The not-actually-missing woman (and Jesus)

Scripture: Acts 1:1-11

Preached 05/25/2014

“Missing woman unknowingly joins search party for herself.”  Maybe you remember this headline from a few summers ago?  Let me remind you of what happened. It was first reported that a woman had gone missing from an Icelandic tour bus, and a frantic search for her followed.  There were more than 50 people searching, both by air and by foot.  And it all started with a simple outfit change.  The woman broke off from her group, changed clothes, and then returned to the group in her new outfit.

Her tour group no longer recognized her in that new outfit, and the “missing” report went out.  They offered the description of an Asian woman who speaks English well and is in dark clothing.  That outfit was apparently pretty important to them!  The woman who everyone thought was missing joined the search party, and they searched well into the night and the early hours of the morning before anyone realized that the woman for whom they were searching was right there searching with them.  The search was called off, and the tour continued. 

It’s hard to hear this story without feeling at least a little bit incredulous.  Seriously- how could no one recognize that this woman was already with them?  All she did was change her clothes.  Yes, she left, but not for long and then she was working right alongside them the whole time. 

As much as I have to shake my head at this story, I do also have a job, being a pastor, meaning that I’m also supposed to be pastoral.  So, as part of that I’m supposed to be empathic, caring, and forgiving, right?  So, in applying those kinder attitudes to this story, it’s really not all that hard to see how this kind of thing could and did happen.

It’s very easy, and very human, to get focused on the wrong thing and ignore everything else.  It’s actually a skill we have evolved to have, to help us pay attention to the important stuff in our environment- for example hopefully what I’m saying right now- and ignore the less important stuff, like what our socks feel like on our feet.  There’s just too much going on and we can’t take it all in.  A lot of times, this is a helpful ability.  Other times, it hinders us.

This not-actually-missing woman scenario is one of those hindering times.  All those well-meaning searchers had their focus on the wrong thing.  The woman had been wearing dark clothes.  They were looking for and were going to find a woman in dark clothes.  Except instead of being helpful, that description of a woman in dark clothes ended up focusing them on completely the wrong thing.

Kind of like Jesus’ ascension into heaven, huh? To be fair, it’s a lot more important and flashy than a simple change of clothes-the change from the bodily Christ to the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, as we hear in our scripture reading, it’s also the kind of thing that can wrongly capture and hold our attention.  Those early apostles who were present for the ascension certainly fell into that trap. 

The risen Jesus had been talking to them about all kinds of important things: the coming baptism by the Holy Spirit, the continuation and expansion of his earthly mission in the absences of his bodily presence- really important stuff.  And those early follower, as they often did, and we often do, missed the point. They wanted to know dates and times, they why’s, how’s, and specifics.  Jesus was there to remind them that those specifics weren’t the important stuff.  But then, as he’s talking to them, the really fantastic thing happens.

So Jesus is taken up to heaven in a cloud.  I’ll say right now that I’m not going to touch on the question of what actually happened here, whether you choose to understand this story in a literal sense, or whether you have a different sense of the truth is expressed here is fine with me.  Getting stuck on that question puts us in the same stuck place the early followers ended up- staring up at the sky in wonder at something that we can’t quite understand.  Which is, of course, the wrong place for us to focus.  As we hear, the early sky-starers had some help in realizing their focus was off.

Let’s take just a moment to imagine just how strange that scene must have looked.  The two men in white come along this group of people staring up at the sky and realize their focus is on the wrong thing. “Men of Galilee,” they say, “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.”

And now, thousands of years later, many of us have made the same mistake as the sky-starers.  We’ve gotten ourselves focused on the wrong thing.  How many of us have asked this question at some point- “Why does God let X,Y, or Z happen?”  Right, why did God let slavery happen, why does God let homelessness happen, why does God let people get addicted to substances, why does God let all kinds of brokenness happen all around and within us?  And when we ask these questions we look skyward Jesus to come off a cloud, come back down here, and do something about what we see.  We feel or think that Jesus is somehow that missing person, even in fact he’s the not-really-missing woman already among us.

We’re focusing on the wrong thing, and we’re looking in the wrong place. Yes, in his ascension Jesus ends up looking different.   We’re not looking for a 30 something Middle Eastern man anymore.  We’re looking for his presence in the Holy Spirit, which means that he can be and is everywhere and anywhere.   

Jesus never actually goes missing. Even in slavery, addiction, pain, and brokenness, they’re there.  He’s in the voices advocating and the hands working for freedom, they’re the glimmer of hope, the counselor offering help, the words of comfort spoken, the hand held, the tears shared, and sometimes even in the simple act of survival, and living to face another day.  He’s in the helpers, as Mr. Rogers would say.  Jesus is right in front of us, and offers us a richness of faith, hope, and love, if only we realize he’s not missing, and is searching for and even being the good right along with us, beside us, and within us.

We just have to avoid getting distracted by the wrong stuff- the pain, the brokenness, sadness, and even the flashy claims and stories that we sometimes hear that get us to question our own faith and experience.  I am confident that we can do this- focus our attention on the right stuff. This is what Jesus asked his early followers to do, and this is the Holy task we inherit as those who claim to follow him now.  To see his continued presence, and to be witnesses to that living presence to the ends of the earth. 

I know, asking you to witness can sound like a very scary request.  But it’s not really as scary as it seems.  It’s just telling a story.  Telling Jesus’ story, and your story, and where the two of them have met up.  Maybe it’s something like a hymn that always stirs your soul, the time you went on a mission trip, or served food to the homeless, but I’m confident we all have these stories.  And I’m very seriously asking you to share them.  We’ll start here, in a safe place. 

I’m going to turn on some background music, and for about the next five minutes, I’d like to spend some time thinking of the stories you have of encountering the ascended Jesus in the Holy Spirit.  A time you have found Jesus right in front of you.

. . . .

Remember this.  Jesus is not missing.  Jesus is right here, right now, moving and working among us, and this community around us.  You have seen his face, and nothing like a little outfit change can throw you now.  So when you leave this place, gaze skyward every now and then, but remember if you want to find Jesus, all you have to do is look around right in front of you, and right beside you.  He’s already there.

(The benediction included the charge to go out and share this story with someone)

 

 

Letting Go

Scripture:

Acts 2:42-47

Preached 05/11/2014

 

How heavy is too heavy?  I don’t know about you, but I’ve been told that I’m not supposed to be lifting anything that’s too heavy right now.  I’m guessing I’m not alone in this restriction, and some of you have been told this too, at some point in your lives, or at this point.  But being told not to lift things that are too heavy isn’t really useful, is it?  So how heavy does something have to be to be too heavy?

Well, let’s start small.  How heavy do you think this mug of tea is?

Okay, so we have a range of answers here, and that’s fine.  However many ounces this glass of water weighs, is it heavy?  Is it too heavy?  Well, that depends, doesn’t it.  And it doesn’t really depend on the absolute weight of the mug of tea itself- sorry- that was kind of a trick question for you there.  Now, to be fair, there are several factors that matter, like my muscle tone and the amount of time I’m holding the mug. 

But what really matters, and what is really important for our purposes this morning, is how I hold the mug.  If I hold it loosely, down at my side in a relaxed manner, it feels pretty light and I don’t feel that much strain, and the glass is light.  But what if I hold this glass differently?  For example, if I hold it tightly?  If I clutch it like this with both hands and all my arm strength, well, then it feels pretty darn heavy, and my muscles get tired really quickly.  And if I try to keep holding it like that for a while, my arms will start to ache.  They’ll eventually start to lose feeling, and even get somewhat paralyzed. 

When I grip it tightly, it’s a really heavy mug of tea.  But, if I put this same glass down, it’s as light as can be.  It doesn’t weigh a thing, at least as far as I’m concerned.  So how heavy this water is doesn’t actually have much to do with the absolute weight.  The absolute weight of the water never changes.  But how I hold it makes all the difference in the world.

It’s not just the mug of tea, either.  This principle of heaviness relative to holding applies to a whole lot. To everything, really.  How we hold on to things makes all the difference in the world.  Remember the scripture reading from a few minutes ago?  I really hope so!  Those early Christians, that early community of people attempting to live out what Jesus taught them, they had a very distinctive way of holding on to things.

Do you remember what it was? That early Christian community we find in Acts didn’t hold things themselves.  They held them as a community.  Verses 44 and 45 of our passage this morning “⁴⁴All who believed were together and had all things in common; ⁴⁵they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” 

One person didn’t hold things.  Everyone shared in holding them.  It’s a different way of holding things!  Especially in the world and culture we live in today.  We are taught to hold on, by ourselves, very tightly to all the money and things we are able to amass.  Because, of course, they are ours and ours alone.  And of course, our culture lies to us when it comes to things and money, because we know that they are, in fact, not ours at all.  They come solely from God, and they belong solely to God.  They are gifts, they are loans, really, and once God has released them to us, it’s up to us to decide how to hold them. 

And we have two, very different options.  We can do what our culture tells us to do and hold, very tightly.  But, just like the mug, the more tightly we hold, the heavier our money and our possessions get. And just like that mug of tea, when those possessions start to get heavy because of our grasping, they hurt us.  They tire us, not necessarily our muscles, but our spirits.  They wear us down, they break us down, because our energy is devoted to them instead of the important stuff- like our families, our friends, and of course, most importantly our God as we know God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  We can even become immobilized and paralyzed from holding too tightly to money and possessions.

Hoarding, or grasping tightly to what we have been given by God isolates us.  If we grasp our time too tightly, maybe only being willing to show up at church or work on church projects and fellowship for this hour on Sunday, our grasping keeps certainly keeps us away from the joyful, shared community based life our scripture describes for us this morning.  Grasping too tightly to what God has given us also keeps us from the joy described in our scripture- we miss on the fullness of the glad and joyful hearts that only come from sharing, from releasing back to God what was never ours in the first place.

And, as one of my seminary professors was very fond of saying, this isn’t just about you.  Yes, releasing those gifts of God is incredibly good for us.  It frees us from those spiritual aches, numbness, and even paralysis.  It breaks isolation, it frees us for the fullness of gladness and joy.  But releasing what God has given us benefits the community too.  Remember back to that scripture reading.  The early Christian community didn’t just release what they had been given for fun.  As we heard “⁴⁵they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

We know there are still many, many people in need. In St. Louis city and county alone, it’s estimated that more than 1.3 million people live below the poverty line, meaning they are unable to afford the basics, like safe housing, reliable transportation, and adequate food.  Almost 1 in 4 children in Missouri are food insecure, meaning they don’t know where their next meal will come from, and often don’t have regular meals.  More than 10,000 people are homeless in Missouri.  And then there’s human trafficking, and mass incarceration, and people trapped in substance abuse and addiction, and teen parents, and the list goes on and on and on.  We are surrounded by those in need.   

And remember, this does apply our money too, and not just time and possessions.  For example, these dollar bills.  How heavy do it have to be to be too heavy? Well, it depends how I hold them.  Do I grasp this money tightly?  Do I hold on to it with all my might?  Or do I hold it loosely, do I share it and let it go as needed?  I’ll admit; I’ve been guilty of holding on too tightly to money in the past.  So, this morning, I’m letting go.  And I’m giving this to all of you. 

Take one, and do something with it.  Remember, just like any other money you might have, this is not yours.  So let it go, too.  Give it to a charity, give it back to this church in the offering plate, give it to a person in need.  Just give.  Let go of what’s not even yours in the first place.  And feel the joy, and liberation, and God-connectedness that comes from giving.  May this dollar be only the very beginning.  Amen.