Now the
eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed
them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came
and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to
the end of the age.’
If I find in myself a desire which no
experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I
was made for another world. (C.S. Lewis Mere
Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, "Hope")
In the Sunday gospels of the past two
weeks, Jesus was emphasizing our oneness with him. He is in the Father, the
Father is in him, he is in us and he will never leave us. Therefore, the feast
of the Ascension is not just the celebration of Jesus ascending to heaven; it
is also the celebration of our ascendance into heaven with him. This is the
anniversary of us becoming Kingdom citizens. If the kingdom of God is within
you, then you are in heaven with Christ.
I can just hear your brains turning
over: “This sure doesn’t feel like heaven to me.”
One of the most significant turning
points in my spiritual life was when I understood that I was not made for this
world. Scripture says that we all are “aliens and exiles” or “visitors and
pilgrims”. (1 Peter 2: 11, 12) If you accept this as truth, it can make a
difference in how you relate to this crazy world. You are in it but not of it,
you are a nomad traversing a desert region, you are a stranger in a strange
land. You are a landed immigrant, familiar with all the attitudes and customs
of the world but not completely at home within it.
The other day I was talking with a
fellow with a lovely British accent and he was reminiscing about “the Old
Country.” It had been quite a while since I had last heard England referred to
as the Old Country and when he said it, it struck me somewhere deep inside.
What it stirred up in me was a sense of the Kingdom of God. I have roots in
God’s country or ‘the Old Country’ and sometimes it almost feels like I have
deep-seated subconscious memories of a home I once knew. There are moments when
something catches my eye or I read a few lines or hear some song lyrics and
suddenly I feel like I’ve caught an ephemeral glimpse of my real home. And I
get homesick.
What do I see? What do I feel? What do
I hear? It’s hard to describe. I see the colors of desire. I feel a stir of
excitement. I hear a voice that’s nothing like a voice saying words that are
nothing like words. All I know is that it’s as if a window was very briefly
opened and I was graced with a whiff of a fragrant, light filled breeze from
‘the Old Country’. I’m always waiting and watching for these glimpses, these
whiffs, that often come from unexpected sources. I can’t make them happen. The
Spirit’s breeze blows in his own good time.
What do these glimpses do for me
besides give me a moment of sheer pleasure? They offer me tangible reminders
that if I belong to a place so graciously beautiful and so familiar it hurts,
it must mean that I am more than what this world would have me believe I am. In
this world, I am faced constantly with irrational, unhealthy and distorted
goals, goals that are almost impossible to attain. Even if I were to achieve
one small goal such as, say, a perfect body, I would immediately be faced with
a mountain of ideals I have not attained. In themselves, many of these ideals
would seem to be admirable but living in a broken world causes a subtle
perversion of these desires. This perversion skews our perceptions and
contaminates the purity of the goals. When we think we are simply reaching for
a good and worthy ideal, most often what we are trying to attain is acceptance.
We desperately want to be accepted and, even more ideally, admired and
respected. Much of what we do is to gain approval, rise above the ‘norm’ and
show that we are worthwhile. We ache to be considered valuable.
There is a place where we have immense
intrinsic value. The ‘Old Country’. Home. This is a place where we have (not
just ‘will have’ but have now) great beauty and dignity. This is where Christ
went to prepare a dwelling place for each of us. If it were not so would he
have told us? His ascension in his glorified body was the grand finale of his
saving act – he became the indestructible bridge back to our original home, the
place where we truly belong, where we are higher than the angels and a place
where we are infinitely full of worth, dignity and grace.
Don’t get me wrong. Being in touch with
our kingdom value doesn’t mean we can’t fail, do the wrong thing, say things we
shouldn’t, harbor anger or resentment and generally get on the wrong track. But
I’ve personally noticed that I am most susceptible to sin when I am focusing on
the values of this world and wasting energy on actions designed to gain control
and elicit approval, acceptance or admiration. When I am mindful of who I
really am, where I came from and where I’m going, I am less susceptible to
being stuck in the heart-numbing mud of this earth’s ‘approval mill’. It’s
amazing, really, how many of our negative or sinful actions stem from a deep
inner need to simply be recognized and loved, which is what we’re really
wanting when we seek approval. We just want to know we’re wholly loved, accepted
and admired for who we really are – not for what we suspect everybody thinks we
should be. Actually, we’d like to know we are more than loved. We understand
that God loves us. What we really want to know is that God is wholly contented
with who we are.
An anonymous person once wrote that we
were put here on earth to help each other get home. Before Jesus ascended to
heaven, he commissioned the disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” In
other words, he commissioned the disciples – and us – to help the world come
home.
Next Sunday, June 12th, is
the feast of Pentecost. Why not spend the time from now until that wonderful
feast day praying that the Holy Spirit will awaken within you a deep abiding
sense of where you really belong…
…and who you are when you’re at
home.
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