Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A 2008

07 Easter A 06

May 4, 2008

Acts 1:6-14

The Path in the Woods

When I was a kid I used to come down here to Deltaville and I would stay with my aunt out on Sturgeon Creek at the end of Honeysuckle Lane. And in those days, a boy by himself could have a whole boatload of fun in Deltaville just by walking out the door in the morning.

All through my childhood, I was fascinated with the woods, the forest, the dense wildernesses flashing by along the highways. All those childhood tales of darkness and danger and mystery fired my imagination. The woods were full of promise and full of danger.

There were lots of woods around Deltaville then, and I suppose there are still today. In those fabulous free mornings I would wander down the lane and the woods would surround me and I would peer at them with wonder and maybe a little longing.

And there are lots of woods around our lives, aren’t there? Dark and dangerous and mysterious places some of us stumble into, sometimes dragging others along with us. Some of us wander away and get lost and don’t come back. Inexplicable illnesses, sudden accidents, seemingly insane choices that tear couples and families apart. Whole nations and peoples sometimes stumble off into the tangling branches and brambles and overgrowth. Sometimes we find our way out, sometimes we don’t.

Between God and the world we live in, there seems to be a dense and overgrown country, impassable, unknowable, even dangerous. We know in ourselves that this has not always been so. Somehow we know there was a time when God was with us, close at hand, and we could all see him as clear as day.

How did the woods get there? I don’t know. Does it torture the metaphor to say we planted that forest? We threw the seeds of our doubt and distrust far and wide till the wilderness that grew up got out of control and went beyond our capacity to clear it away?

I don’t know. But there is stands, the wilderness between. And somehow we know God is out there, on the other side.

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her own sermon on the Ascension, reflected on the strange phenomenon of people returning again and again to gather on Sunday mornings to sing and pray and ask questions and listen to a God they cannot see, whom many say is not there to begin with. It is as if we were grieving the loss of someone they loved, so they keep going back to the last place they saw him.

And she says, “You cannot miss what you have never known, which makes our sense of absence—and especially our sense of God's absence—the very best proof that we knew God once, and that we may know God again.”

God has wanted to come to us. And when God wants to come, God finds a way.

One morning all those years ago, I dared to wander off the lane and through a yard to a little opening I’d spied in the wall of trees. We had very little respect for other people’s property in those days, as I recall. I can’t remember seeing a single “No Trespassing sign” anywhere and if I did, I expect I ignored it.

When I went in there I found a world like I’d never seen before.

It was a path, a wide path, with trees old as Moses rising up on either side of it, big thick pines going up and up forever it seemed till they joined hands like celebrants high above and made a kind of natural cathedral roof. The light back there was magic light and it took your breath away. For a boy like me, alone in the woods, well, I took it for granted it was holy ground.

I used to wonder, who wore out that path? You know? You looked to the left and to the right, and you saw thick forest, dense and dangerous and overgrown, no way to get very far in and once in you’d probably never find your way out. But there in the middle, it was wide open and, it seemed, well-trod.

No fresh cut branches, no obvious tree stumps. The path was old and it had been there a long time. It was a path people made, some people still living, and probably some people long dead.
How can I say this? They were all there on that path. Their feet had worn away all that obstacles.

God wanted to come to us, and God found a way.

He came to that oak in Mamre to Abraham and he came down the ladder to Jacob and he came to the bush for Moses and he came in the still small voice to Elijah and he came into the Holy of Holies for old Isaiah and he even brought those crazy heavenly creatures with him.

God and his angels wore out that old path through the woods, and Jesus found it.

The Ascension of Jesus into the heavens is the cosmic equivalent of that path in the woods. Now I think a lot of us are nodding along here thinking, “right, right, Jesus shows us how to get to heaven.” And I would say, yes, that’s true, but there’s more.

I got so I loved that path, you know, that path I found when I was a boy. I’d seek it out from time to time. And every time I’d think it had disappeared, and every time I’d walk right by it, and every time I’d have that moment when I’d think, “it was a dream.” But there it would be and in I’d walk, and my private cathedral opened its arms to me.

And I’d stroll down it, and I found out it led to the water somewhere. I don’t know what water it was, a stream or a creek, but I remember water. Most paths around here lead to water. But then the hour would come when I was hungry and I’d need to go back to my aunt’s house and raid the fridge. And the path was there to lead me home.

The disciples stand, mouths agape, watching Jesus disappear into the clouds. And two mysterious men in white robes arrive and ask a question. Do you remember it? “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This same Jesus will come in the same way you saw him go.”
Do this sound like another question asked by another angel? It does to me. “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Is the path our way out? Or is it God’s way in?

A real live human being is nothing more than a living spirit in a living body. When the Holy Spirit of God inhabits a living human body, then what exactly is the difference between that person and Jesus the Christ?

I suppose it is as much of a difference as we insist on.

Why do you stand looking up into heaven? This same Jesus will come again in just the same way as he went, that is, just as he ascended into heaven, so he will descend from heaven. Why do you stand looking up when you should be looking from side to side?

Why are you hoping to go to heaven, when heaven is trying to come to you?

Next week, we’ll take a special offering for the start-up of new congregations. This is important not because of this or that individual who will somehow shine like a star. It’s important because as that congregation goes to work, the hungry get fed, the thirsty get water, the imprisoned get set free, and Christ comes into the world, and the world gets a little taste of heaven. Maybe not a full-course meal, but a taste, like a bit of good bread, or a sip of sweet wine.

Will we turn the world away from violence? Will we heal all the divisions and save all the children? Will be rescue all the perishing and heal all the sick?

Jesus tells us that these are not things are not for us to know. These are the kinds of questions that separate the Holy One in heaven from the holy ones on earth. Our job is to wait, to pray, to be open to the Spirit when it comes to us, and when it comes, to obey it.

The path Jesus found is his way of coming into the world. And you are the vessels of his coming. Does that surprise you? Do you think you are not up to the task? Oh, that’s not for me, you think. That’s for someone holier than me. But it is for you. Why do you stand looking up at heaven?

Annie Dillard writes in her book Holy the Firm:

“A blur of romance clings to our notion of these people in the Bible, as though of course God should come to these simple folks, these Sunday School watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves, while we now are complex and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? There is no one but us. There is no one to send nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time. But there is no one but us. There never has been."

Amen.