This sermon was preached for Ascension Sunday, May 21 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11 and Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36.
A couple of months ago, when my son had only just a few words, I was out walking around our cul-de-sac with him. It had just rained and he was stopping to stomp in the big puddles along the curbs of our road. Little blue rain-boots and pure joy. I pulled out my phone to capture the moment, intending to send a video to his grandparents, but then he looked up and said with all the authority of a toddler, “Phone, there,” and pointed to my pocket. Saying as best as he knew how, put your phone away, Mama. Be present here with me. Then he dragged me over to stomp around in the puddle, too. Sneakers be damned.
Today we mark the ascension of Christ into heaven, the moment when Jesus concluded his post-resurrection ministry on earth and rose up to be with God. After commissioning the disciples to be his witnesses in the world, Jesus leaves them standing around presumably with their mouths agape, watching his figure grow smaller and smaller in the sky above them. Then two men dressed in white appear and ask the disciples, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing looking up toward heaven?”
This question from the two men in white - who the text suggests are angels - is meant in part to redirect the disciples' attention, to underline Jesus' last words to them. Jesus has just given the disciples a job - a big one - to tell his story to all the world, testifying to the truth and accounting for the hope that is within them. Their focus from here should not be on the splendor of the heavens or even their grandiose revolutionary dreams for a restored kingdom of Israel the apostles just bugged Jesus about. They are to be focused on the humble here and now, the place and people need the Good News. Men of Galilee, snap out of it and jump in!
What has your attention? Who has your attention?
One of my least favorite phrases when it comes to explaining a child’s behavior is “she or he is just doing it for attention.” Especially when it is said dismissively in the context of a teenager’s mental health crisis. As if attention is not a very real human need. As if attention is not one of our primary ways of expressing and receiving love. Just for attention.
As the parent of an almost two year old, I’m at the beginning of the “Look at me, mom!” stage toddlers are so famous for. Though I think if we are really honest with ourselves that piece inside us that cries out, look at me, look at me, never really goes away - just evolves. You can see one striking example of this in Dr. John Gottman’s research on the psychology of marriage. He’s observed that one of the strongest indicators of a healthy, thriving marriage is the consistency and frequency of each partner’s responsiveness to each other’s tiny, everyday bids for attention - hey look at that bird, hey isn’t this fact interesting, hey how’s my hair. Attention is the currency of love.
And in our economy, it’s also just straight up currency. The rise of advertising over the past seventy years has rapidly shifted a vast segment of our economy to be wholly dependent on the buying and selling of our attention. Trillions of dollars worth of our attention. Billboards, website pop-ups, television, social media, video games and silly little phone games, all clamor over one another - look at this, look at us, look this way. The longer we stay still with our eyes glued to a screen, the more money there is to be made.
In my house, when either my husband or I are stuck on the couch mindlessly scrolling or watching something, one of us will ask the other, “is what you’re doing right now actually what you want to be doing?” Some of the time, the answer is really and truly yes. But a lot of the time, and this is so very very human, the answer is, actually, no. Our attention is not where we meant it, or wanted it, to be.
I imagine that angels wandering around our own hometowns today might say to us these days, “People of Greater Springfield, why are you sitting looking down at your phone?”
The Ascension isn’t the first time angels have appeared to redirect the disciples’ vision away from a place of passivity and observation - and into action God is actually calling them to. The two men in white popped on Easter morning to ask the women standing there staring at the empty tomb, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” Why are you looking for God in the wrong place - that’s the question that reminds them that there’s next steps ahead of them. It’s the question that gets them running to tell the Good News.
At the beginning and ending of each new phase of his ministry, Jesus tells the disciples where they’ll find him next. And it’s not by staring up at heaven. I’m leaving this world. and yet, this world is precisely where you will find me still - in the face of other human beings, especially the ones who need you most. Jesus tells them that he is going to be with the Father, and yet, the disciples will carry on his work on earth, accompanied and empowered by the Holy Spirit. They are to serve him still in the last, the lost, and the least.
“You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” Jesus tells the disciples.
Witnesses. But not the kind of passive witnesses that just stand there and watch. They are to be the sort of witnesses who jump in to testify to the truth they see in the world about them. Witnesses with a story to tell - because they are continually learning how they are part of the story, too.
Part of living a faithful life is paying attention to where, to what, to whom you pay attention. And paying attention to how. Is your life filled with the sort of looking that keeps you standing there unmoving? How much of your life right now is the active sort of witnessing that draws you in the story, too? I’m not just talking about running around being physically involved, here - I’m talking about all the ways God draws us in at every stage of life - emotional, spiritual, financial, mental, verbal, prayerful participation in God’s work in the world.
When God says, look at me, look at me, it’s not to ask us to stand there and gaze up reverently to heaven or to gather by an empty tomb. When God says, pay attention, it is often in the voice of a child, in the plight of a stranger, in the desperate actions of someone in pain.
Sometimes I worry that this is what people misunderstand about worship and church and prayer, when they are on the outside looking in. That worship appears to be a bunch of people standing around looking up toward heaven at the spot God just was. My prayer is that church functions a lot more like the angels here - at least like their question to the disciples. My hope is that it’s a time each week when we stop and ask ourselves, hey wait a second, is my attention focused where it needs to be? That it’s a time to recalibrate and attend to the words of Jesus with others who are trying to do the same. A time to learn to look for Jesus where he has told us he’ll be next: in the bread and in the wine, in our hearts, and in each other. It’s why our worship is a collaborative effort with plenty of roles to jump in and do - lector, altar guild, choir, crucifer, usher, chalice bearer. It’s why the announcement space is actually an important part of our worship - concrete invitations to be and do the Good News in our neighborhoods and community.
In the high priestly prayer from our Gospel today, Jesus prays to the Father about “the ones you gave to me.” He doesn’t say “the ones I went out and recruited.” Perhaps we, too, are bound to ones God has given us - people we did not get to hand-select. We do not choose who our parents are, nor our siblings, nor, most of the time, our children - and certainly not who they grow up to be. We don’t get a say in who our neighbors are, or the folks in our various communities who drive us batty, or the people who secretly frighten us, or the strangers we pass by every day but have never approached, nor do we choose, most of the time, our colleagues and clients and customers.
The people right in front of us. Our Galilee, Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem.
Maybe these, these ones God has given to us, are our own angels, in a way. Pointing out when we are standing there looking for God in all the wrong places. Pulling us out of our passivity and into relationship. Or in my case, out of my smartphone screen and into a rain puddle.
Amen.
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