This is the day that Jesus Christ returns to heaven, 40 days after his miraculous resurrection on Easter, marking the end of his earthly journey through humanity and the beginning of his role as our chief Advocate and intercessor. Ascension neatly bookends God’s great incarnational act, God’s dwelling among us, Emmanuel, from birth, death, resurrection, and return to the Father. It really is the circle of life that we experience in so many, varied, mysterious and wonderful ways.
Christ’s return to God hastens images of this great vacuum in time between his leaving and what will come. My New Testament professor, Dr. Warren Carter describes this time as “the time between the now and the not yet.” Jesus has left, with promises of return in power and great glory; but when? He neglects to say when. A seemingly critical detail! And that “time between the now and the not yet” stretches on, and on, and on.
Those first followers of Jesus feel that same sense of loneliness and isolation at his departure. God dwelling among them, Logos, has shown them a new way, new possibilities, new hope for how the world can be. And he’s left them with mandates for bringing God’s new world order into being during the “time between the now and the not yet.” If they could only know the date of his return, the end date, it would make the waiting and the working through of his purposes so much more palatable.
That not knowing the end date, how long this will go on, is what is so unsettling to us humans. There is something about control wrapped up in knowing when, when something is going to happen. When is Jesus going to return, and set all this right? When will “the now” merge into “the not yet,” when suffering and sorrow and joy all meld into one, all be made right?
In addition to all the physical suffering and loss that COVID-19 has dealt humanity, I think this not knowing when it will end, being in the grips of its “time between the now and the not yet,” sensing this lack of control, is what makes this Corona-tide so disconcerting. And I believe that we have to look to how we wait to find our sense of control, for we can control how we wait! From those first disciples all the way to today, they and we have our Christian mandate, the building of God’s glorious “kin-dom.” Our wait for Jesus is anything but passive as we actively set about doing God’s work in spite of not knowing the date of Christ’s return.
My mentor and friend Canon John Logan tells a wonderful story of a homeless woman approaching the communion rail at Christ Church Cathedral, Houston. The then dean Pittman McGeehee leaned over to John and said, “She says she’s Jesus. What should we do?” to which John retorted, “LOOK BUSY!”
The work of the Doubters of St. Thomas the Apostle marches right on, because of, and in spite of Corona. Committees are meeting and planning events, people are being connected in new and creative ways, your Vestry is hard at work stewarding God’s resources, and your staff are leaning into new ways to draw us together as the Body of Christ.
And we are listening for God’s footsteps as we live in this “time between the now and the not yet.”
Faithfully yours,
Fr. Christopher+
