A Second Holy Week Ascension Sunday May 12, 2013

***THIS SERMON WAS PREACHED AT CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION TODAY. GOOD SHEPHERD HAD A BISHOP'S VISITATION TODAY.***
Within the 50 days of Easter there are three days of special significance: Easter Sunday itself, Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost. For forty days we adjust ourselves to Resurrection living—for forty days we try to wrap our brains around Jesus being dead then not being dead: it’s quite the adjustment, kind of like walking out of the movie theater in the middle of the day...the brightness of the sun takes some getting used too. Likewise, it takes 40 days to realize that death has been once and for all defeated. Death is dead.
Jesus needed forty days too. It took 40 days for him to reach those doubting believers, it took 40 days to teach those ignorant believers, it took 40 days to make one last pitch for His message of uncompromising Love and never-ending Peace.
So, after 40 days, just as our adjustment to Resurrection Life seems almost complete there is another Divine surprise: Jesus leaves. He physically and boldly rises to heaven perched atop a cloud. Now we can debate whether Jesus’ leaving happened exactly like this, but doing that just distracts us from the effect Jesus’ ascension has on us.
In his remarks immediately before the ascension Jesus promises that if we’re patient, if we wait, the advocate will come and we’ll be “furnished with heavenly power.” The arrival of the advocate, the instrument through which we are all divinely empowered, will come next Sunday—the day of Pentecost.
This begs the question---what purpose is served making us wait another week (technically it’s ten days because Ascension Day was this past Thursday, on the 40th day of Easter season…but we commemorate  today, on the 43rd of Easter). Why do we have to wait in this period of limbo? Why doesn’t Jesus leave on one train and the Holy Spirit arrive on the next?
Because there is something very holy in the waiting. There is something very spiritual in the waiting.
There is something important—very very important in the waiting.
Brother Curtis Almquist is a monk with the Society of St John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastery in Cambridge MA. Last Thursday he wrote a poignant, moving mediation on this period of waiting, this period between Jesus departure and the Holy Spirit’s arrival.
Br Curtis wrote:
“Ascension Day follows the high drama of Holy Week: the palm-waving crowds, the betrayals, the scourging, the crucifixion and resurrection.  All of those days are full of interpretation and meaning.  But Ascension Day is rather vacuous of meaning.  Jesus says to his followers, “Stay here.  Wait.  Wait until you have been clothed with power.”  Why the wait? “ Well, Br. cUrtis continues,” I think God is waiting for us, for me and for you, to say “yes” with our own lives: our read­iness or at least our willingness to co-operate with God for what God has in mind for our own lives…
God is waiting for us to say Yes to our lives, which will [then allow] God’s power [to] work within us and through us. ”
  Ok, now I understand why we spent all that time this Easter reading Gospel accounts from the first Holy Week….because the utter and complete absence we experienced then we experience again now. Because this week is another week of emptiness.
An emptiness that is felt deep within us as we read the  account of Mary and the other women taking that long sorrowful walk back to the tomb on Easter morning—they were completely and utterly spent, completely and utterly void, completely and utterly EMPTY, when they reach the tomb, only to find that it too is empty, it too is vacant. There’s great poignancy in the abundance of emptiness on Easter morning. It’s into that space, that empty broken, bereft and spent space that the Love, the Peace and the Joy of the Resurrection takes hold.
This waiting period between Ascension and Pentecost isn’t because God needs time to get God’s ducks in a row, the waiting period isn’t because the Holy Spirit has a time management problem. The waiting period isn’t for God in any of God’s forms. The waiting period is for us.
It’s for us to become receptive. It’s for us to become open. It is for us to become instruments of this Holy Power. The waiting period of this next week is for us.  For us to accept, to say yes to the forgiveness Jesus offers us for our mistakes, our blunders, our less than stellar moments.
The waiting period is for us. For us to accept that God’s Love, that inexplicable, overpowering and never ending Love is ours for the taking, it is ours to receive, it is ours to accept, it is ours to make room for.
The waiting period is for us. For us to accept the Peace that surpasses all understanding, the peace that Jesus showed on the cross, the peace that Jesus showed in the upper room, the Peace that Jesus showed in all he did and said.
The waiting period is for us to realize that Jesus has left this world and taken the fullness of the human experience into the realm of the Divine. The waiting period is for us to begin to understand that the human condition is no longer a concept to God, it is part of God.
The waiting period isn’t about us waiting on God, it’s about God waiting on us—not waiting on our ability to accept the Spirit, but on our availability to receive the power of the spirit, our availability to say yes to being Christ’s Body in this world.
And so we have another Holy week. Another span of time where we need to adjust and readjust to the new ways God moves in and through our lives.
May we spend this week adjusting our eyes to the brightness of God’s glory given to us in the Risen and Ascended One, Jesus Christ. May we spend this week preparing to receive the power promised to us and  may we spend this week shouting Alleluia Alleluia, Death is Dead, Love is in charge and joy is ours now and forever. Amen.