Living Vertically
Sermon
Living Vertically
Gospel Sermons For Lent/Easter Cycle C
Some years ago I attended a conference on the East Coast which concluded on Saturday but to save airfare I stayed over to leave on Sunday. Perusing the local paper I noted the services at the two churches within walking distance. At the United Methodist Church a local seminary professor would be preaching on "Messages from the Journals of John Wesley," a topic a United Methodist would almost feel compelled to hear. But at the Episcopal Church the local Bishop, John Shelby Spong, would be preaching and confirming new members. I had heard of Bishop Spong, but had not heard him or yet read any of his books, so I opted for ecumenism.
It was Ascension Sunday and he preached on today's text. In spite of what I had heard, he had neither tail, horns, nor pitchfork. His message was inspiring and, it seemed to me, orthodox. But I did understand what would rile some persons up. He began by pointing out how our expectations often color our perceptions: we see what we expect to see. This is why eyewitnesses to crimes and even video tapes are often less reliable than we might expect. We don't objectively see what actually happened; we see what we expect to see. Well, the Bishop reminded us, in New Testament times, and for a long time afterward, persons thought of creation as the familiar three-tiered universe, with the flat earth supported by some kind of structure over the underworld and covered by the dome-shaped firmament beyond which were the heavens. It is no surprise that in describing what happened when Jesus departed from the disciples, Luke uses "up and down" terminology, saying that "Jesus was carried up into heaven," giving rise to the traditional portrayals of Jesus rising -- like a helium balloon someone has said -- until he disappeared from their sight. Whether or not we would describe what happened that day using such "up and down" language is anybody's guess.
All the evangelists were, after all, using everyday language to describe extraordinary events. The Jesus who had been crucified was now alive and with the disciples in a palpable, real way. He had been raised, the tomb was empty, and yet John tells us that Mary could not hold on to him because he had not yet ascended to the Father. In the familiar story of "Doubting Thomas" Jesus appears in a room to which the door was shut but offers Thomas the opportunity to place his finger and hand in Jesus' wounds, suggesting that the resurrected Jesus had some attributes of his old earthly body, but not all. Luke presents the same dichotomy. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus walked alongside Cleopas and his companion unrecognized; only when he blessed and broke the bread did they realize who he was. Why were their eyes "kept from recognizing him" until that crucial moment? In the introduction to today's reading, Jesus emphasized the way in which his resurrected body was corporeal: "Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have," he told the disciples before devouring a piece of broiled fish. But your normal everyday corporeal body does not rise from the tomb leaving grave clothes behind. It may eat a piece of fish, but it does not withdraw "up into heaven."
The danger in all of this is that we fail to note the struggle the evangelists themselves were having in describing events that fell outside the realm of normal experience and, therefore, normal language. The man Jesus, who they knew had been dead and buried, had somehow come back from the dead and made his unique identifiable presence known to them -- and yet there were some differences. And now, on this fateful Ascension Day, he was with them and then he was not with them, and they knew that he had been taken to heaven. In Acts 1, when Luke reiterates this Ascension story, the connection between Jesus' leaving and the coming of the Holy Spirit is spelled out. John's Gospel made the connection even clearer: "... the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you" (14:26). So here is the reality that the disciples experienced. Jesus of Nazareth had been with them as a person; he did remarkable things to be sure, but he was a person. He was killed. But then, amazingly, Jesus returned from the grave and in ways that challenged their senses and pushed the envelope of everyday language made himself known to them. Finally, Jesus was present with them in an entirely new way through the indwelling presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The problem with all of this is, naturally, that most of us don't want to struggle and grapple with things. In a recent political campaign in Indiana one candidate described public education in the state as "slow and easy," and meant it as a compliment! I have to admit grudgingly that he was on to a basic human trait. We want things straight and easy; we want either/or not both/and. From the earliest days of Christianity there have been many believers who have made one choice or the other. There have been those (the Docetics) who have protected the divinity of Jesus by refusing to accept that he was really, fully human; he may have looked human, he may have appeared to suffer, but not really. While this position has been a heresy for generations, it is still around in plenty of popular Christian literature. On the other hand, much (but by no means all) of the contemporary interest in the historical Jesus regards him as one of history's seminal figures, but no more. To hold the two together in tension is always more difficult than opting for one or the other, which is perhaps why so many of us have done the latter. The story of the ascension, as fraught with difficulties as it may be, challenges our Christian commitment to the core because it reminds us that we must get beyond easy answers and be willing to push the boundaries of our understanding.
In a recent book (Reason in Faith, Paulist Press, 1999) Adriaan Peperzak suggests three dimensions of what he calls the "heart of religion," which I think address the challenge in today's lesson. Our religion, he writes, should be comprehensive, an experience of the whole of reality insofar as it pertains to the experiencing subject; radical, as an experience of ultimate meaning; and dynamic, not static, but an ongoing movement oriented by God (p. 64). If there is one thing today's lesson presents, it is the radicality of our faith; because we are dealing with that which is deepest, highest, and most profound in our lives, the ordinary language we use to describe everyday events breaks down. How do we describe the overwhelming experience of the movement of God's spirit in our lives? This is something mystics have been grappling with for millennia and which is particularly difficult in our day of reductionism. A "heart strangely warmed" becomes heartburn; a Damascus Road experience, an epileptic seizure; a vision or voice, a delusion and sign of mental unbalance; a "dark night of the soul," clinical depression.
We may opt for giving up the struggle and concluding that these critiques are largely correct, that the answer to Peggy Lee's old sung question, "Is that all there is?" is "Yes, pretty much." Oh, we might cling to a belief in or hope for an afterlife, and we might pray in really dire situations, but pretty much give up on trying to articulate, or even expect, truly radical experiences of God's presence. Some of us may even engage in a Christian reductionism of our own: the only proof of a true relationship with God is speaking in tongues, or intellectual assent to certain doctrines, or a particular "plan of salvation," or a set sacramental system. To expect more or other is wrong, damaging, and heretical. It is no wonder that our Christian faith has become a privatized matter indeed; not only can we not talk much about it in an unbelieving world, we hesitate to say too much in the community of faith.
Many weeks ago, at the very beginning of Lent, I mentioned a 1958 article by the great German/American theologian Paul Tillich in the then very popular Saturday Evening Post magazine titled, "The Lost Dimension in Religion." The lost dimension about which Tillich fretted in that article was the dimension of depth, living life for that which is other than the immediate, loudest, most pressing concern, that world that is "too much with us," of which Auden wrote. You may recall (probably not, but indulge me) that as we began the season of Lent I suggested that if the distractions of the modern world take over our lives, we are destined to live life superficially, horizontally as it were, rather than at the ultimate levels Tillich urged. Now, after making our way through the forty days of Lent and much of the Season of Easter we see that this modern distraction is compounded by the great difficulty we have in allowing the extraordinary into our ordinary world; in expressing the radical wonder that must be a part of an authentic Christian commitment. If we cannot share in the breathless marvel of those disciples who experienced the risen Jesus with them and then suddenly being taken to heaven -- share not explain -- how can we hope to enter into the "fullness" of life of which Jesus spoke?
This is where the comprehensiveness of our faith comes in. Our faith, according to Peperzak, should be comprehensive, that is an experience of the whole of reality insofar as it pertains to the experiencing subject. We are marvelous and complex beings, a bundle of thoughts, intuitions, emotions, fears, hopes, dreads, and so on. When we Christians speak of the abundant life, we should not be limiting ourselves, as we often do, to certain aspects or dimensions of life: just the "spiritual" or only the intrapersonal or perhaps just the institutional; it means everything, a comprehensive faith. This is easy to say and hard to accept. Today's newspaper has the headline, "Faith helps crash victim," as though it is news that religious faith should help anybody with anything. As a young pastor I became very interested in the totality of our beings, particularly as I visited isolated parishioners, alone in their homes or institutions. I recall being quite excited when, in 1977, I attended a seminar where hard scientific data was presented on the strong connection between the emotional, spiritual, and physical. I soon read the then new book The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness by Dr. James J. Lynch (Basic Books, 1977). I now know that this influential study was neither the first nor the last work to draw these strong connections. Yet a quarter century later these ideas have not had any great impact in the Christian community (while they have been more widely embraced by some new age and holistic healing movements). In 1977 I would not have thought that stories of the impact of faith, belief, prayer, or supportive community would have still been grist for human interest stories in the new millenium. Insofar as our faith is less than comprehensive, forcing us to stretch across categories, to re-examine our ways of thinking, to grope for words and concepts to articulate what we know to be true, it is less than the Ascension faith; we are living horizontally, not vertically.
As our faith becomes more comprehensive, less bound by the limitations of language and culture, it will clearly be dynamic, not static, but an ongoing movement oriented by God. Not long ago I was part of a group that was discussing the need for a new outreach ministry in our community, aftercare for persons released from prison, clearly the kind of ministry best sponsored by a coalition of churches rather than a single congregation. In the course of the conversation I remarked on how difficult it often seemed to be to get such cooperative ventures off the ground. By way of explanation one layman remarked that it was because so many congregations in our area are "highly organized, internal" churches whose main function is to care for the believers within the congregation. That may be an explanation, but it is hardly a justification. The ministering to and maintaining members is an important function of any local church, but when the maintenance of the status quo becomes the exclusive purpose, it is a problem. As individuals and groups of Christians we are always on the road to perfection, to paraphrase John Wesley. When we live vertically, constantly exploring the height and depth, the length and breadth of God's riches, we always have to be on the move, always exploring new depths of commitment and avenues of service. Theologically, biblically, an "internal" church is not a church; a static, unidimensional horizontal life is not a Christian life.
Good Friday challenged the disciples to rethink everything. How could they understand who Jesus was and all that he had done after the ignominious death on the cross? Then Easter Day and the resurrection appearance on the road, in the upper room, at the lakeside all challenged the disciples to rethink everything again. How could they understand who Jesus was and all that he had done and was doing in view of his ongoing presence with them? And now, on the day of the Ascension, as Jesus is with them, and then not with them, in a way that they know signals his entry into glory were the disciples challenged to rethink everything yet again! How could they understand who Jesus was and all that he had done and would do now that he was taken from them in this cosmic manner? And we know that when the Day of Pentecost arrived the disciples had to rethink everything yet one more time. Rethinking, grasping and groping for words, creating new categories of thought and new images of life and faith, this is what living vertically is all about. Living vertically is radical, comprehensive, and dynamic because it cannot settle for the definitions of the culture, or reductionism or the status quo. It is always exploring new dimensions in God's power and grace.
As we explore the depths of God's love in our lives, we will encounter the same things those first disciples did. We will have to think and rethink, define and redefine, invent new words and new categories of thought. We will be puzzled and surprised. But like them, we will worship, be filled with great joy, and find ourselves continually blessing God.
It was Ascension Sunday and he preached on today's text. In spite of what I had heard, he had neither tail, horns, nor pitchfork. His message was inspiring and, it seemed to me, orthodox. But I did understand what would rile some persons up. He began by pointing out how our expectations often color our perceptions: we see what we expect to see. This is why eyewitnesses to crimes and even video tapes are often less reliable than we might expect. We don't objectively see what actually happened; we see what we expect to see. Well, the Bishop reminded us, in New Testament times, and for a long time afterward, persons thought of creation as the familiar three-tiered universe, with the flat earth supported by some kind of structure over the underworld and covered by the dome-shaped firmament beyond which were the heavens. It is no surprise that in describing what happened when Jesus departed from the disciples, Luke uses "up and down" terminology, saying that "Jesus was carried up into heaven," giving rise to the traditional portrayals of Jesus rising -- like a helium balloon someone has said -- until he disappeared from their sight. Whether or not we would describe what happened that day using such "up and down" language is anybody's guess.
All the evangelists were, after all, using everyday language to describe extraordinary events. The Jesus who had been crucified was now alive and with the disciples in a palpable, real way. He had been raised, the tomb was empty, and yet John tells us that Mary could not hold on to him because he had not yet ascended to the Father. In the familiar story of "Doubting Thomas" Jesus appears in a room to which the door was shut but offers Thomas the opportunity to place his finger and hand in Jesus' wounds, suggesting that the resurrected Jesus had some attributes of his old earthly body, but not all. Luke presents the same dichotomy. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus walked alongside Cleopas and his companion unrecognized; only when he blessed and broke the bread did they realize who he was. Why were their eyes "kept from recognizing him" until that crucial moment? In the introduction to today's reading, Jesus emphasized the way in which his resurrected body was corporeal: "Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have," he told the disciples before devouring a piece of broiled fish. But your normal everyday corporeal body does not rise from the tomb leaving grave clothes behind. It may eat a piece of fish, but it does not withdraw "up into heaven."
The danger in all of this is that we fail to note the struggle the evangelists themselves were having in describing events that fell outside the realm of normal experience and, therefore, normal language. The man Jesus, who they knew had been dead and buried, had somehow come back from the dead and made his unique identifiable presence known to them -- and yet there were some differences. And now, on this fateful Ascension Day, he was with them and then he was not with them, and they knew that he had been taken to heaven. In Acts 1, when Luke reiterates this Ascension story, the connection between Jesus' leaving and the coming of the Holy Spirit is spelled out. John's Gospel made the connection even clearer: "... the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you" (14:26). So here is the reality that the disciples experienced. Jesus of Nazareth had been with them as a person; he did remarkable things to be sure, but he was a person. He was killed. But then, amazingly, Jesus returned from the grave and in ways that challenged their senses and pushed the envelope of everyday language made himself known to them. Finally, Jesus was present with them in an entirely new way through the indwelling presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The problem with all of this is, naturally, that most of us don't want to struggle and grapple with things. In a recent political campaign in Indiana one candidate described public education in the state as "slow and easy," and meant it as a compliment! I have to admit grudgingly that he was on to a basic human trait. We want things straight and easy; we want either/or not both/and. From the earliest days of Christianity there have been many believers who have made one choice or the other. There have been those (the Docetics) who have protected the divinity of Jesus by refusing to accept that he was really, fully human; he may have looked human, he may have appeared to suffer, but not really. While this position has been a heresy for generations, it is still around in plenty of popular Christian literature. On the other hand, much (but by no means all) of the contemporary interest in the historical Jesus regards him as one of history's seminal figures, but no more. To hold the two together in tension is always more difficult than opting for one or the other, which is perhaps why so many of us have done the latter. The story of the ascension, as fraught with difficulties as it may be, challenges our Christian commitment to the core because it reminds us that we must get beyond easy answers and be willing to push the boundaries of our understanding.
In a recent book (Reason in Faith, Paulist Press, 1999) Adriaan Peperzak suggests three dimensions of what he calls the "heart of religion," which I think address the challenge in today's lesson. Our religion, he writes, should be comprehensive, an experience of the whole of reality insofar as it pertains to the experiencing subject; radical, as an experience of ultimate meaning; and dynamic, not static, but an ongoing movement oriented by God (p. 64). If there is one thing today's lesson presents, it is the radicality of our faith; because we are dealing with that which is deepest, highest, and most profound in our lives, the ordinary language we use to describe everyday events breaks down. How do we describe the overwhelming experience of the movement of God's spirit in our lives? This is something mystics have been grappling with for millennia and which is particularly difficult in our day of reductionism. A "heart strangely warmed" becomes heartburn; a Damascus Road experience, an epileptic seizure; a vision or voice, a delusion and sign of mental unbalance; a "dark night of the soul," clinical depression.
We may opt for giving up the struggle and concluding that these critiques are largely correct, that the answer to Peggy Lee's old sung question, "Is that all there is?" is "Yes, pretty much." Oh, we might cling to a belief in or hope for an afterlife, and we might pray in really dire situations, but pretty much give up on trying to articulate, or even expect, truly radical experiences of God's presence. Some of us may even engage in a Christian reductionism of our own: the only proof of a true relationship with God is speaking in tongues, or intellectual assent to certain doctrines, or a particular "plan of salvation," or a set sacramental system. To expect more or other is wrong, damaging, and heretical. It is no wonder that our Christian faith has become a privatized matter indeed; not only can we not talk much about it in an unbelieving world, we hesitate to say too much in the community of faith.
Many weeks ago, at the very beginning of Lent, I mentioned a 1958 article by the great German/American theologian Paul Tillich in the then very popular Saturday Evening Post magazine titled, "The Lost Dimension in Religion." The lost dimension about which Tillich fretted in that article was the dimension of depth, living life for that which is other than the immediate, loudest, most pressing concern, that world that is "too much with us," of which Auden wrote. You may recall (probably not, but indulge me) that as we began the season of Lent I suggested that if the distractions of the modern world take over our lives, we are destined to live life superficially, horizontally as it were, rather than at the ultimate levels Tillich urged. Now, after making our way through the forty days of Lent and much of the Season of Easter we see that this modern distraction is compounded by the great difficulty we have in allowing the extraordinary into our ordinary world; in expressing the radical wonder that must be a part of an authentic Christian commitment. If we cannot share in the breathless marvel of those disciples who experienced the risen Jesus with them and then suddenly being taken to heaven -- share not explain -- how can we hope to enter into the "fullness" of life of which Jesus spoke?
This is where the comprehensiveness of our faith comes in. Our faith, according to Peperzak, should be comprehensive, that is an experience of the whole of reality insofar as it pertains to the experiencing subject. We are marvelous and complex beings, a bundle of thoughts, intuitions, emotions, fears, hopes, dreads, and so on. When we Christians speak of the abundant life, we should not be limiting ourselves, as we often do, to certain aspects or dimensions of life: just the "spiritual" or only the intrapersonal or perhaps just the institutional; it means everything, a comprehensive faith. This is easy to say and hard to accept. Today's newspaper has the headline, "Faith helps crash victim," as though it is news that religious faith should help anybody with anything. As a young pastor I became very interested in the totality of our beings, particularly as I visited isolated parishioners, alone in their homes or institutions. I recall being quite excited when, in 1977, I attended a seminar where hard scientific data was presented on the strong connection between the emotional, spiritual, and physical. I soon read the then new book The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness by Dr. James J. Lynch (Basic Books, 1977). I now know that this influential study was neither the first nor the last work to draw these strong connections. Yet a quarter century later these ideas have not had any great impact in the Christian community (while they have been more widely embraced by some new age and holistic healing movements). In 1977 I would not have thought that stories of the impact of faith, belief, prayer, or supportive community would have still been grist for human interest stories in the new millenium. Insofar as our faith is less than comprehensive, forcing us to stretch across categories, to re-examine our ways of thinking, to grope for words and concepts to articulate what we know to be true, it is less than the Ascension faith; we are living horizontally, not vertically.
As our faith becomes more comprehensive, less bound by the limitations of language and culture, it will clearly be dynamic, not static, but an ongoing movement oriented by God. Not long ago I was part of a group that was discussing the need for a new outreach ministry in our community, aftercare for persons released from prison, clearly the kind of ministry best sponsored by a coalition of churches rather than a single congregation. In the course of the conversation I remarked on how difficult it often seemed to be to get such cooperative ventures off the ground. By way of explanation one layman remarked that it was because so many congregations in our area are "highly organized, internal" churches whose main function is to care for the believers within the congregation. That may be an explanation, but it is hardly a justification. The ministering to and maintaining members is an important function of any local church, but when the maintenance of the status quo becomes the exclusive purpose, it is a problem. As individuals and groups of Christians we are always on the road to perfection, to paraphrase John Wesley. When we live vertically, constantly exploring the height and depth, the length and breadth of God's riches, we always have to be on the move, always exploring new depths of commitment and avenues of service. Theologically, biblically, an "internal" church is not a church; a static, unidimensional horizontal life is not a Christian life.
Good Friday challenged the disciples to rethink everything. How could they understand who Jesus was and all that he had done after the ignominious death on the cross? Then Easter Day and the resurrection appearance on the road, in the upper room, at the lakeside all challenged the disciples to rethink everything again. How could they understand who Jesus was and all that he had done and was doing in view of his ongoing presence with them? And now, on the day of the Ascension, as Jesus is with them, and then not with them, in a way that they know signals his entry into glory were the disciples challenged to rethink everything yet again! How could they understand who Jesus was and all that he had done and would do now that he was taken from them in this cosmic manner? And we know that when the Day of Pentecost arrived the disciples had to rethink everything yet one more time. Rethinking, grasping and groping for words, creating new categories of thought and new images of life and faith, this is what living vertically is all about. Living vertically is radical, comprehensive, and dynamic because it cannot settle for the definitions of the culture, or reductionism or the status quo. It is always exploring new dimensions in God's power and grace.
As we explore the depths of God's love in our lives, we will encounter the same things those first disciples did. We will have to think and rethink, define and redefine, invent new words and new categories of thought. We will be puzzled and surprised. But like them, we will worship, be filled with great joy, and find ourselves continually blessing God.
