May 28, 2006

Clay Nelson

Sunday after the Ascension 
    Acts 1:1-11 
    Luke 24:44-53

Considering how deadly dull they can be, you may be surprised to learn that sermons are living, breathing things and sometimes have a life of their own. If you were to live with a preacher the week before his or her sermon you would discover that the thoughts expressed are the nugget where the preacher's life that week and the Gospel intersected. It continues to live and breathe if it intersects with your life.

Today's sermon is no exception. What is different is it has already been preached. It was my sermon at our celebration of the Ascension last Thursday. After hearing it, Jane, who was scheduled to preach today, told me like she was Humphrey Bogart, “Preach it again, Clay.” That led to a theological reflection between us as to how pastoral is it to challenge our congregation's traditional beliefs? Is it a loving thing to do? As a result I will preach Thursday's sermon, but now it is a sermon within a sermon informed by that reflection. Here is a revised version of what some of you have already heard. If you were one of those eleven I'll wake you later.

Considering my last two sermons were on Jesus being just a man, I can be excused for wondering if Jane's invitation for me to preach tonight on the Ascension was a reflection of her mischievous sense of humour. I can hear her saying, “OK Clay, you're on record now, tell us how JUST a man ascended into heaven like an unfettered balloon.”

I confess it is clever of her. She's got me. For over two decades I've tried to preach on this event and squirmed. Suspending my disbelief, I dutifully stuck to the party line about the physical resurrection of Jesus' body. I only expressed my real beliefs off the record and out of earshot of the bishop.

So what do I believe? Unlike the people in Luke's time, I know about DNA. I know that the universe is infinite. I know about gravity. I know how babies are made. I know that Jesus was just a man, conceived like every other human being. I know helium didn't flow through his veins and no physical heaven on the other side of the clouds exists. I know that human life at some point ends and that when it happens human beings don't resuscitate and then float up to an imaginary heaven. I also believe that Luke was not using poetic license.

For him, Jesus' ascension was not a metaphor. He heard the story, in fact, two different versions of it and recorded them both because he believed it literally happened. Even if he was speaking metaphorically, neither a literal belief or a metaphorical one challenged his world view. He didn't know what we know. What he did know was that Jesus had changed the landscape. He had changed the rules. This man was so unlike any man anyone living knew he must not be just a man. He must've been God paying us a visit, and the Ascension was just his going back home. Made sense to Luke. Made him feel less alone in this hostile world. Made him feel better that God would make the trip to visit and on his return would look after him from his throne in heaven.

What made sense to Luke doesn't make sense to me.

I was first confronted with this conflict between my beliefs about Jesus and the Ascension and my faith years ago when I visited Israel. In Bethany in the eastern hills that overlook Jerusalem is the Chapel of the Ascension. It is a very small circular structure, maybe 5 metres in diameter that has since been turned into a mosque. Inside there are only slits for window light and a small niche on the eastern side to tell Muslim worshippers which way to pray to Mecca. But what is most unique is that the floor is dirt with a large stone in the center. We were told by our guide that this was the very stone from which Jesus ascended to heaven. Furthermore, those who were true believers could still see Jesus' last footprint on earth in the stone.

You and certainly Jane won't be surprised to learn that all I saw was a rock. I really did try, but it was just a rock. And not a very memorable one at that.

What was memorable was upon leaving the chapel I was greeted by a camel and his driver. Who explained that this was no ordinary camel. This was a kissing camel. He said if I didn't believe it, for one dollar, the camel would kiss me. I told him I would accept it on faith.

So clearly, I'm not totally without faith.

In fact, a long way from it.

For instance I do believe a man can ascend into the heavens like a balloon, with balloons. Larry Walters actually did it.

When Larry was 13, he saw weather balloons hanging from the ceiling of an Army-Navy Surplus shop. It was then he knew that some day he would be carried aloft by such balloons. Twenty years later on July 2nd, 1982, Larry tied 42 helium-filled balloons to a lawn chair in the backyard of his girlfriend's house in San Pedro, California. With the help of his ground crew, Larry secured himself into the lawn chair which was anchored to the bumper of a friend's car by two nylon tethers. Among his supplies was a BB gun to shoot out the balloons when he was ready to descend. His goal was to sail across the desert and hopefully make it to the Rocky Mountains in a few days. But things didn't quite work out for Larry. After his crew cut the first tether, the second one also snapped. Larry shot into the LA sky at over 300 metres per minute. A TWA pilot first spotted Larry and radioed the tower that he was passing a guy in a lawn chair at 5000 metres! The Federal Aviation Administration was not amused. Larry started shooting out the balloons to start his descent but accidentally dropped the gun. After drifting for a couple of hours he eventually landed in a Long Beach neighborhood entangled in power lines. He was uninjured.

Now that is a true ascension. Funny, quirky, but not life changing. But Larry did inspire a wonderful Australian film, Danny Deckchair, which while untrue in fact is full of truth. The hero, Danny, a bored cement worker, is clearly an unlikely Christ figure. In a fashion similar to Larry's he ascends from his backyard in Sydney during a barbecue and lands less than gracefully in a small town in the Australian outback. By this act of departure and arrival everything changes not only for Danny, but for those in Sydney and those in the town. Danny's unique departure inspires those at home to take risks. To live life more boldly. To act on their dreams. To become all they can be. In having acted out his dream, he finds new confidence and becomes a source of affirmation for the townsfolk who used to see themselves as backwater short poppies but now see even delivering the mail as a noble endeavour. Everyone is transformed by his ascension. New life and love accompany his resurrection.

Luke's two versions of the Ascension are not true like Larry's lift off but are true like Danny Deckchair. While the event certainly did not happen in a literal way, the story does attempt to capture the quality of a real man whose coming and going in their lives changed them forever.

That's why Luke's surprising ending isn't so surprising.

The ending is about the joy the disciples felt upon seeing their Lord departing.

A surprising reaction considering they had allegedly just seen their beloved master fade from sight. Why no grief? Why no sorrow and tears?

Because the God they saw in him they found in themselves. In his departure they discovered they could love as wastefully as he did. They could live as abundantly as he did. They could bring about healing and reconciliation just as he did. With Jesus pointing the way, they had found God, and while Jesus was gone, the God he pointed to was everywhere, even in them. Now that's good news to have faith in. It sure beats kissing camels.

OK, those of you who already heard it can check back in.

That was the sermon that was. Now, back to the sermon that is.

Is standing in this pulpit telling you that Jesus was not some kind of incarnate deity, in contradiction to scripture and the historic creeds of the church, a pastoral, loving thing to do? Nevermind heretical.

For me it is a difficult thing to do. It may unsettle you. It may even make you angry. Some of you, if you buy what I'm selling, may question your faith or wonder why you even bother to come here on Sunday mornings. But I would argue it is still the kindest thing to do.

If your faith is sustained by a belief in a miraculous understanding of Jesus that has to ignore what you know about the real world, is it a faith that can help you in the real world?

Eventually this world of advancing scientific knowledge, that no longer requires a personal God to create, heal and sustain life will make the God we have had irrelevant, if it hasn't already. I think God would rather be dead than irrelevant. And if God is irrelevant, Jesus, who has been portrayed by Luke and the church as the incarnation of this God, will suffer the same fate. For many he already has.

The human Jesus does not suffer the same fate. The human Jesus, instead of only showing us God in all “His” glory, also shows us in all of ours. This Jesus becomes a window through which we can glimpse the mystery of love and life and being we are called into. This Jesus through his radical love of even his enemies invites us into that mystery that surrounds us and is part of our very being. This Jesus becomes the door way through which I'm willing to walk into that mystery. For this mystery, I am willing to die to have new life.

Mystery makes sense to me, the miraculous doesn't. The mysterious Jesus inspires me and calls me to new levels of being. The miraculous Jesus helps me as much as telling a child that babies come from the cabbage patch. The mysterious Jesus sustains my faith. The miraculous Jesus impedes it.

So if you were up here, which Jesus would you proclaim?