Sermons

May 20, 2007

Rev. Scott Swanson

Ascension - John 17: 20-26

Some of you may remember that one of my jobs outside of congregational work here at Langley is as a member of the BC Conference Interview Board. The Interview Board is charged with interviewing all candidates for all streams and varieties of paid accountable ministry recognized by the United Church. The Interview Board met two weeks ago; the team I was on interviewed a man hired to work as a youth minister in a congregation on Vancouver Island. By United Church standards this is a very conservative congregation. It took them a long time to find the right person for their youth ministry position because they couldn't find anyone in the denomination who was a fit for their congregation.

The man they hired and who we were interviewing came from an evangelical Baptist background. Reading his resume was like reading something in another language, from another culture, and when we me as an interview team to prepare our questions, one of the members of the interview team was quite upset. She could not understand how this man could fit in a UCC congregation. She was not aware that there were congregations in the UCC that occupied that place on the spectrum. She wondered how we could possibly approve someone with his theology to work within the denomination and wasn't even sure what to ask or say to him. She found herself pressed to live up to the name of her beloved church: the United Church of Canada. In that moment, unity did not come easily.

Jesus, praying to his Father says, "The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one..." Ut omnes unum sint - that all may be one: the motto of a denomination conceived at the height of the ecumenical movement in the 19th century, a motto taken from these verses from John's gospel. The story from Conference Interview Board illustrates that we are not even united as a denomination that celebrates and honours diversity, never mind as part of the global church.

I was reminded last week that I live with two people who still see the world through eyes of mystery. Sarah was showing me something - I think it was something she had drawn. She went on in great detail about what was on the paper we were both looking at. I could see nothing that she could see, but I marvelled and gave thanks that she could see it.

This is Ascension Sunday, when we mark how 40 days after Easter Jesus ascended into heaven. We kind of prefer to ignore this day in the church year. Frankly, the Ascension doesn't really work that well for us modern and post-modern types. How do we explain a miraculous levitation to a world that demands to know how the trick is done? How do we explain it to ourselves? Maybe ... just for today ... we could allow ourselves to re-enter a world where the miraculous is still possible and the heart can ponder the work of the divine. "Unless you become like a child," says Jesus, "you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."

A sermon a friend of mine wrote for this Ascension Sunday some years ago says in part that the Risen Christ walked on earth for forty days and then absented himself, leaving the disciples on their own. We know this reality. It is ours, too. Ascension Sunday helps us to name that we live in the presence of the absence of Christ. ... Christ leaves the world, paradoxically, to become more accessible to it."

Ososo ososo, / pyonghwauiimgum,
uriga hanmom / iruge hasoso.

In these times of hyper-individualism, oneness can so easily become a barrier to oneness. What I mean is that we are all so busy being true to ourselves that it requires a huge act of self to let go of some of that in order to meet others so that we can develop a sense of being one together. This is hard work: finding a balance between the protection of self and integrity on the one hand, and the surrender of self for the common good on the other hand. Hard, perhaps impossible work. Perhaps this why Jesus does not command us to be united, but rather prays that it might be so: perhaps only the Holy Spirit can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

When it came to the interview with our evangelical, Baptist, United Church youth pastor, the interview team took the approach that it would be pointless to discuss theology and the place of scripture, and other such thing where we knew there would only be disagreement. Instead we focussed on him: his story, his ministry, his way of being with people - what he did, and how and why he did it. For 45 minutes or so we had a delightful conversation, and the interview team was graced by this young man's passion, hurt, giftedness, and deep faith. Afterwards, we all felt gifted by the Spirit and honoured to have interviewed this person. It was a reminded of the truth that God can unite the church in God's Spirit, in spite of our differences.

On this Ascension Sunday, we acknowledge (as my friend remarked in his sermon) that - alone and as community -- we know too well the absence of Christ's presence. So much that we may begin to believe that the absence of the presence of God is to be expected. But sometimes in these moments - as in those grace-filled moments when we experience unity in spite of our diversity - God's Holy Spirit gives us hope in the power of God. Not rational hope, but the hope of hearts open to the mystery and wonder of God's determination to be present and incarnate in the world.

"For those with eyes to see, the ascended One re-enters history moment by surprising moment as incognito as ever. ... First a manger. Then a cross. Now a stranger's face. So it is that we live life expecting ... expecting that the ascended Christ will come close... close enough to see and to touch" ... that all might be one.

Amen.

With thanks to Rev. Edwin Searcy, and his sermon "The Presence of Absence," May 24, 1998.

For more information or to comment on this sermon, please email Rev. Scott Swanson.

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