Faith with Feet

T.S. Eliot (“East Coker”) writes:
“Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”

Today we mark the last Sunday in the Easter Season. Forty days after his resurrection. Forty days of his appearing to and visiting his friends. Forty days during which he met with specific followers and met their needs: to Peter he brought reconciliation, to Thomas, reassurance; to Mary Magdalene he brought joy out of sorrow.

Today’s readings reflect Jesus’ ascension into heaven. “Home is where one starts from.” Bethany was Jesus’ home base while he was preaching and on his last day on earth, he took his followers the two miles from Jerusalem to Bethany.

Home is where we start from too. We start from the familiar: from the places we started from. We start with what’s familiar. And we are called out. We discover the connections between us and the world: “Not the intense moment/ Isolated, with no before and after,/But a lifetime burning in every moment.”

Several weeks ago I traveled with Cathy and Betty and Sue—we ventured out from our homes to the Leadership and Ministry Fair. You will hear from each of us about what we learned and discovered. You will hear about a few steps on our journeys with the Living Lord. Because you see, real faith has ‘feet’. Faith moves us out of our places of comfort to meet the living Christ where he is to be found.

That’s the reason the angels asked the disciples: “You Galileans—why do you just stand here looking up at an empty sky?” Not that we could blame them for staring. But they learned what T.S. Eliot says: “Love is most nearly itself/When here and now cease to matter.”

For the living Christ commands us to do but two things: love God with all we are and love our neighbors and our enemies as ourselves. To do this is to experience eternal life—not just in the great by and by but here and now. In the midst of uncertainty, in the midst of strife, to know God through a relationship with the living Christ. Jesus himself has said this: “And this is eternal life—that they may know you…and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Now this knowing is deep and personal. To know Jesus, to know God is through a deep relationship—the way that brothers and sisters know each other, the way that lovers know each other, the way that a mother knows her child. It’s as far removed from a purely intellectual knowledge—the way that we know that traffic will be horrible on a rainy Friday night—as it can be.

For Christian spirituality is not a set of answers about a dead person. The life of a Christian is rather a life lived in relation to the mystery of a living person. Thus, we can follow T.S. Eliot when he suggests that “Old men must be explorers,” and that we must be “still and still moving.”

Whatever can it mean to be still—as in motionless—and still moving? We can be unmoving, tranquil, solid on the Rock that is Jesus. He is the pattern for our lives. Yet he also calls us to move—to get on with our lives and to be his presence in the world.

When people ask where Jesus can be found, we should be able to say with our words and with our actions that the Risen Christ resides in the gathered community. He resides in our worship and he lives in our service. The Risen Christ lives on in our hospitality to the stranger and in our ministry with others. The Risen Christ lives in the ways that he changes our lives and transforms the world.

So our “faith is a response to the living Lord who presses us on in every moment.” (Luke Timothy Johnson, “The Living Jesus”) You see it is Jesus who impels us “Into another intensity/For a further union, a deeper communion.”

Where our faith is growing, it is alive. In our end—in the death of what has lived out its usefulness, the death of what has become stagnant, the death of that which no longer serves us or God—is our beginning. We will now hear some of what Jesus’ current disciples have learned as they moved out from their homes to the Leadership and Ministry Fair a couple of weeks ago.

As Jesus ascended into heaven, the very last thing he did was bless the disciples. It is the first time in any of the gospels that we hear that he raised his hands to heaven. It is likely he prayed the prayer God gave to Aaron, when he was blessing his people. “The Lord bless you and protect you; the Lord make his face to shine on you, and be gracious to you; the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.”