This joke is of course is poking fun at our, if not outright division in the Episcopal Church, our resistance to any one, unifying identity. Perhaps it is to our credit that Episcopalians cover such a broad spectrum of social and political persuasions. I haven’t verified this with a political analyst, but it seems to me that we can’t be counted on as a group to vote for one party over the other, or to take a single stance on hot button social issues. We are certainly seeing this right now with the role of gay people in the church. Thirty years ago it was about the ordination of women. Before that, it was over the use of Biblical Criticism. Before that it was Evangelical vs. Anglo-Catholic styles of worship. Before that, Puritans were battling with Conformists over the relationship of Church and State. No doubt I’ve missed some major and minor controversies that at one point or other in the history of our Anglican Tradition has seemed to be tearing us apart. My point is simply how often it has seemed that we are more divided than united.

And yet, Jesus’ last prayer in the moments before being handed over to the authorities for crucifixion is “Holy Father, protect them…so that they may be one, as we are one” (17:11). This prayer is the conclusion to what are called “the Farewell Discourses” in the Gospel according to John. Beginning with washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus goes on for several chapters summarizing and distilling the message he’s been teaching, and basically putting his presence on earth into perspective with God and those who follow him. He gives them the new commandment, that they love one another as he has loved them, and he tells them that this is how they will be known: by their love for one another (13:34-35). He tells them not to let their hearts be troubled (14:1), that there are many rooms in his Father’s house and he is going to prepare a way for them (14:3). He tells them “Abide in me as I abide in you….As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love”(15:4&9) And he tells them, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13).

The prayer “Let them be one, as we are one,” is the culmination of all of Jesus’ teaching and preparation of his disciples for the future that awaits them, and us. This is really it—his final prayer that seals all of his work, all of his healing and teaching and prayer, all of the miracles of his time walking the earth with us. And what are we to make of it?

A couple of years ago I taught an adult Sunday School class here at Chapel of Our Saviour on what it means when we say in the Apostles’ Creed that we believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I said at the time and still feel that this is the most difficult part of the creed for me. I think the reason I find it difficult lies in my expectation of what constitutes a miracle. I expect God made flesh in the person Jesus born of the Virgin Mary to be a miracle, and therefore beyond my ability to understand or grasp rationally exactly how it came to be. I accept that I must take that on faith. So too the resurrection of Jesus as well as the future resurrection of the rest of us; I freely admit I have absolutely no idea how that might come to be or what it will look like when it does, nor do expect I should know or possibly could know what a miracle of that magnitude would look like. But that’s alright, because what I do know is that God’s imagination is so much bigger than my own, and God can imagine the resurrection, and the virgin birth, and countless other miracles that are by nature unimagined and unexpected by me. I am willing to take the leap of faith that will bring me to a place where I can imagine and even expect them, but I cannot expect to come up with a rational understanding of them from my own thoroughly human intellect. So, I take them on faith.

But I feel a little differently about what it means to be One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, because I don’t feel like I should have to take an imaginative leap to arrive at such a place. I can imagine that Church—at least I think I can—and in a very real way I do expect it right here and right now. It certainly would be nice to trade out our controversies over sexuality and gender issues, Biblical interpretation, worship styles, etc., etc, for One Whole and Holy Church. In all honesty, however, I am beginning to doubt that recognizing such a church, should I find myself in it, is as straightforward as it seems.

But I will tell you one thing I can imagine with absolute clarity in the here and now. It’s from our passage in Acts for today. In fact, this story of the Ascension is one of the most visually vivid of all Bible stories for me. Not the Ascension exactly—that requires the miraculous imaginative leap, which I willingly take but must remain a little hazy on the details. But what I’m absolutely clear about is what happens after the Ascension. I mean of course the reaction of those who witness it.

Here is the whole story: Jesus is talking to his disciples, teaching them and telling them what they can expect in the future, just as he has been doing throughout the New Testament up to this point. And then, as his disciples look on, Jesus is lifted up and a cloud takes him out of their sight. He is there one minute talking, and then I imagine a cloud sort of descending from Heaven and Jesus is taken up into its midst and ascends to God the Father. That’s the part that requires a bit of imaginative work on my part to visualize, but I can see it. The next part, however, requires no leap for me to imagine—it is crystal clear in my mind’s eye. As Jesus is being taken up into heaven, the apostles are staring up after him, and although the text doesn’t say it, I know their mouths are gaping open. Who wouldn’t be standing there, open-mouthed, staring up into the sky after seeing someone lifted up in a cloud and taken to heaven? This part of our story I don’t think requires any imagination, because it describes a particular stance in life with which we are all familiar at some point or other. We all know what it feels like to be taken off guard, to be astonished, to not know what to expect next. I would even venture that this moment in Acts describes where we Christians are today on this last Sunday in Easter, some 2000 years after Jesus’ Ascension.

In our story, while the disciples are standing there staring open-mouthed after Jesus, two angles in white robes appear and ask them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Obviously these are God’s messengers telling them to quit standing around, staring off into space and to get on with their lives. It is a kind of cosmic kick in the pants, so to speak. So, they go back to Jerusalem and back to their upstairs room to await they know not what.

Of course this isn’t the first time Jesus has been taken away from them. The first time was much more violent, more heartbreaking with its betrayal and carefully planned cruelty, but I suspect both times were traumatic for the disciples. You know the root of the word “traumatic” is the German word “Traum” meaning dream, and I suspect that is precisely what the Disciples have felt their lives have been like since Good Friday--sometimes a nightmare, and sometimes, like in our story today from Acts, a surreal drama that leaves them stunned and silent, staring off into space. I can’t imagine that they are happy to see Jesus leave them again, even if it is in a triumphal lifting off into heaven. My guess is that when Easter came and Jesus proved that not even execution by the Roman Empire could keep him out of their lives, the apostles came to believe that Jesus would always be with them, always present when they needed him. And what’s more, they had come to think that maybe the time had finally come for Jesus to show the world what it really means to be the Son of God. Jesus has proven himself as a sacrificial lamb and now they hope he has come back to reign in Glory as the Messiah: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” they ask. But they are rebuffed: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority” Jesus tells them. Yet again, for the umpteenth time, Jesus has to refocus his followers. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,” he tells them. And what is the purpose of this power, and how are they to use it? Not for the restoration of a kingdom, but for reaching out to strangers. “You are going to go out into the world, being my witnesses to the ends of the earth,” are his parting words. Instead of Jesus fulfilling their hopes for his reign here on earth, he disappears in a cloud and goes off into sky! It’s got to be unsettling!

And so, the disciples go back to their upstairs room to pray and await their “baptism with the holy spirit.” I wonder if in those days between the Ascension of Jesus and Pentecost they could imagine what that would mean—if they had any idea what they were in for. I suspect that in those days of waiting and praying they were struggling to make their own imaginative leap. You see, they had to somehow put everything together, all that they had seen and heard, all of Jesus’ miracles and his teaching, into a coherent and whole story that they would then be able share with others and take to the ends of the earth. And that is exactly what we are trying to do right now.

In his commentary on the Book of Acts, William Willimon writes “The church in Acts exists as the church has always existed—as a people who claim to know something that we would not have known except as it was given to us. The Book of Acts opens with the community waiting for something to happen, listening for a word. Presumably if God had done nothing, had said nothing, there would be no community. Your church exists today in the same situation—as the result of the dialogue between a loquacious God who refuses to be silent and a community who tries to listen. Whenever, in your church, Scripture like Acts is read and interpreted, your church is participating in the same primal activity which gave birth to the Book of Acts.” Willimon goes on to say that when the people of Acts listened to scripture—in their case the Hebrew Scriptures—they did not ask: “What does the Bible say?” but rather, “What is God using the Bible to do to us?” (Interpretation, Acts, pp 1-2). This is of course our question today: What is God using this story to do us? How are we changed by it? Shaped by it? What will come out of our astonishment and our struggle to believe? I wonder what kind of imaginative leap is being required of us on this last Sunday in the season of Easter in 2008, as we look to our own Pentecost?

It is very significant that our lectionary has paired these two texts together—the Ascension from Acts and John’s account of the final prayer of Jesus before the crucifixion—and that they are given to us on the last Sunday in Easter, as we all (both the early disciples and us) face a world without a Jesus whom we can see and touch. In other words, a Jesus whom we must take on faith. It is important because before the sending out, there must be a gathering together. Before the stunned disciples can be expected to take their story “to the ends of the earth,” or even to know their story, they must first be gathered together into the very heart of Jesus. “Father, the time has come,” He prays. “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent….Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one.”

In her commentary on the book of John, Gail O’Day writes “This [passage] does not emphasize knowledge per se, but emphasizes the revelation of God in the incarnation.” The knowledge spoken of here in the verse “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” therefore “must be interpreted through the love manifested in Jesus’ life and death.” In other words, this is not some secret “Gnostic or metaphysical” knowledge of God available to only the few who are “in the know.” Rather, it is a relationship! Eternal life isn’t knowing of God; it’s knowing God. It is knowing that in his love, God has sent Jesus as a means of loving us more still.

But God’s love can’t be limited to a verticality of God loving us and us loving God. There is another whole dimension that spreads outward, emanating around those participating in the love relationship with God. And this brings us back to the Church, and where we first got the notion that we simple, dumbfounded humans who are staring up into the sky with our mouths open, might be a part of One whole and holy catholic Church—a veritable miracle—in the here and now.

When we come to church and participate in Holy Communion, there are several levels on which this is taking place. First of all, God is himself communion. I mean by this that God’s own being is, in itself, a relationship—a loving and cooperative relationship of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. We recognize this when we acknowledge that Jesus is himself Lord, sent by God the Father, and that God the Holy Spirit is ever-present with us. Second, through God’s reaching out and offering himself to us in the person Jesus, we become participants in God’s communion. And thirdly, participation in God’s communion necessitates that we are brought into relationship with each other. Church historian John McGuckin observes that our identifying God as Trinity involves the realization that the divine being is in itself “communion rather than solitude” and this has “ensured that Christian spirituality ever afterwards prioritized the concept of loving relationship as the supreme image of God, and the ultimate way to experience the divine presence” (130). Therefore our Communion, right here and right now in this church today, is a holy coming together of us with God and with each other, and we cannot separate our communion with God from our communion with each other.

Perhaps I’m taking a leap here. I may well be leaping from a broken church which squabbles over gender issues, worship styles and God know what else to a miracle church which knows perfect, loving communion in and with a perfect and loving God. I don’t believe there is any squabbling going on among the three persons of the Trinity, and yet there certainly is in the here and now church. But perhaps our squabbling shouldn’t be taken to mean that there is no whole and holy Church. Perhaps, rather, our squabbling is a sign of our relationship, and our relationship is a sign of our communion, and our communion is of course a divine gift and a manifestation of God’s love for us. In fact, the reality that we argue shows that we are invested in each other. Our squabbling is a sign of our commitment, our love even, in that we don’t simply walk away when disagreements arise. Squabbling requires courage and closeness, both of which are virtues of communion.

Strange happenings are certainly afoot, both in the lives of the first disciples and in our own. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you,” Peter tells us in our Epistle reading. Could it be that the “fiery ordeal” is of our own making, and it looks like a divided church, and that the strange thing happening to us is that we are One Whole and Holy Church without knowing it? Could it be that simply by recognizing God as the object and means of our communion, right here, right now, this Sunday at this table we are made one with God and with each other? And could it be that through this love we share, we have eternal life? The answer is yes, but let me be clear: this is not some spiritualized love. It is not something that we only think of in our heads or feel warmly in our hearts. It can’t be, because it involves sacrifice. This love requires that life must be laid down: God’s life is laid down in Jesus, Jesus’ life is laid down on the cross, and our lives are laid down in front of this table, when we eat and drink of the same bread and cup. Jesus’ life and his love are offered to us in the bread and wine this morning, and we in turn offer our vulnerability when we open ourselves to the giving and receiving of the love known in the miracle of God made flesh in Christ. When we love, we know God. This is eternal life. This is our perfect bond with each other and with God in this broken and strange world.

Glory be to God the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.