He meant it in the same way a parent knows that the time has to come when apron strings must be cut.

There are times when God needs to pull back to put us on our own. It doesn’t mean God loves us less; it means God loves us MORE. God doesn’t want puppets; God wants persons.

But the Ascension means even more, doesn’t it? Jesus’ going away also had what I suppose we could call a universalizing effect.

He was no longer THERE, but he hadn’t gone entirely. There was a change in dimension, but not a change in fundamental relationship. Though He no longer dwelt AMONG them, the disciples knew that somehow now he dwelt WITHIN them.

The Ascension was a way of saying dramatically that now Jesus had been LET LOOSE, that now He was unfettered, unrestricted, so that all people, everywhere, had access to Him.

In some ways, in fact, they discovered, He was more real to them than ever before. No matter where they went, He could be with them, even in the Jewish courtroom, or in the Roman arena.

In one sense, He was never more present than when He was absent, never more immanent than when he was transcendent, never more with them than when He was beyond them.

He had ascended, as Luke put it pictorially, but He has not abandoned them....He was there in spirit, in comfort, in strength, in faith....and He had given them the promise, the solemn promise, that if they waited before Him in trust, and patience, He would come to them in a now and mighty way, to lead them in a mission that would both transform the world and startle their souls.

What were they to do? The instructions are explicit in the story---twofold in nature: DON’T DEPART FROM JERUSALEM....and WAIT FOR THE PROMISE.

That is, keep the disciplines....stay close to Jerusalem...worship, pray, study, share, commune....maintain the Faith.....regularly, faithfully.....That, first of all...AND THEN, WAIT EXPECTANTLY FOR THE NEXT WORD.

So we, today, as those early believers, celebrate Ascension Sunday, in tension, between Resurrection and Pentecost, between recollection and anticipation, between celebration and empowering, between remembering with gratitude what God has already done, and eager expectation of what God is yet to do.

It is, of course, the precise mood of the Lord’s Supper...memorial.......expectancy, looking back......looking ahead, gratitude...........waiting in trust.

As the ritual puts it in one inclusive sentence, it is: “a perpetual memory of His precious death, until His coming again.”

The Lord is not here, He has ascended to the Father. But He IS here, in spirit and in truth, and invites you, now, in faith to His table, to give thanks and to WAIT, for His special Word....to YOU.