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"Is This the Time?"

5/15/2018

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​ Acts 1:6-14

 
Do you like heights?  Not just a visit to the top of the Empire State building at 1,250 feet. But do you seek to be a member of the Seven Summits Club, who love to conquer some of the highest peaks of the world? Think of it: There’s a company called Everest Flash Expedition, that claims that what once took two months to scale the 29,020 feet mountain, now with hypoxic tents, more sophisticated equipment and better delivered oxygen, they can get you up and back to earth in four weeks –half the time --for a mere 95,000 dollars.

If that’s a bit too much of a hit on your wallet, why not try Kingda Ka at Six Flags.  At 456 feet, it’s the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. It may leave you nauseous and dizzy, but the torture will be over in minutes instead of weeks.


        There seems to be an inner pull in the human heart to ascend the heights, to soar with the birds, to conquer space – to enter the abode of God. Even though we know in our minds that God is here, there, everywhere -- yet heaven, the home of God, is often viewed in popular understanding as in the sky, expanding out infinitely through the cosmos. “Heaven is my throne,” God declares through the prophet (Isaiah 66:1).  “Tear open the skies and come down” Isaiah begs the Holy One (64:1).  Paul reminds us: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col 3:1-2). 


While we yearn for the heights, the great feat of Jesus was coming down to earth, emptying himself, becoming human, one of us—as the Lord reminds us: “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). Now on Ascension Day, observed last Thursday, the holy act is reversed -- Jesus was taken up to heaven. Jesus has come full circle. He brought us Good News. He conquered sin. He defeated the Devil. He destroyed death. Now Jesus is welcomed home and is seated at God’s right hand, the place of highest honor.


Ascension Day doesn’t get a lot of press. Tucked in between Easter and Pentecost, it’s kind of like the Preakness to the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes.   One reason the Ascension gets the short shrift is because it represents another letting go, an in between time, saying goodbye but not knowing what’s next. We know from Scripture that Jesus told the disciples and explained over again, that he would have to leave them.  And Jesus tried to prepare them. He said abide in my love. He said love one another as I have loved you.  He said, don’t be troubled.  He said God would send them the Helper, the Spirit of Truth. Jesus opened their mind to the scriptures.  He assured them all prophecies had been fulfilled.  So, Ascension Day is when the rubber meets the road. Jesus physically lets go, and now the disciples must now walk in faith.


        The disciples are, not surprisingly, confused.   They saw Jesus alive after he was crucified, but they didn’t know what to make of it.  What did it all mean now?   So, after all Jesus taught them, what was the very last question they ask Jesus before he leaves earth?  They ask, “Lord is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?  They retreat to the past.  Back to square one.   “Is this the time that you will you now restore the kingdom to Israel?"  Now is the time? Is this what it’s all led up to? After all they have been through with Jesus all those years, they reverted to earthly solutions to spiritual problems.  They relapsed to thinking like an ordinary, pious Jew – as if they never heard the gospel. Will you restore the kingdom of Israel now Jesus? Before you go, Jesus, can you kick out the Romans?  Can’t you appoint a new earthly King of Israel, restore the kingdom – which hasn’t existed for centuries? They began to gaze into the glories of the past, when Israel would have a kingdom on earth like the Kingdom of David.   
This is what happens when we are about the face the unknown future.  When the stakes are high. When we have to let go to move on. We withdraw. We find comfort in the certainty of the past. We reminiscence about the triumph of the past when church was full, kids didn’t have soccer or swimming on Sunday, the stores were closed.  There were plenty of people to staff the committees, fill the choirs, run the programs, there was not an empty pew to be had.   We yearn for those days. We want to reach those heights again.


So, Ascension Day reminds us that as we are to prepare to move to the next stage of development we often revert to old, safe ways. It’s the two steps forward one steps back phenomenon.   Like the people of Israel who couldn’t let go of the past as they trudged through the wilderness, we are tempted to see our future through the lens of the past. Jesus says, no.  See the future through the lens of the Ascension. To making peace with the past, letting go, and reaching for the new spiritual heights Jesus has in store for us.  Yes, it is now time.


An arrow can only be shot forward by pulling it back. So, if life is dragging us down with worries, it means we’re doing to be launched into something great – so keep focus and keep aiming.   So, it is natural to be pulled back, like the disciples, to the past. It means we are being prepared to be launched. As long as we let go, and let God carry us forward.


As the disciples fixed their eyes upward, watching Jesus ascend, angels-like-men had to jar them out of their dreams and ask them “why do you stand looking up to heaven?”  Their focus needed to be on earth. They needed to turn and look around at each other. Thus, began the hard work to form real, Christ-like community. A community based on what Jesus taught. Luke, in his Gospel account of the Ascension, describes what happened next saying, “And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”  


        So, Jesus tells them that something grander, more important, something more earth-shaking and astounding is about to happen: God's Spirit is about to come down on them to empower them to become his witnesses. They had to prepare. Not by pining for the past that is gone. But through worship. Experiencing great joy. Blessing God. Through acts of worship. Experiencing great joy. And Blessing God. That is what launches the arrow forward. The Ascension was key stepping stone for them to understand that Jesus was not an earthly king – but King of the Cosmos – and their marching orders was not a conquest of land, or conquering their foreign rulers, but of the triumph of the human heart for the love and reconciliation offered by God.
The Ascension prepares us for new beginnings, the next step, deeper insights and understandings, miracles.  For Pentecost, the coming of the Helper, the Spirit of Truth.  We are the Arrow God shoots into history, to bring forward the message of Jesus Christ to the depths and heights the encompass us.


It is time.  God releases us from the captivity of the past.  The future stands before us. In the heart of our worship, as our soul becomes filled with great joy, as we continually bless our God, we will bring heaven to earth, we will spread the kingdom of God here, in our midst, we will discover heights yet unscaled.  It is time – to take that step into the future as we worship and bless God with great Joy, awaiting the promised great outpouring of the Spirit upon us all. Amen

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"Fruit that Endures"

5/1/2018

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John 15:1-8; Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21

 
April is National Gardening Month.  How many people have the green thumb? How many can’t wait to sink your hands into the soil preparing it for seeds and fledgling plants? My hat goes off to you.  I have the kiss-of-death thumb.  I have one plant, one plant, that has survived my 30 years attempt at gardening. Plants shrivel and droop under my watch. They see me coming and they cast themselves on the nearest pruning shears.  It’s gardening season and I have learned to appreciate the blooming and growing, with awe and wonder, from a respectable distance.

So, it’s National Gardening month. We appreciate those who tend well the amazing growth of flowers, fruit and vegetables, the greenery of our world. Today our scriptures also proclaim a gardening day, a day to think about the season of spiritual gardening in our gospel lesson.

        Jesus, according to John, had just finished his last Passover meal before his death. He drank the fruit of the vine for the last time (Matt. 26:29).  As Jesus walked to the Garden of Gethsemane to spend his final hours, in prayer, waiting for his arrest, no doubt he had a lot on his mind. No doubt vineyards crossed his mind, as he passed by them. The vineyard image is embedded deeply in scripture. Vineyards were deeply in the psyche of the Jewish people Vineyards were everywhere in Palestine. They were a part of everyday life.   I imagine, as Jesus made his way to the garden to pray and wait for his arrest, he recalled vineyard verses.  
  
        Perhaps in this somber time Jesus recalled the words of the morning prayers from Psalm 80: “You brought a vine out of Egypt …you cleared the ground, for it took deep root and filled the land.” (Ps 80:8-9).  No doubt, Jesus thought of the promises of God echoed in Micah, which described the fulfilled life, “Everyone will sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one will make them be afraid.” The image of vineyards filled Jesus’ mind as he walks to Gethsemane, because God called the People of Israel his grapevine. Surely Jesus recalled the motif of the grapevines on Jewish coins, the decorations of grapevines on the main doors of synagogues and even etched in gold in the across the grand entrance of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Grapevines. Grapevines. They were everywhere. They were symbolic of God’s relationship with his people. Now Jesus took this symbol as his own.


Jesus dwelt on the symbol of the grapevine because he was about to face the most brutal pruning, a pruning to the depth of his soul, on this spiritual Gardening Day.  Jesus looks at his disciples, disciples that will deny him, betray him, leave him. At that moment, Jesus prepares the soil for them. Jesus prepares them to be pruned to the quick as well. However, he needs for them to know in this dark hour when all seems lost, the power of the True Vine will endure.  For in the True Vine he will abide with them and they will abide with him. They will remain with him, they will remain in him, he says over and over. More than anywhere else in the gospels.  Jesus is the “True Vine” that wraps around the cross and yet lives. He is the living vine that not even death can cut down.   This is the power of the vine of Jesus, the vine of living, abiding love.  It rebounds the pruning of death with resurrection power, producing fruit 100-fold. 

Jesus declares that today is National Gardening Day in the church. On this gardening day we encounter Jesus as the True Vine. We celebrate ourselves as branches of this true vine.  We are not joined to Jesus in some mechanical way that if we remove a plank, remove a cog, all movement ceases. No. We are connected to Jesus, he declares, in a living, organic way.  If we are cut off from the vine, we spiritually die. If we abide, simply remain, simply be, simply dwell with Jesus, it means that the fruit of Jesus -- the goodness and loving-kindness of his life -- courses through us and we bear this very same fruit. This process of abiding, enduring, dwelling in Jesus producing fruit just as naturally as we when we watch those daffodils that are busy blooming, the forsythia standing guard along yards and parkways, the blue muscari that edges the lawns that my dogs insist on stopping to take a sniff. They bloom for they abide solidly in the soil, the branches, the stems.  Jesus is the True Vine, we are the branches.  Like the Lilies, we neither toil or spin, but if we submit to the divine-life force coursing through or branches we will bear fruit.  Fruit that will endure. Spiritual Fruit that the world is in need us: fruit of the Spirit the Bible names as love, faith, goodness, peace, joy, gentleness and self-control. (Gal5:22-23)

On this National Spiritual Gardening Day, I so appreciate at how the vine operates.   Vines climb, they creep, they crawl. They persistently spread out in a horizontal fashion, even a vertical fashion, for example along trellises. The true vine spreading throughout our families, our churches our communities and all of earth. The True Vine, grafted on the cross, has spread out vertically and horizontally throughout the ages, in all directions, down through centuries until here it abides, right here, in this sanctuary with branches anchored in each of our hearts.   That’s abiding power of the True Vine, the gift given to the disciple branches, we have the power to remain, to dwell, to be, to rest, to continue, to endure patiently just like our sister and brother vines, flowers, trees and shrubs in nature.

Gardeners remind us, if I understand them correctly, that vines send out shoots that attach to objects. Tendrils emerge that coil tightly around objects in its environment. Twining stems claim assist branches to anchor us to posts or trellises.   The True Vine sends branches in our hearts, tendrils that grasp our thoughts, twining stems that climb to help us develop the character from which good fruit emerges. Branches go where the Vines send them.  Branches go where they are needed.  This is the abiding power of the vine, the abiding power the vine gives to us.  We, disciples-branches of the Lord, send out those stems to embrace our family and friends. Just like in Acts, we too send out stems to strangers like the stranger, the Ethiopian Eunuch, seeking to understand the word of God. We are disciple-branches like Philip, obeying the Spirit to help someone, even if we don’t understand.  We, disciple-branches, abiding in Christ, send out tendrils to take hold tightly of each other in love, to take hold and bloom love amidst the hurt in our community.

Today, on this National Spiritual Gardening day, we see the power of the branches to reach out, intertwine, abide, and bring life to those around us. As we tend this spiritual garden, we ask, are we bearing fruit, the fruit that endures? Have the tendrils of love and joy been entwining in the circumstances of our life?  Have the twining stems of peace and forbearance coiled tightly through all tasks of our day?  Have our branches sending forth buds of kindness and goodness, embracing all in our path? Is faithfulness growing?  The Fruits that endure are not perennials or annuals – they are everlasting.


So, on this National Spiritual Gardening Day, we pray, divine gardener, prune away doubt. Divine Gardener prune away fear. Divine Gardener, prune away our stubbornness, our selfishness, our restlessness that keeps us from abiding in you, resting in you, grounded in you.  Divine Gardener, we say, prepare the soil of our hearts, remove branches dead from apathy and sin, and unrighteousness. Divine gardener, graft unto us the True Vine, with healthy branches that bloom in your timing. Disciple-branches, abiding in our Savior Jesus Christ, we will bloom love.  We will bloom righteousness.  We will bloom joy.  We will bloom justice and peace.  We will bloom mercy and kindness. We will be the garden of the Living Vine, the garden that will cover our communities, advance into the world with abundant fruit that endures. 
Amen.

 
 


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    Moirajo is a minister, social worker, wife, mother, writer and animal lover. That's just for starters. Join the story, there's so much we can share together! 

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