Graduation or commencement?

7 Easter (Ascension), Year A
June 1, 2014
Acts 1:6-14

Thursday was Ascension Day, the day 40 days after Easter when we remember Jesus ascending to the Father.  We get the Ascension story from the book of Acts today too, so there is no escaping this story that sounds so odd to us modern people.  We know enough details about our solar system and beyond to have trouble with the concept of heaven as up.  And it is easy to get stuck in the details, creating in our heads a picture of Jesus’ toes peeping out of the clouds that we push to the side and label either amusing or absurd. 

Maybe it’s time to graduate from that reading of this story.  This is, after all, the season of graduations. 

I’ve gotten announcements from my two high school senior second-cousins, Grace and Ben.  Ben was the valedictorian of his class and the Oregon state champion in trombone.  Grace spent a summer studying in France and got to go to Hawaii for a marching band championship.  They aren’t at all the little kids that still reside in my memory.

In the paper there are constant mentions of graduations, too.  I was excited to see my alma mater, Wake Forest, in the news because Jill Abramson, the recently ousted executive editor of the New York Times, was speaker at Wake’s graduation.

            Now, graduation is what happens at the end of something.  You get through high school or college (or now days even preschool) and you graduate.  You celebrate that ending and all that you’ve accomplished thus far.  You are proud to be done, surrounded by friends and family, still safe in your cocoon of the familiar.

            But those graduations are often called commencement ceremonies for a reason.  Commencement meaning “the time when something begins.” 

            When you graduate you are finishing something, sure, but what is really happening is a new beginning.  That can be scary and overwhelming.  Sometimes you don’t know exactly what the future holds.  And sometimes you are starting out relatively alone.  Maybe (hopefully) looking forward to what is ahead, but almost always with an awareness that you are facing the unknown.  About to leap into who-knows-what.

            And so at graduations there is the inevitable commencement speech, often with advice or thoughts or preparation for the future.  I keep coming across inspiring blurbs from memorable commencement addresses in the past.  There seem to be several common themes that repeat.

1. Be your true self.  From Steve Jobs to Stanford grads in 2005: “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.” 

2. Live joyfully.  From environmentalist Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009 at University of Portland: "Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years.  No one would sleep that night, of course... We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television."

            3. It’s okay to fail.  J.K. Rowling to Harvard in 2008: “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”

            4. Change the world.  Maya Angelou in 1985 at Wake Forest: “Your destiny is to develop the courage to flesh out the great dreams, to dare to love, to dare to care, to dare to want to be significant and to admit it, not by the things you own or the positions you hold but by the lives you live.”

            The crowd gathered in our reading from Acts this morning is at just that kind of defining, in-between, graduation/commencement moment.  They are at the end of several years of learning from and traveling with Jesus, being part of his ministry.  They have made it through, some with flying colors (like those women who stuck with him every inch of the way), and some with lower GPAs (like Peter who denied Jesus and James and John who fought over seats of power).  But they have endured and made a lot of sacrifices along the way.  So here they stand, diplomas in hand, tassels tickling their cheeks.  They are graduating from their work with the physical Jesus showing them the way.  (There are even people there in white robes!) 

Watching Jesus being lifted up out of their sight must have felt very much like an end.  They must have felt bereft, standing up there on that beautiful mountain and having their beloved risen Jesus disappear from view.  Not being able to touch him, question him, walk with him, and follow him in the ways they were used to.  This must have felt like another death to them.  The end of their hopes and dreams.  Again!  The end of what they were just beginning to understand and re-imagine after Easter.

            And so there they are, standing with their mouths open, shocked and frozen.  And then those two white-robed angels call out, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”  In other words, stop looking up – stop wallowing in the past!  Look around you!  This isn’t the end, this is just the beginning!

It turns out those words Jesus had spoken to them just before he’d disappeared were a sort of a commencement address to his followers.  To extrapolate the main themes from Jesus’ message, it might go something like this:

1. Don’t get bogged down in theology.  It might be interesting to pontificate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but don’t let it stop you from dancing yourself.  There’s a lot you all can’t know, and don’t need to know, about what God is up to.  But never forget that loving God and loving your neighbor are at the heart of everything.  The rest is so much less important.

2. You are not alone.  Sometimes you may feel like the world is crashing down around you or that everything you know is changing before your eyes.  I may not be as visible and touchable as you’d like, but I am still here with you as you go forward.  In every moment, whether or not you always feel it, you are surrounded and upheld by the presence of God. 

3. You have more power than you think.  I am blazing a trail for you, making the way ready for your work in the world.  God isn’t just something outside of you or something to contemplate.  God the Holy Spirit is inside you, filling you with power and promise.  The life and light of Easter resides in you now.

4. Go be my people in the world!  In everything you do -- whether at home or at work, with family or friends – you have an opportunity to be my witnesses.  The way you speak, the way you love, the way you respond, the way you notice … all of these things can point to me.

This isn’t an end for Jesus’ disciples.  This is just a beginning.  And you can tell they understand that by what they do next.  Once they get past the open-mouthed and uncertain part, they return together to Jerusalem and begin “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”

There are two pieces of that that seem especially important for us. 

First, just like us, these are real folks gathered as part of a community.  This is the first congregation: Some of them are named, like Peter, John, James, Andrew, Phillip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon, Judas, Mary.  And there are unnamed folks too, like the other women and Jesus’ brothers.  These first followers of Jesus don’t try to go it alone.  They gather in a central place to share stories and to support, challenge and care for each other.  This is our model for what it means to be Church.

And second, watch what they do as they gather -- they pray.  They will go and do soon enough; there will always be plenty of work to do.  But instead of rushing right into it, first, they pray, waiting for God’s spirit to strengthen and renew them and show them the way.  This gathering place, this first church, is the place where they pause and linger before heading out into the world to begin their work as witnesses transforming the world.

Even as we face the unknown, I wonder what new thing God might be calling us, the people of St. Aidan’s, to as we pause and linger here this morning?   On this last Sunday of Easter, and at this stage in our own faith journeys are we ready to graduate or to commence?