5/12/24 Sermon

Luke 24: 44-53

Jesus said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law from Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.  He said to them, “This is what is written: the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,  and a change of heart and life for the forgiveness of sins must be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.  Look, I’m sending to you what my Father promised, but you are to stay in the city until you have been furnished with heavenly power.”

 He led them out as far as Bethany, where he lifted his hands and blessed them. As he blessed them, he left them and was taken up to heaven.  They worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem overwhelmed with joy.  And they were continuously in the temple praising God.

WORD OF LORD

It’s hard letting go. Especially if it isn’t something you want to let go of…  Think about it for just a moment… I used to have these big dreams and ambitions of what I would become when I grew up, of what my life would look like, of what I’d be doing.  They’ve changed throughout the years somewhat but some of them had remained constant.  I’m getting to the age now where I can look back and evaluate things and I can see dreams I’ve accomplished.  I can see dreams that I have yet to reach.  And I have dreams that I’ve had to let go of entirely.  

For instance, I remember the first day I stood on the campus of Union Seminary as a student. And I remember standing right outside the chapel entrance into the main academic building and stopping.  I vividly remember thinking now what?  For so long it seemed like the dream was getting to that moment. The goal was to be standing there doing what I was just about to do - to walk into my first class as a graduate student in seminary -  I hadn’t really put any thought into what would happen next. I wasn’t really sure what to do next but I knew I could check that dream off the list.  

The dream then quickly became to get a phd in theology and hopefully teach at a similar institution. That’s a dream I’ve decided to let go of.  It’s a hard dream to let go of for me because I’ve seen others live it out. So many of my closest friends have “Doctor” in front of their name. And I wouldn’t say it fills me with a sense of jealousy, but it does fill me with a sense of longing sometimes.  Then, a close friend pointed out to me the other day that one of my favorite theologians wasn’t a doctor either.  I had to look it up because I didn’t believe it but Karl Barth - a man the pope called the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas - never got a phd either. That did make me feel better. So that’s a dream I’ve decided to let go of.

I’ve always wanted to write a book.  I haven’t yet.  I’m not sure what the book would be on or what it would say. At least not yet.  But I’m still keeping that dream alive in my back pocket.  Dreams I’ve accomplished. Dreams I’m holding onto.  Dreams I’m letting go of.  Those are relatively easy in the grand scheme of things.  

People… People however, have always been hard for me to let go of.  Maybe its because I’m adopted.  Maybe its because while a friend once accused me of being the most misanthropic minister he ever met, I seem to have a hopeless optimism in the best of people.  I see potential and sometimes I mistake that potential as reality or for who that person is in the moment.  Or I get infinitely curious about why a person is the way they are and I try to understand them.  And with that understanding comes empathy.  And it can be hard to let go of or give up on people you empathize with.  I don’t like letting go. I don’t like saying goodbye. 

It means that sometimes I’ve held onto toxic and unhealthy relationships longer than I should have.  Sometimes I give people too many chances at my own personal cost. And sometimes I have friends that everyone else in my life think are jerks… and they’re right. They are jerks.  But it’s hard for me to give up on people.  I try to see the best in them.  I don’t want to walk away from it… 

And then there are those cases which are the hardest ones of all… When you know someone beautiful and wonderful, who adds so much to life… and yet you have to say goodbye… You have to let go…

I had this teacher in High School - I may have told you about him - his name was Joel Ferree.  And Mr. Ferree was a weird little man who everyone thought was crazy because of his classroom antics that he used to keep the attention of teenage boys trapped in a boarding school while he was tasked with the nearly impossible job of trying to get us interested in literature.  For some reason I’ll never really understand, he took an interest and liking to me.  He was the first teacher to ever do so.  He was the first teacher that didn’t tell me I was a waste of potential or that I was too smart for my own good.  He was the first teacher that didn’t make me feel like I was an outsider and that I had to work to fit inside of some box.  Instead he just let me be me.  He found ways to connect to me and embraced who I was and he encouraged me.  And it changed my life.  

I wouldn’t have gone to college if it weren’t for him.  I wouldn’t have believed I could write or that I could be creative if it weren’t for him.  I definitely wouldn’t be giving sermons if it weren’t for him.  And I definitely wouldn’t have had any confidence in who I am, held on to what curiosity I have, or chased any dream if it weren’t for him.  He stayed in touch with me encouraging me through college. Giving me confidence when I went to seminary that it was ok that I yet again wasn’t like the other students. He Gave me the courage to be truly myself and he taught me how to embrace and love who I am.  I owe the man more than I could ever repay but I don’t think he saw it that way… 

When I was in Seminary, I had the chance to preach at the church I grew up in and Mr. Ferree came to see.  He had a really bad case of cancer that he had just gotten over. So, I was really excited to see him.  Afterwards, we got to catch up with each other. I had so much I wanted to tell him. So much I wanted to thank him for.  But for some reason when it came time to say it, we just hugged each other and cried together.  And all I could choke out was “thank you.”  And thankfully it seemed like enough. Some part of me knew. 

I just knew that this would be the last time I would ever see him.  I didn’t want to let go of him.  And when I did, I still remember vividly watching he and his wife walking out of the church, him turning at the door, looking back smiling, and waving goodbye.  And the cancer returned a few weeks later.  A few months later he was gone and I was sitting in another church at his funeral.  I didn’t want to let go.  I didn’t want to let him go.  I remember sitting there in that sanctuary wondering much like I did on my first day of seminary but in a very different way, What will I do now?  

Maybe he had more he could have taught me.  There’ve been times where I’ve wished I could just pick up the phone and talk to him and get his advice or just joke around with him.  There are things I’ll see, funny stories that will happen, a book I’ll read that I wish I could share with him. There have been times where I very desperately wanted his reassurance and encouragement. But he’s gone now.  And that letting go, that question of what will I do now, can be so painful and hard.  And so sometimes I replay our conversations and adventures in my head and I try to interpret them in a way that fits my needs in any given moment.  But I still feel I lost something great when Mr. Ferree died… And it’s still hard to let go… 

I wonder… I wonder if the disciples didn’t feel the same way on the day of Jesus’ ascension… Let’s take the story just at face value.  Sure we could argue if it really went down the way Luke reported it.  We could question if something like this could actually happen.  The physicist Carl Sagan once calculated in the 1980s that depending on the rate of acceleration, Jesus would be somewhere near Pluto now. But I think to argue the literalness of the story misses the point.  So, lets’ just look at the story itself and lets think about it.  

Maybe you have a Mr. Ferree or a parent in your life or someone really close to you that you’ve lost. And lets imagine that while it was still raw, their loss still feeling very real and very recent to you, that they suddenly show up.  You thought they were dead but then some of your friends say he’s still alive and sure enough, one day he shows up to a gathering where you and your friends are.  Just like Jesus did… And you’re so relieved to see this person because everything seemed lost without them and you weren’t sure what to do next or what you were supposed to do next.  But he’s back now.  Everything is ok.  Everything is going to be ok.  

But then one day he just, I don’t know… Disappears into the sky? You just got him back and now he’s gone again. And Luke basically ends things here.  He picks it back up in his sequel - the book of Acts.  Acts gives a similar version of the story with some different details.  There are angels there who tell them that Jesus will come back the same way he just left but they don’t say when.  And then Acts tells us they go back to Jerusalem to the upper room with some of the women including Mary the mother of Jesus and the rest of Jesus’ family and they enter a time of prayer and a time of discenment.  It doesn’t say for how long. But I get the feeling it was awhile.  

I bet they were wondering the same thing I did.  What do we do now?  How does this all work without him?  How do we let go of him?  How do we move this thing forward?  Can we without him?  And so what do they do?  It sounds like they replay the conversations and adventures in their heads trying to figure out the advice and guidance Jesus would give them.  Some of them would decide to write these teachings and stories down so they wouldn’t forget and so others would know. All of them would go out and try to live out these teachings, start communities committed to this new way of being in the world, and try to make sure that while Jesus may now be gone, he wasn’t forgotten.  But I can imagine the pain of having to let him go…  

But despite how hard it can be to let go and how much we may not want to, sometimes in life we just have to.  And like the disciples we just have to trust its for the best and that somehow God is still guiding us.  If I’d held onto the dream of being a professor, I wouldn’t be standing here today. And from talking with friends who are professors, I can say with some confidence that I find the work of a pastor much more fulfilling to me than I would have found the work of a professor.  

If I’d held on to some of those toxic relationships, I wouldn’t have the children I have today who I love beyond all reason and imagining.  And maybe by letting go of Mr. Ferree, I was finally able to do what he was trying to teach me the whole time - how to become fully and wholly my own person, how to think for myself and try to move through this life in a way that’s authentically my own.  And I hope I get to help teach my children and others to do the same now.  

And maybe Jesus knew that in order for the disciples to be fully who they were intended to be, in order for this new church or community to grow and become what it was fully supposed to be, that in a weird way, they had to let go of him.  I imagine he could have stuck around if he wanted to.  I imagine he could still be here today guiding and leading the church with a physical presence making it exactly what he wanted it to be and how he wanted it to be.  But that didn’t seem to be a part of the plan.  For some reason that’s beyond my capabilities to understand or explain, the plan seemed to be that we need to make it our own.  That there must be something to our struggle to figure out how to do this without him directly telling us what to do.  Maybe its because if we feel that we need to put in the work and put ourselves into making all of this work, we’d be more invested, treat it with a little more care, and not just expect that Jesus will come around and bail us out or tell us what to do.  

Maybe by letting go of Jesus, of him ascending and leaving us, he’s trying to show us that this is about more than one person - that it takes a collective effort - that we need to work together to fulfill the vision that he’s left us.   I feel like I’m on the boarder of heresy here.  I’m not saying we don’t need Jesus.  I think we need him very badly.  You can turn on the news just to see that. But maybe the goal isn’t for him to swoop in to fix everything.  But its for us to figure it out together.  And we couldn’t or wouldn’t do that if he were actually here… And so we had to let go of the man… and embrace what he taught us… and trust those teachings to guide us… and reflect on what he did and his adventures with those disciples so we can make this world reflect more of the kingdom he intended.  And we just need to be invested in that together. And rely on each other. And let go… into new life… with new dreams… and healthy relationships… and realize that while this whole thing is based around one person - Jesus - it isn’t up to HIM to make this work.  It’s up to us…