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May 8, 2005
Looking Up
Acts 1:6-11
Christians should read with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. That was the urging of a prominent, 20th century theologian. I do that, more or less. I think part of what he was getting at is that Christian faith and the lives we live are inseparable. Faith is for the real world; and the "real world" is where faith is active.
I like to read The New York Times' Sunday edition. In the "Week in Review" section editors collect what they believe are some of the best, and most telling editorial cartoons from the week before. Last week they showed one by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was commenting on the present controversial debate over Social Security. He draws a caricature of President Bush holding a bowl labeled "Soc. Sec. Reform Chili." Next to him, is a caricature of an elephant-standing, no doubt for very nervous members of the President's own party-saying, "…Pssst, maybe they'd like it better without the finger…." The finger in question is shown floating in the chili with the label "Personal Accounts." It's not hard to get.
The gospel-writer Luke was writing the "good news." The story we read from the Acts of the Apostles-the continuation of his gospel—has such clear, vivid imagery. I wonder if, under different circumstances, Luke instead of giving us his prose version might have drawn us something like an editorial cartoon.
When we look at editorial cartoons we expect caricature and exaggeration; we don't take them "literally." We interpret its images, juxtapositions, balloons and captions to get the meaning. Taking scripture seriously is not the same as taking it literally. Indeed, taking scripture literally very often means not taking it seriously at all. What if we were to try to draw our own "editorial cartoon" based on Luke's written description of the situation at Jesus' ascension?
Just a note: whenever we say the Apostles' Creed together, we say we believe Christ "ascended into heaven." The Creed, an ancient summary of basic points of Christian belief, is a handy way for disciples to gather up the core elements of the faith. The part about the Lord ascending into heaven is probably among its least well understood phrases. Some of us resign ourselves to incomprehension, sighing "we just have to take it on faith." Come on: that's not faith; that's giving up. That's just wrong. Faith doesn't give up. Faith is always seeking understanding. We do take on faith the basic mystery of God's self-disclosure in Christ. But let's not confuse the majesty of "mystery" with something we just find obscure. Mystery and obscurity are not the same. Mystery illumines. Obscurity dims and dulls. I hope our "editorial cartoon" based on Luke's depiction of Christ's ascension will help clear up some of the obscurity—and help us treasure the mystery of faith.
Our editorial cartoon will have more than one panel. The first panel shows disciples talking with the risen Christ, who has appeared to them once again. One of the crowd is saying to the Lord, perhaps a bit impatiently, not demanding, but with eager expectation showing on the faces of all: "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" Even though we may not get it all, what's pretty plain is that the disciples are expecting the Lord to deliver big time. These are people who believe they have the attention of someone who can help them realize their hopes, work out their agenda. That's their prayer.
Reminds me of prayers I've given for things I'd like to have come true. I'm not the only one to think now-and-then that religion is about sanctifying my own agenda. That obscures the mystery of prayer—dulls it, dims it. Prayer is really about getting in touch with the Lord's agenda.
In our next panel, we see the Lord giving what must have been to the gathered disciples a disappointing reply: "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority." Imagine the expressions on the faces of the crowd. No words. Faces and body language have to say it all. Are they full of sadness of disappointment? Do they show the indignation of those who believe they deserve a straight answer to a perfectly sensible question? Are they incredulous: "Of course we don't know, that's why we asked you. We thought surely you'd tell us." Luke makes clear enough that Christ and the Father are on good terms; good enough that Christ knows what secrets may or may not be told. You get the feeling he knows what the Father has decided. But he's not telling. Luke lets us know this: if anyone comes around saying that the Lord let them in on the secret, we should know better. He didn't tell those closest to himself; why would he tell somebody else?
This scene provokes me to think of that spate of books, "the left-behind" series, and the TV program "Revelations." Both portray people who seem to know the "secret" of when the Lord will return, and knowing this will get them a special place in the scheme of things. These know-it-alls started cropping up with a vengeance—again—in the 1970s, but they've been around for quite a while—centuries. Back in the first half of the 20th century, Presbyterians declared the line of thinking reflected in the "left behind series" and "Revelations" a heresy. A heresy is an opinion that somewhere has a grain of truth in it, but whatever truth there may be has been so obscured by distortion and exaggeration that it's lost.
Back to our editorial cartoon: How should we draw the Lord who made this jarring response? Does he have the expression of a person whose attitude is: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I know and you don't"? Or is it an expression of someone who knows this line of questioning is a non-starter, a dead-end? We picture the Lord who knows that this crowd need to be thinking about other matters, matters they can know something about, matters that serve the holy purpose of the Father.
Our next panel shows it's the latter. The Lord continues: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Even if we don't understand all the references and place names, we get the point that the Lord thinks the people in the crowd have other, more important fish to fry. The point is: they'll receive power. Not power to fulfill their own potential or dreams, but power to serve the Lord, to have their dreams transformed, to be the Lord's witnesses.
How does the crowd of disciples take this news? Are they happy? Sad? Shocked? Bewildered? The Christian movement is all over the world. The corner or 5th and 3rd and environs is our part of it. Those people started in Jerusalem. Our starting point is here. And what we're supposed to be about—being Christ's witnesses—has implications for the whole earth.
Let's go on. To those disciples' utter amazement, in the next panel the Lord is taken out of their sight, even as they watch. After those parting words, the interview is clearly over. No follow-up questions. I think this must surely be a point where everyday readers of the Bible must shake their heads. But I wonder if it's exactly at this point that the idea of taking what Luke is doing here as a kind of editorial cartoon is most helpful. Ask yourself this: If you were going to try to portray how someone being overtaken by an utterly new reality, how would you do it? Would you think of the "transporters" on the TV show Star Trek that materialize people from one place to another? Or, in a different vein, but still in the realm of science fiction, would you imagine someone traveling at WARP speed, you know, at multiples of the speed of light, so that in an instant someone is here and then instantaneously there? You see the problem, but maybe you also get Luke's idea. The one who really lived among us, who really died, who was really raised has lifted up our human reality to heaven. In Christ, the human is become heavenly. And that's where we're headed; not there yet. Christ can get us there.
Christ, the one who had been their leader, who had been killed by crucifixion, who had risen from the dead, who appeared to various people, this one is involved in a reality we cannot even imagine, much less depict. So, Luke with his three-story universe of the heavens above, the earth in the middle, and the nether regions below does a pretty good job of conveying Christ's removal from an earthly reality into a heavenly reality. This very human person has borne our humanity to a level we could not imagine, much less achieve. How we convey this for our own understanding and for others who have even fewer clues than we is another matter.
We don't have a three-story universe any more. We still use up-and-down language. A rising tide lifts all boats. His star is rising. This movement is in the ascendancy. The ascension of Christ is about power. It's about the power that comes God's right hand man. It's about the power for disciples to be witnesses of the Lord in this time and this place.
Maybe going on to draw the next panel will help. Amazement continues. Their leader is gone, and in his place a couple of guys decked out in white are criticizing them and telling them to shape up: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."
What's Luke getting at? Is it that all those appearances of Christ following his resurrection came to an end? Is he saying that anybody who goes around saying they've seen the Lord here or there are just full of it. But he's saying more than that. He's also letting us know that the one who lived among us is the one who will come to us. That's really important. I wonder if he means we ought not think that somehow the Lord will come in some disguise, or that someone else who doesn't resemble the Lord in the least is the one we ought to pay attention to.
There's just one mediator between God and human beings: Christ. Since we don't have any physical description of the Lord, don't you think what we'll recognize of the Lord coming into our midst are his teachings and deeds? So we need to pay attention to what we know of his teachings and deeds so we'll be able to tell when it's the Lord showing up and when it's not. That's just one of the reasons I think we ought to study our Bibles. You can, of course, rely upon a qualified expert like myself to tell you what to believe, and simply trust that I've got it right. Or you can read, and pray and struggle along with me as we read with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
Luke's last panel shows an obedient community: disciples and women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, at prayer in Jerusalem, waiting on the Lord. We're still working on one panel. It's the one with us and our time in it. So how shall we picture ourselves?
In our editorial cartoon, we moved from people who were trying to work their own agenda to people freed to serve the holy agenda of the Lord. I've got my agenda; you've got yours. Like the country-western song about the couple who lived in a two-story house. He had his story; she had hers. There's another story. That's the one told when people bear witness to the one who lived, died, was raised and ascended. That's a whole other agenda. Sharing that holy agenda can come from reading with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
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