Being connected
19th May 2023
Then Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them,
“This is what is written: the Messiah must suffer and must rise from death three days later, and in his name the message about repentance and the forgiveness of sins must be preached to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And I myself will send upon you what my Father has promised. But you must wait in the city until the power from above comes down upon you.”
Then he led them out of the city as far as Bethany, where he raised his hands and blessed them. As he was blessing them, he departed from them and was taken up into heaven. They worshiped him and went back into Jerusalem, filled with great joy, and spent all their time in the Temple giving thanks to God.
Luke 24.45-53
How do you explain where Jesus is now? It was easy when he was with his friends, going around the countryside near the Sea of Galilee. He was sitting at the table, or walking by the lake, or washing at the well, or fast asleep in bed. He was just there – a living, breathing presence.
After the first Easter it wasn’t so easy. Jesus had been taken away from his friends in the cruellest way. When he came back to be with them it was both wonderful and mysterious. It seems that he just appeared and disappeared. But they could touch him, and eat with him, and sit next to him. He was really there, but in a new way. For Jesus the divide between heaven and earth, between this age and the age to come, had become so thin, he could just move between the two.
But there still seemed to be some limitations. Jesus didn’t apparently appear to people in different places at the same time. He was a single presence, in one place at a time.
But then things changed again. Today’s reading comes from the very end of Luke’s gospel. There is another version at the beginning of his second book, the Acts of the Apostles. This event is like a hinge between the time when Jesus could be just in one place, with one group of people, and the time when he would be with all his followers, wherever they are.
Luke tells the story using the language of physical space. Jesus meets with his disciples on last time, and as he blesses them, he is taken up to heaven. That’s why we call today Ascension Day, and why there are some very dodgy stained glass windows in churches showing Jesus in flowing robes going up on an invisible lift.
Before this, Jesus tells his followers to wait in Jerusalem until ‘the power from above comes down on you’. Luke later tells the story of this event, the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit comes down on the believers.
We sometimes talk as if God is ‘up there’. In the time of Jesus heaven was seen being up beyond the physical dome of the sky. But we know now that what is up there is the solar system, the galaxy and the whole universe – and God isn’t living in heaven somewhere beyond the edge of this.
Maybe another way to think of this is that there was a point when Jesus moved from being out there – physically close, but separate, to being in here – living within us through his Spirit, as close to us as breathing. From Pentecost onwards the disciples knew this presence of Jesus, with them in a new way, through the Holy Spirit.
I was listening to a conversation with Richard Rohr the other day on the Nomad podcast. He was saying that Jesus did not come to connect us to God. We are already connected to God. As St Paul said, ‘In him we live, and move and have our being’.
But we fail to recognise that connection. We believe ourselves to be separate from God. Jesus came to lead us into the truth – we are already in God, and God is in us. And he came to free us from ways that we keep a distance between ourselves and God from our side – because of our fear, our lack of trust, our egos, our looking for help and happiness in the wrong places.
Matthew’s gospel also ends with Jesus parting from his disciples. Jesus meets them on a hillside. He tells them to share the message of his love. And he says ‘I will be with you always, to the end of the age’. They have experienced the closeness of Jesus in physical space – now they can know the closeness of Jesus in spiritual space – in their souls and in their lives. That is the promise of Jesus to us as well.
You may like to breathe more slowly, and as you breathe in, say in your mind the words ‘I am’ and as you breathe out, the words ‘with you’…
Lord Jesus, underneath the surface of our life – underneath our busy lives, our busy thoughts and our unsettled feelings – help us to find ways to recognise your presence with us, deep within.
Lord Jesus, as we grow more closely connected with you, may the divide between your life and our life grow more permeable, so that your love may flow through, and out, into the lives of others.
Lord Jesus, help us to look at the world with your eyes, and to share your longing for healing and blessing and justice and compassion. May we be your hands and feet and lips, your body on earth, bringing your life and your love wherever you call us.