Exactly twenty-six years ago on May 2 (the day before yesterday), Nancy and I had been happily married for just over three years. We were at that time a couple without children and we had lots of time to share and enjoy together in marital bliss.

Exactly twenty-six years ago early yesterday that was about to change, because Nancy, my best friend, love of my life, wife and soon to be co-parent went into labor with our first child. We had been taking Lamaze classes for weeks and all our training and anticipation was now supposed to go into action. My job was to be with Nancy, time and log contractions, help coach Nance with her breathing, comfort her and feed her (of all things) shaved ice.

Nancy’s job list may sound shorter, but I had no desire to swap places with her. She was (in ways I have never quite come to grips with) charged with the task of extracting an eight pound, eighteen inch, living, breathing, human being from her body . . . without any smoke or mirrors or pain medication.

Although I did not want her job, I did want to be there for the magic of it all. This was the stuff of real magic.

I mean, for weeks it was clear that there was something miraculously growing in her tummy. The beautiful bulge; the magnified thump-thump-thump of the little heartbeat; the little feet that kicked me through her belly and just the anticipation of that baby in my life had caused me to fall so in love with that unseen being that I spent hours reading and singing and talking to our unborn child.

Early (I mean way, way early) in the morning for a fellow who managed a restaurant until 2 AM. I was awakened with the news that baby was on the way. I dutifully timed the contractions and soon we hurried over to the hospital only to be turned away by a gruff nurse. We were, she barked, “too early.”

So we went home and Nancy was in labor all day with pains too far apart to go back to the hospital.

In fact, Nancy later confided that she asked the gruff nurse when her shift ended and then determined she was not going to go back while that nurse was on duty! So I have never been too sure whether Nancy or Mother Nature caused that labor to go on for more than 24 hours!

At one point while we waited we went for a walk and Nancy stopped to use the restroom at a local bakery. The owner casually asked me as I waited “When is your wife due?” I made the mistake of telling her “Actually she is in labor right now.” That poor owner began to pace and look nervously toward the restroom and kept asking over and over in a shaky voice if she should go in and check on Nancy; if I was sure she was alright. The owner was so shaken up I wished I had thought of a cover story. I am convinced that when Nancy emerged and we safely exited the bakery that it was one of the happiest moments in the history of that establishment, or at least in the owner’s life.

Sometime in the early evening – after the gruff nurse’s shift– we decide that surely by now it must be time. So back we went to the hospital, and this time they let us stay. We had a beautiful birthing room with a rocking chair and place for me to sleep, as well as Nan and the baby.

The baby must not have heard that the gruff nurse was gone because she stayed in the womb for another twelve hours. I was so tired it would have been nice to go home and sleep. Of course, I didn’t. I had to stay and be with Nancy and wait for the promised new life.

For hours through the night I dutifully logged contractions until it finally dawned on me that neither the doctor nor the nurses cared about my contraction log. Once I figure out that my notes meant nothing (I think they were supposed to keep me otherwise occupied) I dedicated myself solely to being in the moment with Nancy– and let me tell you it was long and hard on her. I may have been tired, but as you can imagine she was exhausted somewhere way beyond fatigue.

So we eventually reached a point where our aim for hours was to get just through each moment, each contraction. There was no past or future only the given moment. This went on for hours and that experience of getting through a rough time, a moment at a time, was a very valuable lesson that I have leaned on many times since.

After some twenty-six hours of labor at last this wee little bloody being with long wet hair, sparkling eyes, a high piercing cry and a magnet for my love came into the world and into my life.

At that instant my life changed. I don’t just mean because Nancy and I were no longer a couple but a family. And I don’t just mean because I had this long day that ended with the joy of a new dad walking on air that morning twenty-six years ago today. I mean my whole life was changed, instantly filled with new life and new love for this little newborn.

It was quite an experience. All that waiting for nine months did not even come close to the intensity of anticipation we experienced that long laborious day of labor. It was like a slow arduous unwrapping of one of the greatest gifts ever. That anticipation was almost as hard as the work –well, I doubt Nancy would agree with that, but you know what I mean.

Today is Ascension Sunday in the life of the church. It may seem counter-intuitive that a day with “Ascension” in title can be related to a story about anticipating a birth, but it can!

As you heard from the Lectionary reading the resurrected Christ had been hanging around with the apostles speaking about the Reign of God and he told them toward the end of his forty post-Easter days that they had to stay in Jerusalem to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This” he said “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

The apostles had asked Christ if he would be doing the Messiah Warrior-King thing. You see the Messiah had been expected by many to lead an army to “restore the Kingdom of Israel.”

Christ had a very interesting answer to this inquiry. “It is not for you to know the time or periods that [God] has set by [God’s] authority” and then Christ tells them that soon power from the Holy Spirit was coming not to accomplish what they expected, but to baptize each of them personally so that they would become witnesses for Christ “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, “and to the ends of the earth.”

After Christ said this– with the apostles looking on– we told that Christ “was [then] lifted up and a cloud took him out of sight.”

Most folks focus on this miracle of Christ ascending in a cloud when considering this story. But I wonder if just as miraculous is Christ’s answer to the question about Messianic power; where Christ tells those early followers of Jesus that they are to be directly given power from the Holy Spirit. Christ tells them that soon they will receive a great gift: the ability to wield the very power of God, and consequently they are to be Christ’s witnesses to the very ends of the earth! That is some miracle, some bit of magic to await.

In Luke the apostles have been hanging around with Jesus all during his ministry. Then he is taken away from them by Rome’s cruel execution of him. The apostles are grief stricken, frightened, at a loss as to what they will do without Jesus.

Then the resurrected Jesus miraculously shows up in their lives hanging around with them in what had to have been a great post-Easter bliss.

And what happens next is what today’s story of the Ascension seems to really be about. Pardon the pun but it is about a pregnant pause, a transition from the bliss of the marriage of the resurrected Christ with the apostles to the reality of next greatest thing to come. What’s coming is at this point in the story is a surprise for the apostles.

Nancy and I never peaked at the gender of our children in vitro so we never knew if we were going to have a boy or a girl. It was always a surprise, a part of the anticipation.

Our first newborn was a girl whom we named Tristan Robin and she has grown up to be one of the people I admire most in the world. She is full of compassion and a sense of justice and kindness and so much Love and Grace that it is awe inspiring. Not once in her life has she ever stopped being amazing to me. Nor has a day gone by that I did not somehow miraculously love her more! When I think of her especially during prayers it is always a Spiritual high. That little bitty baby, celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday today, has become one heck of a human being.

Christ was careful upon preparing to ascend not to reveal fully the surprise of what was coming for the followers of Jesus. Christ tells them vaguely that something exciting, something miraculous is coming from God for them and then leaves. Today’s story ends with the apostles waiting for the great gift Jesus promised.

The gift that is coming is the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, a day we celebrate next Sunday. A day that commemorates the Holy Spirit descending upon the early followers of Jesus, birthing, as it were, the Church. Jesus goes up-and-away and the Holy Spirit comes down and upon Jesus’s followers and we get the birth of the Church.

We will talk more about Pentecost next week–which this year falls on Mother’s Day.

Coincidence?

I think not!

Today’s Biblical passage is in one sense about how the apostles’ experience of the loss of something – Jesus’s human-like bodily presence– is a part of the birthing process of something else – the Church, a new and continuing forever Body of Christ.

In another sense the passage is about pain involved in the process of the birth of the church. The bliss of sharing and enjoying three years as Jesus’s disciples, the apostles spending time alone with Jesus was coming to an end and it had to have been painful.

Jesus like a birthing mother certainly dealt with the physical pain, but, the disciples like a caring a co-parent had to watch helplessly as that pain occurred.

Then there was the added pain of grief and sorrow at the death of Jesus who in a very real sense died in this birthing process.

And now in today’s story, after getting Jesus back for forty glorious post-Easter days, Jesus is bodily leaving his followers by ascending into heaven.

You see the disciples up to this point have merely been Jesus’s followers, a great thing but the power of God has mostly been coming through Jesus and they have depended on him for their bliss and teachings. This was true not only while Jesus was alive, but even as they grieved his death and rejoiced in the surprise of his mystical still-with-them-ness before he ascends.

Jesus must ascend for the apostles– Jesus’s followers– to continue on not as blissful followers married to the historic Jesus, but as Church. Another aspect of God – the Holy Spirit– must descend upon them so that they can be not just followers of Jesus, but, become themselves two or more gathered in his name as Church– acting as the very Body of Christ meant to continue on through history.

The hands and feet of Jesus alone cannot make them Church. They need the Holy Spirit to descend and jolt them into being the Body of Christ, Jesus’s continuation on earth.

The Texts for Preaching commentary puts it like this:

Ascension is an interim time, a period– not unlike Advent– between promise and fulfillment, The disciples of Christ are called to live faithful and obedient lives and to remember that the wonder of God’s love and presence revealed so radically in the cross and the open tomb still has in store fresh surprises of joy. The disciples of Christ are called to witness, little realizing how the Spirit lurks to transform all that they do into magnificent occasions for the outpouring of God’s love. In this manner the Ascension points to Pentecost and to all the marvelous ways of the Holy Spirit of God. 1.

Now some argue that the second coming of Christ occurred already with the birth of the Church. There may just be something to this, at least symbolically. At the end of today’s reading two angels, men in white robes, suddenly appear and ask as the apostles gaze up after Jesus: “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

In next week’s scripture text we learn that the Holy Spirit came in the same way Jesus left descending from heaven. Thus giving birth to the Church – the very Body of Christ!

Can you see how the Church as the Body of Christ can be understood as Christ’s return to earth? The Second Coming? Pretty interesting to think about.

Today we remember the glorious anticipation and pregnant pause between Jesus’ followers’ experience of him in a human bodily form and Jesus’s followers miraculous ability through the gift of the Spirit to reanimate the Body of Christ by creating – through Jesus’s followers– the Church.

The newborn reborn Body of Christ has at its best grown up to be one of the greatest and most admirable gifts every given by God.

Done right church is full of compassion and a sense of justice and kindness and so much Love and Grace that it is awe inspiring.

It has been, and still is, world altering. Not once in the life of the church – when truly acting as the Body of Christ– has it ever stopped being amazing.

That thing that the followers of Christ await becomes one heck of a Holy place. Church.

You are sitting in just such a place.

A place that alters the world through Spirit-filled followers of Jesus.

A place where the Body of Christ through the Holy Spirit alters lives filling them with new life and new love.

Amen.

Endnotes:

1. Texts for Preaching, CD-ROM pages 311.

Scott Elliott Copyright © 2008