Is, "I'll be with you in spirit", enough?

Acts 1:6-11

6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

We all know that this past Thursday was a holiday here in Luxembourg, though maybe not all of us know why.  Even if you do know it was Ascension Day, you still might not know what that even means.  One of the oddities of living here is that almost no one goes to church but we still move by the rhythms of the Christian calendar.  Ascension names the moment when Jesus ascended into heaven and took his place at the right hand of the Father.   

The Acts passage we read describes this brief moment.  The disciples ask Jesus - who’s still standing there - when his work will be completed, when the kingdom will be restored, and Jesus replies that it’s not for them to know the time.  Instead he promises that they will be empowered by the Holy Spirit and he charges them to be his witnesses near and far.  Then, suddenly, “as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”  Just like that, Jesus is gone.  

Despite the reassurances that Jesus has given, presumably in this moment they’re struggling to come to grips with the reality that their Lord, whom they’ve shared their lives with these past few years, is apparently gone… and they’re wondering how life is going be without him.  When a loved one departs on a journey of unknown length, the promise of, “I’ll be with you in spirit” is only so comforting.  They’d rather not be alone.  No one wants to be alone.  

At the airport you’ll often see people saying goodbye at security then trying to keep their eyes fixed on the other for as long as they can, then still hoping to catch one more glimpse even after it seems no longer possible.  They don’t want to be apart.  

Moments after Jesus disappears a couple of angels appear (as angels are wont to do) to ask the disciples why they are looking in the sky.  I’ve never met a angel, to my knowledge, but I assume their intelligence is at least comparable to that of humans, so they probably actually know the answer to their question: the disciples are staring into the sky because Jesus just rode a cloud into the heavens, and that’s the sort of thing that will leave you gawking for a while. But, of course, it’s more of a rhetorical question: the implication is that they should not be looking up to heaven.  Don’t worry that Jesus is gone.  As quickly as he departed, so shall he return.  

We’re accustomed to hearing that we should be ready for Christ’s return, maintain a constant state of vigilance, persevere in faithfulness, not put off until tomorrow what should be done today, etc. - and it’s well known that we are not to try to figure our the day, not least because if we knew then we’d slack off until we thought it was time to get ready.  But the angels seem to be telling the disciples - and telling us - that we shouldn’t have our eyes fixed on the sky either.  If we’re going to get about the work that God has given us to do, of being faithful witnesses, then we need to have our eyes focused on this earthly plane.   This is how it’s going to be for a while.  This is our normal.  

As Christians we base our faith on events that happened while Jesus was physically on earth, and we look forward to the time when Christ comes again in final victory, when the kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.  But the entirely of our lives, except for that first generation and whomever will be last, is lived in Jesus’ physical absence.  He was here, and he will be again, but he’s not right now.  And, to be honest, it’s hard to give an entirely satisfactory explanation of just why Jesus departs for such a long time.  Indeed the first Christians, it seems clear, expected Jesus to return in their lifetimes.  They did not expect at the outset that we’d still be here waiting.  

To be honest, God’s apparent absence often seems more real than God’s presence.  It can feel like God’s has left the scene and you start to wonder when - or even if - God will return.  In fact, it’s been so long since God was around that you start to wonder if maybe you were mistaken; was it all an illusion?  Maybe it was all make believe?  

Where is God?  That’s a fairly important question, and the usual answer is that God is heaven.  And, in a sense, this is obviously true.  When we confess our faith every week we say that, “Christ ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.”  But it seems to me that these two angels are also telling us that, if we seek God, we shouldn’t be looking up to the heavens.  We should also expect to find God here and now.  

Next Sunday is Pentecost (we get another holiday for that), the day when the Holy Spirt descended upon the gathered believers and the church was born.  In all the Gospels, in various ways, Jesus said that, when he departed, the Holy Spirit would come to be his abiding presence.  And he presents this not merely as a consolation, but even as better than him remaining with them.  We read the passage recently from John 14 when he declared that it’s better that he leaves so that the Spirit will come, that then the the disciples will do even greater things than he has done.   

What could that possibly mean?  How is that God is present to us - present even in a superior way - once that presence in no longer physical but spiritual?  We’ll try to address those questions next Sunday (I think).   

But for now, at least, I think it’s worth naming and abiding with the tension that, despite the assurances, God often seems far away, that God, despite wanting to be known, often seems elusive.  We’d sure like to see God face to face, to be able to reach out and actually touch God with us.  Presence is reassuring, especially when you otherwise feel vulnerable.  

In our Gospel passage Jesus prays to the Father for the protection of those who have been entrusted to them, a kind of acknowledgment that he won’t be there to protect them any longer.  The 1 Peter passage warns us that the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.   It’s a harsh world, and the question remains of why evil is allowed to persist?  What is the point?  Why did Jesus leave us?  And why doesn’t he just return?  How do we make sense of this story?   

Rather than trying to resolve the tension, I’d rather name it and even embrace it.  As I mention perhaps too often, in our age “reality” is understood primarily, sometimes exclusively, in terms of what is physically present - what your five senses can detect.  Even those people who believe in spiritual realities nevertheless can’t help but think of the material world as “more real”.  We think of ourselves as bodies with a spirit.  But God is Spirit, and God is the fundamental reality upon which all else depends, closer to us than we are to ourselves.  The spiritual is more real than the physical.  We are not bodies infused with spirit; rather, we are spirits who have been embodied, made for eternity, like God our creator.   Which is to say that the Holy Spirit is hardly an inferior presence, and it’s perhaps only our modern prejudice that causes to think so.  

At the same time, it is central to the faith that God is most fully revealed to us in Christ, in God’s physical incarnation, that the God who seemed distant has come near.  And that all of life is lived in this space when we wait for Christ to come again, to restore and redeem, to make all things new, to dwell with us forever.   God is more present to us now than our eyes allow us to see, but we yet wait for the time faith will be as sight.  For now life can feel like a fiery ordeal, but this to be expected, for Christ himself suffered, and we might take solace that our sufferings are a participation in his own, and Christ’s glory will be our own.  God is with us.