Ready to Receive the Spirit

Sermon for Seventh Sunday of Easter: Ascension Sunday 

May 21, 2023

 Acts 1:1-11

Psalm 47

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Come, Heavenly Comforter, and Spirit of truth, blowing everywhere and filling all things. Treasury of blessings and giver of life: come and abide in us. Amen. 

I wanted to tell you a story. It’s a story from my own life. A story about vulnerability.  Growing up, after my parents separated, and my dad moved away, the closest person in my life to a father figure was my Uncle Ed, my mom’s only sibling. Throughout my childhood, Uncle Ed was a constant presence in my life. He was there for all of the major milestones. Always around to help with school projects and birthday parties, and to teach me how to properly build camp fires on camping trips, and how to whittle, and how to swim in the ocean and not get caught in the rip current. Uncle Ed had no children of his own, and he loved me like a son. 

Years later, when I finally decided to tell my family that I was gay, it was Uncle Ed who took the news the hardest. He was devastated. He couldn’t imagine how I could gay. And he went through all of the stages of grief—shock, denial, anger and frustration. For a while, he even blamed himself. He wondered if maybe, he should have thrown the football more with me, when all I really wanted to do as a kid was play priest dress up and make flower arrangements and watch The Golden Girls and pretend that I was best friends with Princess Diana. 

In any case, when I told him about myself, he made it clear that he did not approve. And when Michael (the person I’m now married to) came into the picture, he made it clear that he didn’t approve of him either. It was a painful time, for all of us. We hoped he would change, yet, we also we knew that we couldn’t force him to accept us. So, after a while, we assumed that this is the way things would always be. 

Until something unexpected happened. I got a call one day saying that my mom was in the hospital and that she was sick—really sick. Michael and I rushed home to Virginia to be with her in the ICU. And when we arrived, she was unconscious and on a respirator. Things did not look good. The doctors told us candidly that they didn’t know if she would live or die. For days, it was touch and go. The other person with us there in the ICU my Uncle Ed. And for a week, it was just the three of us, keeping vigil at Mom’s bedside, night and day. Advocating for her. Interfacing with doctors and nurses. Coordinating her care. And praying for her. Praying that she would make it. 

It was a profoundly vulnerable time, a time when we had no idea what was going to happen, and when we had very little control over the outcome. But in the midst of our vulnerability, something quite miraculous happened. Uncle Ed witnessed the love and care that Michael showed for my mom, his sister, as well as for me, his nephew. He saw with his own eyes how Michael and I supported each other, and him, under very difficult circumstances. And our love for one another went from being an abstract concept in his mind, to something concrete and genuine.  And suddenly, in that hospital room in the ICU, his heart began to soften. And frankly, so did ours. 

Although he had been hostile to us for years, and we had assumed he would never change, he did. And at the same time as my mom started to recover, Uncle Ed came to embrace Michael and me. Looking back on that time, all I can say is that the Holy Spirit must have been present with us.  Moving among us in the midst of our vulnerability. Moving us to open our hearts to each other. Moving us back into relationship. 

Now I share that story because I think the story we hear this morning as we remember Jesus’ Ascension, is also a story about vulnerability. And the ways the Holy Spirit can work within human vulnerability. This time, it’s Jesus’ own disciples who find themselves in a vulnerable place. Jesus, their friend and their teacher, is leaving them—for good. As we’ve been remembering during these past 40 days of Easter, even after his death and resurrection, Jesus wasn’t really gone yet. For 40 days, he stuck around, appearing to the disciples and others. On Easter morning, he appeared to Mary Magdalene and others at the empty tomb. The same day, he appeared to two disciples who were walking on the road to Emmaus. And then he appeared to the disciples in the upper room, and later in Galilee, even eating a meal with them on the beach. Even though he had been separated from them by death, and risen again, he still managed to be present to them. But then the time came for him to leave. To be permanently separated from them. To depart for real. This is what we remember today, on Ascension, the day Jesus leaves for the last time, and is taken up into heaven in the sight of his disciples. 

And just like that, he is gone. 

I sometimes wonder what must have really been going through the disciples’ minds as he disappeared? Here they had left their families and livelihoods to follow him. For years, they’d spent every waking moment with him. Watching him perform miracles, and feeding hungry people, and forgiving people, and bringing dead people back to life, and preaching to good news of God’s kingdom. They’d placed their hope in him. And then, all of a sudden, he is gone. And their future seems to have disappeared with him. I mean, the hymns we sing today, and even our scripture readings, assure us that they were rejoicing as he departed—that there were lots of alleluias.  But I have a feeling that that’s only part of the story.  

One of my favorite images of the Ascension, by the painter John Singleton Copley, that hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, offers a fuller, more human picture. It’s on the front of your bulletin this morning, so I invite you to take a look. As you can see, most of the disciples have their hands in the air, and seem caught up in the drama and the light show of Jesus rising in the air. But one of the disciples is letting his true feelings show. He is collapsing on his knees, and he is holding his face in is hands, and he is weeping. Of course he is! If the rest of the disciples in the painting could be as honest for a moment, their hearts too must have been filled with grief! Not to mention uncertainty, anxiety and probably fear as they thought about what their lives would be like without Jesus. How would they carry on without him? What an intensely vulnerable time this must have been for them. 

And yet, witnessing the Ascension story in light of my own experiences of vulnerability, and how God has been present to me in the midst of them, I think that it was actually the disciples’ vulnerability that was preparing them for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I think it was their vulnerability that was also opening their hearts to the Spirit. That was helping them to let go of control, and let down their defenses, and, dare I say… to trust. I think it was their vulnerability that allowed them to receive the Spirit in ways they would not have been able to if Jesus had stayed around. 

And so it is, I think, with us. So often—at least from my experience— it is the times when we are most vulnerable that we, like Jesus’ disciples, are most open to God. So often, it’s the moments when we’re feeling uncertain, anxious, exhausted and afraid that are the most fertile ground for the Spirit to work in us; that give her a foothold into the door our lives. So often, it’s only when we have no control over the outcome, when it feels like we’re going to lose what we love most, when our hearts are full of grief, that we are ready to receive her. So often, it’s when there is nowhere else to turn, and nothing else for us to hang on to—when we are totally defenseless—that we can finally place our trust in her. 

Now, I’m not saying we should go in search of experiences of vulnerability or suffering. The truth is, we all already have experiences of vulnerability in our lives. It’s part of living in this world. Part of being human. We can’t escape being vulnerable. Maybe for some of us it’s because we’re aging, and wondering what’s going to happen to us. Maybe for others, it’s a health crisis or diagnosis we’re facing. Maybe for others, it’s because of something that’s going on for us in school right now. Or maybe it’s because of the grief we’re experiencing after the loss of a loved one—a spouse, a child, a parent or grandparent, a friend. The truth is, we are all vulnerable in different ways. 

Perhaps the invitation for us today, and in these coming days as we wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost next Sunday, is to trust that the Spirit is going to show up to these places in our lives—that indeed, that Spirit is already there. Working in us. Advocating for us. Leading us to the truth. Abiding with us and in us. Softening our hearts. Giving us her power and comfort when we need them most. 

Come, Heavenly Comforter, and Spirit of truth, blowing everywhere and filling all things. Treasury of blessings and giver of life: come and abide in us. Amen. 

—The Reverend Edmund I. Harris. 

*image is The Ascension, by John Singleton Copley, 1775