Abler Souls
A Homily on Luke 24:44-53 and Acts 1:1-11
by Griff Martin
For the Celebration of Ascension (and the Eleventh Sunday of Online Worship)
May 24, 2020
The great spiritual teacher Carl Jung says it best, “Oddly enough the paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions... Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.”
A paradox is a statement that seems to be self-contradictory but after you sit with it for a while, the more you come to see that the statement actually expresses a great truth. Some of the more famous examples: Can God make a rock so heavy even God can’t lift it? Or Socrates’ “I know one thing, that I know nothing,” or Ghandi’s “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” Or our community favorite John Lennon, “It’s weird not to be weird.”
Jesus is full of paradox… You have more by having less, love your enemies, you truly live by dying.
Our faith is full of paradox, today being a prime example. Today we celebrate a paradox… We celebrate the presence and absence of Jesus.
Each time we celebrate Ascension Sunday I think about my first Ascension Sunday with you all and the art display we did throughout worship that morning. Erika Houser used a large canvas at the front of the church and over and over on the canvas she painted these words in black paint, "God is nowhere." Until the very end of the service, during our last hymn when she took white paint and over all the other writings she wrote, “God is now here.”
The paradox is that for us to fully grasp God, God had to become absence; that for the Christ to fully arrive, Jesus had to depart.
Which comes as a surprise, even though it should not… after all, it was John 16:7 where Jesus has made this very clear, “if I don’t go then the fullness will not come, but if I go I will send the fullness to you.”
Which does not help the disciples understand this entire Ascension thing any easier, but to be fair we have much more of the story than they do and we are still struggling to understand it.
Our story begins with one of my favorite lines, Acts 1... This book is written to Theophilus, which is not a person but a group of persons, God-lovers... The book opens up, "Dear God-lovers, In my first book I wrote the story of Jesus… ” I love this opening Luke gives us because it is just assumed that this story has continued… that the story of Jesus has grown and there is now a need for a new chapter. It’s the story that has continued unto this day… Dear First Austin, you know the story of Jesus and Christianity, what chapter are you going to add?
Luke continues and reminds us of Jesus’ many convincing proofs, he reminds us that faith is a lot of unknowns for us -- ours to live, not ours to control -- that knowing is doing, and then Jesus gives a farewell speech about going out and spreading love to the end of the world and Luke tells us that as he was saying this, and I quote, “he was lifted up on a cloud and taken out of their sight.”
Now, two observations here… First, for those of us who grew up with the original Nintendo, yes, this has a very Super Mario Brothers 2 feel to it… and second, note that it says "out of their sights," it does not say "to heaven." We have added that part, in fact we add it in the next verse when it says, “they stood there gazing toward heaven.”
Remember that for the 50 days following the Resurrection, Jesus is not constantly with them, the post Easter Jesus has a very real Dr. Seuss feel to it, Jesus is here, there, everywhere. So Jesus has been appearing and then disappearing to them over and over in the 50 days… But this time is different. This is the only time we have a cloud involved that we know of and this is the only time Jesus makes a clear goodbye speech...
And here is what I think has been happening… Jesus has been appearing over and over to them and Jesus is finding them waiting, in a closed room, fishing and so forth… what Jesus has not yet found is them doing the very work that is now theirs to do. Jesus has the realization that while the teacher is still with them like this they will never realize that the teacher is now inside them, this is their graduation, I have given you all that you need, it’s inside your heart and soul, you contain it now, so go…
For us to fully grasp God, God had to become absent, for the Christ to fully arrive, Jesus had to depart.
One of my favorite spiritual teachers Elizabeth Gilbert has been sharing a lot of her recent grief and what she is learning from grief. If you have not followed Elizabeth Gilbert since her days of Eat Pray Love, she is a voice worth rediscovering. Since then, she has written several books, most better than Eat Pray Love. A few years ago, she fell in love with Rayya, a close friend. Now, she fell in love with Rayya knowing that Rayya was dying of cancer, but knowing that her place was by Rayya’s side. The two married almost a year before Rayya died.
In a recent podcast she talks about one of their biggest fears, she says that as Rayya was dying, one of the conversations they had over and over was, "how will I find you after you are gone?" The two of them talked to a priest and a shaman, they worked through poetry and spirituality, even psychedelics with guides all trying to answer the question, how can we connect and find one another when you are done with this earthly body?
After Rayya died, Elizabeth said she has been amazed at how quickly and easily she found the answer to that question and it was nowhere that she was expecting… she talks about how she records voice memos on her phone talking to Rayya, telling her every part of her day and does this for hours right now, and when she needs her counsel, she says she just asks out loud and then she gets quiet and finds the answer. She says it’s nothing fancy, not even a voice in the head, she says she suddenly just knows the answer because Rayya is now such a part of her.
Her words about losing Rayya, “the only thing you don’t have to lose is the love and the love is the intimate connection that does not go anywhere.”
She says the connection they were looking for is the profound intimacy they had already created. She said that she found Rayya within her own soul, it’s what the poet John Donne called the “abler soul,” two souls that braid together and become more able, thus abler, than they were on their own.
I think that is what this day today is about, Jesus knew that as long as he was still present in the way Jesus had been present the disciples would not find their abler souls.
And I don’t think that is limited to the disciples, I think each of us has access to that abler soul as well, which may very well be exactly what being a Christ follower is… Our soul and Jesus’ should be braided together so that we are much more able than we are on our own.
Of course that requires intimacy.
It requires us not just knowing that Jesus calls us beloved, it requires us accepting that Jesus calls us beloved. Taking that in and allowing that to wash over us and create something new. To know that it’s not just a nice church saying, that Jesus really does love us, is proud of us, accepts us, calls us his own, takes pride in what we do, cheers us on, desires intimacy and connection with us, wants us to be his beloved.
It requires us knowing Jesus, reading the Gospels, allowing the kingdom of God to take root in each of us so that that becomes the lens through which we view the world and our desire for this place, knowing his voice, his story, his stories, his priority. It’s learning to see things through his eyes.
And it requires Jesus knowing us, which means it’s vulnerability in our prayers and meditations, truly bringing all of us to Jesus, not just the pretty places we so often bring. It’s opening up the spaces in our souls that scare us and letting Jesus lead us around these places. It’s learning to let Jesus see through our eyes.
It’s the work of falling in love… spending time together, learning about each other, loving one another, finding shared projects and passions, knowing what moves us both to tears and what makes us both belly laugh…. This is the work of intimacy, this is the work of becoming an abler soul.
Because you can’t be an abler soul without intimacy.
Ascension Sunday…. It seems an odd celebration, for us to fully grasp God, God had to become absent, for the Christ to fully arrive, Jesus had to depart.
Today speaks two truths for us… It’s a call to the presence of Jesus by learning intimacy with Jesus and it’s a call to the absence of Jesus, since he's not here, we now do the work of Jesus… a call to presence and absence, to both and, another paradox.
But again paradox is truth.
It’s the truth that is one of the many beautiful lessons in The Lion King. Once his father dies, Simba goes on a long journey trying to figure out who he is and one night, it all finally falls into place and when it does, he looks in the water and instead of seeing his own reflection, he sees the face of his father… In typical Disney fashion, a song begins to play and if you listen to the words that are softly sung as Simba goes racing back home, the words are “he lives in you.”
Ascension Sunday reminds us of this great truth, he lives in you and me, he lives in us, he lives in our abler souls finishing the great work that he began.
This is our calling.
Amen and Amen.
*artwork: Ascension by Eric Gill
*artwork: Ascension by Eric Gill
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