They Returned Rejoicing
By Rev. J. Mary Luti
May 04, 2008
Ascension Sunday
Lessons: Luke 24: 44-53
I imagine that this parting was indeed an unwelcome one for them. But the story is explicit about their state of mind when it is over, when Jesus has gone from their sight. They do not return to Jerusalem grieving, a painful lump in their throats. They return rejoicing. And I have often wondered why.
This leave-taking episode occurs a few weeks after Jesus’ resurrection. According to Luke, in the interval between his rising and ascending, Jesus spent all his time teaching the disciples. He started with the couple on the road to Emmaus. To them he explained the Bible’s long, meandering story line, its trajectory of grace that culminates in him and his mission. His teaching lit a fire in their hearts.
He continued to teach the disciples up to the minute of his departure. He was still blessing them, still speaking to them, when he was taken from their sight. He left them in mid-gesture, even in mid-sentence, which is, of course, what all unwelcome good-byes feel like, even when they have been prepared for a while. They always seem to happen too soon, in the middle of things, with so much more left to be said and done together. (The conversation between Jesus and his disciples really isn’t over, however—but more on that later.)
Before going out to Bethany that day, Jesus opened the Bible’s meaning to his disciples one last time. You never get it the first time. Like every practice of faith, it takes a while. And yet, as he spoke to them in this way, I imagine that, like the hearts of the disciples on the Emmaus road, the hearts of all the disciples with him that day flared up too.
Have you had heart-kindling experiences with the Bible? You hear a familiar story. The passage seems to speak directly to you, and something in your life is laid bare, healed, made new. A light comes on, a fire is kindled, joy invades your soul.
This is what happened to Martin Luther, the 16th century Protestant reformer, when he was studying Paul’s Letter to the Romans. He had made himself crazy trying to please God, but a demanding God never seemed satisfied. In Romans, however, Luther read that God’s approval was in fact a free gift, already given in Jesus. It was nothing anyone could earn. Striving was a pointless exercise, a way to try to save yourself, and as such, doomed to sinful failure. Good works are good things, but they should be done out of gratitude for God’s acceptance, not in an effort to convince God that we are worthy.
Luther felt a huge weight lifted from his soul. This biblical insight changed his life. It became a bedrock Protestant principle, and it is still capable of igniting a fire of liberating joy in people. I know, because I have preached this truth repeatedly—that God is all generosity, that God takes delight in us, that God’s forgiveness is ours even before we ask, and that our work in the world is about responsive gratitude, not endless striving, as if God will like us better if we scrupulously make ourselves miserable and die of guilt and exhaustion doing good.
Every time I preach this with conviction, someone tells me that it is a joyful relief to hear it, to be released from bondage to a false image of God. This is what can happen to us when we immerse ourselves in the Bible’s rich testimony.
Perhaps, then, it was Bible study with Jesus that sent the disciples back to Jerusalem rejoicing. And if it was, that says something about the place of scripture in our lives.
Often we feel joyful only when conditions are good and things go our way. But Christian joy is resistant to the vagaries of circumstance. Being possessed of it doesn’t mean we are going to be happy all the time. It means that we have hold of something—or it has hold of us—that is so trustworthy and anchoring that we can do no other than be grateful and glad, no matter what else we are experiencing.
The Bible testifies to this joy repeatedly. And when we immerse ourselves in the ancient testimony of God’s people about their experience of God’s passion for us, the Spirit can bestow it on us. Our hearts become receptive to joy through the practice of devoted, patient and prayerful searching of the Bible’s depths.
Do you read the Bible? It is a complicated book, to be sure—off-putting at times, inscrutable in places, even bizarre and repulsive. And so we need help reading it. Reading it with others is a good practice. Reading it with a simple commentary helps too, and is to be commended. But no matter how you read Scripture, the best way to read it is longingly, with an open heart, asking for the gift of joy in the Lord, the kind no circumstance can alter.
But what if it wasn’t Bible study with Jesus that made the disciples rejoice? Well, then maybe it was what he said to them about being his witnesses. He reminded them that they are the ones who have seen and heard. They are the ones who have experienced. They are the ones, therefore, who can tell the world everything he told them, and everything they experienced of God in him.
Only cruel people enjoy telling somebody really bad news. Most of us would rather that the earth swallowed us before breaking awful news to another. One of the painful aftermaths of a loved one’s death is that the survivor has to call everybody up and tell them what happened. It is hard to keep answering the concerned questions, describing the final days or moments. That’s why the bereaved often gets someone else to do the notifications. Who can keep naming the thing that has carried away their heart?
But when we have good news to tell, we take enormous pleasure in telling it! You can’t keep us quiet! All those Christmas letters brimming with the worldly success of our children! All that shiny reflection on their excellent upbringings! All the spam to family and friends when you get engaged, or your first poem is published, or the baby is born, or the chemo is finally over and the future looks better than it did six months ago. We don’t get tired of telling good news; we will buttonhole people at parties, at the office, and waiting in line at the DMV to do it.
And when we are in love, oh, how we give testimony! I always look forward to my first meeting in the pastor’s study with engaged couples preparing for marriage. I always ask them to tell me the story. The story of each other. The story of their love, the “how we got from there to here” story. It’s hard to get the partners to stop telling me all they have seen and heard of each other. I rarely have to prompt their testimony. I often have to cut it off for the sake of time.
Jesus tells the disciples: “You are my witnesses.” Maybe that’s what makes them rejoice. They are going to get to sit in the pastor’s study and chatter on endlessly about the one they love; only in this case, the pastor’s study is the whole wide world, and the talk won’t be just talk; it will also be deeds of mercy, forgiveness, justice, and sacrifice.
Have your told story lately? Who knows your good news? Have you shared what is happening to you because of your faith? Because you are learning to pray or serve or see? Learning to hope or trust? Have you opened your heart and let the gratitude that is in it spill out around you? What is holding you back?
The author of 1 John writes, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our own hands, concerning the word of life... that which we have seen and heard, we tell you."
There is nothing more important for the world than for us to learn how to tell—to witness in the face of all this hopelessness to the bright hope that is in us. To share what we love with others is a source of authentic joy. The disciples were told that they would be witnesses. They rejoiced. Do we?
But what if it wasn’t the Bible study or the charge to be witnesses that made the disciples rejoice? What if it was the promise?
It turns out that the disciples are not supposed to charge out immediately and tell the world their good news. Jesus commands them to go back to the city first and wait there together for the promised one, whom he calls “the power from on high.” It’s the Holy Spirit he’s talking about, and next week we will commemorate her raucous arrival on Pentecost Sunday. (So if you have something red and want to wear it, please do. Red is the color of the Spirit’s fire, the sign of the passion of God for us and for the church that the Spirit continually conveys. But I digress.)
Maybe it was this promise, that soon they would be clothed in red, clothed in fire, that made the disciples rejoice. Perhaps they read between Jesus’ lines and realized that the Spirit’s coming would fill and empower them in such a way that it would make his departure not only bearable, but also somehow wonderful.
For when the Spirit finally came, the disciples discovered that Jesus had never really left. When the Spirit finally came, they found out that Jesus was still among them, close and tangible, not far away and invisible.
The Spirit made him continually present, materializing him wherever two or three gathered in his name, revealing him whenever they broke the bread and poured out the cup in remembrance of him, or gave a drink to the thirsty or visited the sick, or encouraged the fainthearted, or spoke the truth to power.
When the Spirit came, they discovered that Jesus was not confined any longer to one particular time or one physical space, but that, as the letter to the Ephesians puts it, he now fills all in all.
My colleague at Old South Church in Boston, Quinn Caldwell, writes:
Deep in Chartres Cathedral, tucked in a corner that not many pay attention to, is the funniest sculpture ever. It is the last of a series of carved, diorama-like depictions of the life of Jesus, and in it a group of people stands agape, staring up at the ceiling of the diorama--from which dangle a pair of perfectly carved feet. No body, just feet. They are Jesus' feet, of course, the last bit of him we see before he enters heaven. It's probably not meant to be funny, but it is.
I’ve seen the carved relief that Quinn is describing. My first impulse when I saw it was to grab those two dangling ankles and pull Jesus back down to earth. That would have been precisely the wrong thing to do.
The disciples let him go. They let him go, rejoicing. They seemed to sense that there is a joy that is much greater than having Jesus’ feet on the ground with them. It was having him inside them and around them and above, below, before, and behind them. And so, faithful to his command, and rejoicing all the way, they returned to wait and pray for that promised company, so cosmic and so intimate.
The promise that made them glad was made to them and to the church they became. It is a promise to us too, then, and to this church.
We always need the Spirit to be a church and to act like the church. But these days we need her in a special way. After worship today, this congregation will embark on an important discernment about its future. There will be discussion and clarification and objection and refinement and more discussion. Eventually, by God’s grace, the shape of the way forward will emerge.
I won’t be part of this process, because my time here is coming to an end, and except for my prayers and encouragement, I can’t accompany you into the future you are going to choose. I can’t go with you, but Jesus can, and Jesus will.
In the Spirit, he will be with his church, with you. He will be on the lips of everyone who speaks, in the hearts of everyone who listens, in the hands of everyone who uplifts them in prayer, in the minds of all who deliberate and decide. He will be with you if you do what he commands on this Ascension Day—if together you await, expect, and pray for the gift from on high, the Spirit of all truth, the Guide who will lead you to it.
If together you go to the upper room of this congregation’s deepest yearning and ask for this gift, in the power of that Spirit, Jesus will always be among you with his peace, and you will know that he has indeed ascended to his God and to yours, and that he has brought you with him into the gracious Presence that is the source of every joy.
Thus, you can have confidence that what God began in you, God will finish. And you will go your way rejoicing, full of praise.