“Living in the Blessed Absence”
The Reverend Tom Steffen
16 May 2010

Readings: Acts 1:1-11

Luke 24:44-53

“As they were looking up, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” (Acts 1:9)

Of all the Sundays in the liturgical calendar, I suspect the one closest to Ascension Day is as strange as any. It stands in the gap between the crescendo of Eastertide coming to a close and the explosive sights and sounds of Pentecost. If the average church goer has stayed with the “Alleluias, He is risen, He is risen, indeed!” throughout the Sundays of Easter, he or she may be tempted to stay at home on the Sunday dedicated to the ascension. Who wants to be reminded of the absence of the One who came to us so long ago?

It is only in the first chapter of The Book of the Acts of the Apostles that we learn about the few details we have. Jesus and His 11 followers are hiking the Mount of Olivet just outside Jerusalem. And He disappears inside a cloud. One moment He was there with them, and the next moment He is gone. Various mediums of artistic splendor have attempted to capture the Christ up in the air. He is nearly out of sight, His well-known, scarred hands raised for a final blessing, His familiar shape vanishing from them. Tradition suggests that He left the earth to return to heaven, which, of course, doesn’t clarify much what seems to remain well beyond our comprehension. Wherever He went, it is believed that He left to finish what He had begun with us.

Barbara Brown Taylor put it this way: “It was not enough that, through Jesus, God was born into the body of the world; that was just His Christmas gift to us. His ascension gift was that through Him the body of the world was borne back to God. By presenting His own ruined, risen body to be seated at the right hand of God, Jesus imported flesh and blood into those holy precincts for the first time. He paved the way for us, so that when we arrive there later, everyone will not be quite so shocked by us.” (“Looking Up Toward Heaven,” page 73)

I like the sound of that, and even though it is more homely than academic, I suspect that it still sounds very abstract for both the believer and the skeptic. When you come to think about it, other chapters in the Jesus story are less abstract, I think. He was born; we were born. He ate and drank and slept, not so unlike how we live out our days. He loved and got angry and forgave people, and He died. And we will die. Even His resurrection isn’t completely beyond us. From time to time, we find joy in sorrow, life in death. But disappearing in a cloud and ascending into heaven, well, like those earlier disciples, we are left standing alone looking up. On this Sunday, the one between Easter and Pentecost, sheer white and flaming red, we are left waiting and wondering about being left behind.

I had two reasons to think about the meaning of “absence” as I approached today. I attempted, once again, to get my mind around this notion of ascension; and that won’t surprise you. But also this week, I prepared for a memorial service in honor of Laura Beth Allington Kirn, Roger’s oldest daughter. On Friday, I attended a dinner at Roger’s and Reva’s in order to meet the family, and I was reminded about something of the meaning of absence. When loved ones gather, left behind, to remember one who is absent, the one who is absent has a mysterious way of being present. I’m sure you have experienced this great mystery.

I read of a woman whose husband is devoted to hawks and especially golden eagles. Driving down country roads, her husband is always looking up and out of the windows and cranes his neck to spot the wing feathers of birds overhead. “Is it an eagle or just a turkey vulture?” She, no doubt, was more concerned about his wild driving than the wild bird. And then because of a job transfer, they lived a part for over two months. She thought that she would get a break from all the bird watching, but to her surprise she began to see birds everywhere – loping through the air, spiraling in the rising thermals, hunkered down in tops of trees. She writes: “Seeing them, really seeing them for the first time in my life, I understood that I was not seeing them with my own eyes but with Edward’s eyes. He was not there, so I was seeing them for him. He was absent – or was he? He was present in me.” (Page 76)

If you have ever felt “left behind,” I suspect you have experienced that strange awareness that there is no sense of absence when there is no presence. What makes absence difficult, sometimes painful, is the memory of what used to be. You’ve heard the saying: “You cannot miss what you have never known.” Well, I guess it is true, true enough and especially true of our experience of God and the absence of the ascended Christ. We gather here Sunday after Sunday, looking up and looking around out of a sense of God’s absence and also in search of God’s presence. It is a blessed absence…Why? Because our coming together in this place revives our longing for that which we sense is missing.

Christians have been looking up for the ascending Christ for a long time now, but little by little, the earliest followers started to look down and around as the two men dressed in white robes had instructed them. Those waiting started a wave of action. His followers became leaders. Those listeners became teachers and preachers and apostles. The disciples became missionaries and the healed became healers. And it continues to this day. We mostly look down and around these days, we look at each other and at those in need around us. Because we have figured it out: This is where the risen Christ is to be found. Where two or three are gathered, even in His absence, the Christ is present among us. We know this because if you listen to us, we have started to sound like Jesus. And we really want to do the things we remember that He did. Don’t we? On our best days, isn’t it true?

Having been baptized into His death and resurrection, we want to be His earthly hands and feet – scarred, yes His are scarred and so are ours. And ours are little ones, like those who sat with me here a moment ago. And we want to be His earthly hands and feet even when they become stiff and arthritic. And we want to be His heart – most of all, His heart – to a world in need of grace and mercy.

This is the word of the Lord: “Men and women, boys and girls of St. Peter’s: Why stand looking up toward heaven? Continue to look around, look around there at the Crossroads. I will be there – you can count on me, I will be in your midst.” Thanks be to God.

I am grateful to Reva Allington, friend and member of St. Peter’s, who edits my sermons.