Year A
 Acts 1:1-14
 Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
 John 17:1-11

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

In Genesis…  we learn about God being in relationship with the first humans…  about God coming into the Garden…  walking in the Garden…  about giving us some guidelines…  guidelines which would at least help ensure that we’d continue to live in paradise…  don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil…  don’t eat of the Tree of Life…  and it’s WE humans who made choices…  choices which ended up with us being sent out of the Garden…  away from a seamless harmony with God and all of creation…  away from intimate knowledge of God’s Wisdom…  and into the realm of knowledge about the world…  and everything other than God’s will…  God’s Word…  God’s intent for us…  and the story that God has been writing ever since…  the story that God has been yearning for us to read…  mark…  learn…  and inwardly digest ever since…  is the story of God’s desire to restore us to that divine relationship…  that divine intimacy…  that divine unity… 

Now when a baby is born…  it experiences no separation from mother…  it’s been in her womb for upwards of nine months…  and quite simply…  it’s felt experience is that mother and I are inseparable   that mother and I are in unity…  that mother and I are One…  and the Terrible Twos…  are really the Terrific Twos…  because the child is not only beginning to experience itself as a separate person…  but is beginning to experience God’s gift of free will…  is beginning to experience the consequences of making choices…  is beginning to experience the freedom of having eaten from that Tree…  and the freedom to choose to be in relationship or not…

Now God could have made it…  so that we had no choice about loving God…  that we could have been pre-programmed to love God…  but we all know that forced love is no love at all…  and so the two-year-old…  who’s learning about her or his place in creation…  is also learning that they can choose to seek to recapture that experience of unity…  but this time…  instead of with their mother…  it’s unity with God…  it’s the same seamlessness that Jesus and the Father share…  and this is the seamlessness into which we are invited…

In S1E10 of the Apple TV series Foundation…  the character Gaal Dornick reminisces…  My mother used to say that going to sleep was a leap of faith…  our souls wander when we dream…  or so she told me…  and if we say our devotions…  our souls will find their way back before we wake…  climbing from our cradle is another leap…  so is leaving the comfort of home…  for some…  it’s setting sail…  hurtling ourselves into the void…   we send messages into space hoping someone will answer…  praying we find safe harbor over the horizon…

And in today’s reading…  Jesus ascends…  Natalie Wigg-Stevenson…  a teacher at Emmanuel College in Toronto…  asks some questions about the Ascension…  are we to interpret it literally…  metaphorically…  or some other way altogether…  she cites the character Nemo in the movie The Matrix…  and asks with him in mind…  So when I’m made fully in Jesus’ image…  will I be able to fly too…  but his ascent is not about geography…  it’s one of those leaps of faith about bearing witness…  it’s not about the expansion of colonialism…  not about heading out to the horizons…  and she writes that…  the idea that God came and went…  and came again…  and then went…  but is coming back again…  is one of the strangest mysteries of faith…  but God’s incarnate self must leave…  for God’s Spirit to stay…  for the Holy Spirit to come on Pentecost…  and at our clergy retreat this week…  on Thursday…  at our Ascension Day Eucharist…  Bishop Singh framed the Ascension in this way…  Tag…  you’re it…

Because in his long speech on the night before his death…  Jesus underscored what he’d been doing and saying during his active ministry for those gathered with him for one final meal…  some of his most memorable teaching legacies…  loving one another…  servant leadership…  the gift and responsibility of intimate and productive relationships are recorded in this discourse…  and in the priestly prayer at its end…

Tag…  you’re it…  means that Jesus is turning his work over to his disciples…  he’s taught them…  he’s trained them…  he’s been patient with them…  in fact…  just a few chapters earlier…  in John 14:12…  Jesus said…  Very truly…  I tell you…  the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and…  in fact…  will do greater works than these…  because I am going to the Father… 

But what catches my attention…  is that the language in this morning’s Gospel…  is language of reunification…  of seamlessness…  of Oneness…  of the autonomous child yielding to God’s will and presence…  and Jesus explains quite clearly that eternal life is knowledge of God…  and not immortality…  that’s why…  I think…  that in Acts…  when the apostles have come together…  and they ask…  Lord…  is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel…  so they could align themselves with the world’s wisdom…  and reign forever…  and I can imagine Jesus letting out an exasperated sigh…  because they’re not getting it…  they’re stuck on issues of power and authority…  and the church sometimes gets stuck on the same issues… 

The first verse of this morning’s Psalm is…  Arise, O God, and let your enemies be scattered; let those who hate you flee before you…  in Latin…  Arise, O God… is Exurge Domine…  the name of the Papal Bull…  or edict…  which demanded that Luther recant forty-one of the statements in his writings…  or face excommunication…  and what did he do…  he publicly burned the Bull…  and was excommunicated a year later…  Pope Leo X was certain he had the mind of God…  but Luther was certain as well… 

We’re not in the final stretch just yet…  but when I was at the National Workshop on Christian Unity last week…  there were indications that our Christian sisters and brothers were taking more to heart…  the idea that denomination is a wonderful adjective…  but is an idolatrous noun…  and that there’s more that unites us than divides us…  it’s like being one with mother…  then being an autonomous person…  and then relinquishing that autonomy for the sake of the collective…  but living that out is the challenge…  so what do we do when we are certain that we know what God intends…  while others hold an opposing view…  religious divisions have the same potential to spawn hatred and violence…  in fact…  in John 16:2b-3…  Jesus says…  indeed…  an hour is coming…  when those who kill you…  will think that by doing so…  they are offering worship to God…  and they will do this…  because they have not known the Father or me…  but even short of that there are still political…  familial…  or racial divisions…  history and current events bear witness to that…  we have to be very careful about invoking God against our enemies…  it’s something Jesus never did…  the cross shows that God refuses to use power against God’s enemies… a pacifist God…  what do we do with that… 

This weekend we hear Jesus ask in his prayer for his disciples at the Last Supper in John…  that God protect them and make them One…  as he and the Father are One…  he desires that his followers be united in love…  so…  we in our fractious church and world…  can only pray…  Lord, show us how to do this…  and take up the cross again…  and continue to learn the way of love…