I'll elaborate, because it's one of those things that we celebrate, that we have a festival about in the church, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense on the surface, given that it's a day in which our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into the clouds and left us all alone on earth.
I suppose something analogous to that would be to celebrate the day that your two loving parents broke up, and your father moved away to Zaire and only sent you money in an envelope once a year on your birthday. This is not a happy day. Jesus ascends into the clouds, and vanishes from their sight. The man who was God in the flesh, he who had been working on their behalf, the man who had been healing the sick and raising the dead, the man who had been curing diseases, performing miracles, the man who had been doing all these amazing and wondrous things, he ascended into the sky and was gone.
And then, as it tells us in the book of Luke, "They worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy."
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you know. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the disciples to be filled with great joy while they think about Jesus, the lamb of God, being taken from their eyes.
Now, this is a problem until you consider what's happening here on a bigger scale. Consider this. Consider the ascension less like a loving parent moving out from you, and more like a loving parent helping you move out. Now, if you're reading this, there's a good chance that you moved out at some point, and got a place of your own. There's a good chance that you have a spot to call your own, your own apartment, condo or house where you live quite contentedly. If that is the case, who cooks for you? Who cleans for you, who irons your shirts, who does your laundry? If I were to guess, and I am guessing, there's a great chance that you do that yourself. Your mother doesn't still come in twice a week to do your laundry for you, I'll wager.
But cast your mind back to a time when your mother did do everything for you, and I'm sure there was one. Cast your mind back to a time when your mother tied your shoes, cleaned for you, cooked for you, tucked you in, kissed you goodnight, and did all those other things that had to be done. And if your mother did that forever, what would happen to you? Well, you've seen it a thousand times, parents who did everything for their kids for far too long, parents who stepped in and insisted on looking after their children to such a degree that their children became helpless eventually.
Now, there's a certain degree of tension that comes along with this. When you first start to learn to cook, you get an awful lot of stuff wrong. You make a few key mistakes that a veteran chef wouldn't. You substitute baking powder for baking soda, you get salt and sugar mixed up, since they look so similar. You forget to turn the slow cooker on before leaving for the day. You know, all this stuff that leads to ruined dinners and wasted food that becomes inedible. There is a learning curve that will never be overcome if someone else keeps on doing it all for you. One of the great things that my mother gave to me was the task to cook for the family, to learn to work with food and ingredients, to get a grip on what it means to assemble meals from scratch. I'm still rubbish at baking, but cooking I can do, but that never would have happened if my mother had assembled my meals for me all the time. I would, by now, still be incapable of working with food, as many of us are (I'm still bad at laundry, so don't think that I'm talking myself up too much).
Here's the point - if someone else makes the meals all the time, then they always turn out fine, but I never improve, even a little bit. If I am to learn how to make the food, then it won't always be great, but both the food and I will improve over time. This only ever happens if I am taught, and if I'm allowed to learn.
The various things that Jesus asks us to do in the scriptures, there are some unexpected benefits to them that we might not see until we actually go about accomplishing them. In all the things that Jesus sets out for us to do, there are two things that happen with each and every one. First of all, if we go about and do the thing that Jesus asks us to do, then the thing gets done. This is a good thing. It doesn't get done quite as well as it would if Jesus himself were to do it, but that's how it is with letting someone imperfect tackle a job. Your grandmother could bake circles around you, but you'll never learn her recipes if you just let her do the job for you forever. But the second thing that happens is the important bit that we don't see until we accomlish the task at hand. We become changed by it too.
We are God's workmanship, says the scriptures, created by him to do good works which he has prepared in advance for us to do. Good news indeed. Good news indeed for us, we people who view good works, charity, acts of love for those near as well as far, as just something we do and accomplish for other people. It's not just for other people. It's for us, too. By doing the things that Christ has set out for us to do, by loving each other by caring for each other by doing works of charity and courage, two people benefit - the subject as well as the object.
This is partially why the Lord our God has chosen to work on earth in this capacity. This is part of what church, a community of faith offers, which is to aid us to see the grit and challenge that comes along with being an active participant in the work of God in the world. For you see around you the people who don't know how to do anything, how to manage a household, how to cook or clean, and if someone else does it for them forever, then they care less about that work, and become lazy and indolent. They become spoiled man-children who just wait around for someone to do this sort of work for them.
Jesus doesn't have that in mind for us. We're not supposed to have that spirit of timidity. 2 Timothy tells us that God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power, love and self-control. We are supposed to get on with the kingdom work, even though Christ our Lord could accomplish it just fine without us, but then who would we be?
Something happens when you get invested in things. Something happens when you get involved, invested, when you take ownership, is that stuff gets done, and that you yourself are changed in the process. This is something that is incredibily simple, yet maddeningly elusive, for some reason. It is so straightforward to say that we should be able to see this, but in reality, the connexion between them is often lost on us.
And this, this is why we need Christ. We need Christ's counsel for when we'd rather not do what must be done, when we'd rather step to one side and shirk our responsibilities. It's a simple matter of us understanding that the work that must be done is for our benefit as well as for the benefit of those we do the work for. And a large part of what happens in the church is understanding the words that Paul gives to us, where he says 'be imitators of me, as I am an imitator of Christ.' Paul, the apostle called by Jesus Christ after his ascension. Paul, called into active service by Jesus after he had gone away, and called into really serious evangelism work that took all the energy he had. And what happened ? Well, Galatians tells us that because of the work Paul was doing, and because of who he was, they glorified God because of him. Could this have worked otherwise? Possibly. But Jesus was able to use the imperfect tool that was Paul to great effect, he was able to work with this limitation, to turn a weakness into a strength to get his work done. Many many times in the Bible, people called by God have had excuses: I stutter, I'm too young, I'm too old, I'm not one much for talking, I am afraid, and so on and so on, and God cuts through them all, saying only this much.
I haven't chosen to work through other means. I've chosen to work through you. And your weakness will be made strength in me. Because your sins are forgiven, you will be able to forgive others. Because you have been loved, you can love. Freely you have received, now freely give. And when you do, you will change other, and you yourself will likewise be changed. That doesn't happen if I do everything for you always. That happens when you become a spiritual adult, when you exchange milk for meat, when you take ownership of your faith, your church, the rich legacy that has been passed down to you, and realize that if there is a future, part of it is yours. And you must be invested in it, or it will lapse and wane. Muscles only work as long as they are used. Languages can be forgotten unless they are spoken by those who have learned them. Cars won't start up if they are just left sitting forever. Exchange milk for meat, grow strong in your faith, and remember that as Christ's workmanship, you have been created to do these good works.
No comments:
Post a Comment