7 Easter Yr A

I have a very fond memory of teaching at Ascension School in North Minneapolis, on the Feast of the Ascension, which is 40 days after Easter, and usually fell near the last Thursday of the school year. We celebrated the Ascension just this past Thursday. We would spend the whole day playing games inside and outside, concluding the day with mass, and then releasing piles of red balloons. It was a glorious day for everyone, and although it was a day free from the rigors of school, we pointed the children to the glory of God seen and experienced in play and in one another. It was an opportunity to look through the ordinary to see the extraordinary.

Looking through the ordinary to the extraordinary, to the glory of God, is what an icon is. An icon is a picture, image, or representation through which we may gain a glimpse of the holy, the glory of God. However, icon is used is popular parlance in ways that defy this traditional meaning of the word. Sports figures are called icons, I remember Princess Diana being called an icon, and the word is thrown around in the world of advertising quite a bit. Ronald McDonald, The Green Giant, Betty Crocker, The Energizer Bunny, Aunt Jemima, Tony the Tiger, and my favorite, The Pillsbury Doughboy are all icons in the advertising world. Although they may be memorable, even cute and fun, I'm not convinced they are that through which we may see a glimpse of the holy. However, I suppose that depends on your take on the holy.

The story of the ascension, this story we have before us today, help us to glimpse the glory of God, like icons help us to glimpse the holy. And these stories bring the Incarnation full circle. God gave up all power and came into this world in the flesh, as one of us, fully human. That is the incarnation. That is God with us. Jesus lived, and loved, as you and I live and love. Jesus died, as you and I die, however the circumstances of Jesus’ death are certainly different than the circumstances of our deaths, most of us are not put to death because of the way we live our lives. The stories we have heard this Eastertide are stories that attest to the resurrection of Jesus, the absolutely new life that God accomplished and continues to accomplish in Jesus. This story of the ascension tells us that Jesus returned to God to glorify God, and so that we may know God, and in knowing God, we may have eternal life, life right here and right now that is absolutely new and different and life with God that is new and different than the life that we experience now.

This is the reality of what God did, and continues to do in Jesus. God came to us to be known, and to know God transforms us and introduces us to a different quality of living. It is this that our gospel in John shows us today.

In a wonderful little book called Plan B, Further thoughts on faith, by Anne Lamott is a series of essays, reflections really, on faith and family and politics. There is one essay in it called holding on, in which Anne tells the story about insisting that her teenage son attend church with her. She writes, “why do I make him go? Because I want him to… We live in bewildering, drastic times, and a little spiritual guidance never killed anyone. I want him to see the people who love me when I felt most unlovable… I want him to see their faces…” She continues, “there are worse things for kids than to have to spend time with people who love God. Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don’t get to meet some of the people who love God back. Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive.”

God came to us to be known, and to know God transforms us. See, God loves us whether or not we love God back. God adores us whether or not we care. But God wants us to know about that, God wants us to know how much we are loved, so God came to show us, that we may be transformed by that love. How do we know God? How are we transformed? How is God glorified? By learning to love back.

In the midst of our own disappointments, we are transformed by loving back. In the midst of our own pain, we are transformed by loving back. In the midst of our own stubbornness, we are transformed by loving back. When we hurt others, we are transformed by loving back. When we overuse, when we overconsume, we are transformed by loving back.

When it feels like we are defeated, when it feels like we have nothing left, God continues to love us, and we are transformed by loving back. When it feels like no one likes us, when it feels like we don’t fit in, when it feels like everyone else is going a different direction, God continues to love us, and we are transformed by loving back.

When we love God back, we witness to the fact that it isn’t about any one of us anyway. It’s about God, and it is about God’s relationship with us, and our relationship with one another. That’s the point that Anne Lamott makes in her essay about making her son go to church, she wants him to be a part of a group of people who love God back, who show that in their worship, in their music, in their Sunday school, and in the way they treat each other and in the way they treat people who are not members of their church. In how they feed the hungry, how they clothe the naked, how they put the last first, and the first last.

Loving God back is not necessarily about any one of us individually, although we can love God back as individuals. Loving God back is really a community endeavor. The God who loves and adores each and every one of us is a very personal God, we know that because God came to be one of us. But our response to God is not private, it is communal and therefore public. Contributing money to feeding the hungry is very important, and yet when we work together to eliminate poverty we are able to transform our lives together. Giving our second and third jackets to Coats for Kids is very important, and yet working together protect the most vulnerable among us will transform our lives and the system we live within.

The gospel of John not only is about this circle of incarnation, life, death and resurrection, and ascension, it is also about unity. Jesus’ desire is that we may be one as Jesus and God are one. Living a life in Christ is not an individual endeavor. Responding to God’s amazing love for us is not an individual endeavor. It is a community project, in it we are one body, and by it we are made one body. Unity is not the same as agreement, unity is about the body of Christ. As people of the body of Christ, we come from diverse backgrounds we come from different places, we arrive together with a whole different plate from which to eat, and, we are transformed into a living breathing organism that takes care of the least of these, that works for justice, that works for peace.

We are transformed into a living breathing organism that is greater than any one of us by ourselves, and capable of living out God’s love for this world. God came to be one of us to show us the way, Jesus lived and died, rose into new life and joined his father to show us the way. Jesus left with us a gift …. Ah but that’s next week.

God loves and adores you, Thanks be to God. Amen