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"Why are you standing there?" Ascension Sunday 1997--for the Cotteridge Church (an ecumenical church including the Anglican, Methodist & United Reformed Church denominations) Acts 1.1-11 When I was growing up we had a dog that was the least ecumenically-minded dog you would ever wish to meet. This was due in large part to my father, a Presbyterian minister, who had the misfortune to have a Methodist church slightly larger than his own just down the street from his church in every Midwestern small town we ever lived in. So my father taught our dog a trick. He taught Snoopy to lie down on his side, and Dad would put a dog biscuit on the side of his snout and say, "No, Snoopy, you can't have that biscuit. It's a Methodist biscuit", and he would begin lecturing Snoopy on the waywardness of Methodism and the evils and dangers of Arminianism while the poor animal lay there wide-eyed and trembling. Snoopy, like most dogs I know, was a glutton. Finally, overcome with pity, Dad would give in. "Yes," he would say. "You can have it; it's a Presbyterian biscuit." And with a quick upward jerk of his snout Snoopy would flip the biscuit into the air, where he caught it in his mouth before it had a chance to even think about falling back to the floor. You've heard of Pavlov the Russian psychologist who experimented with conditioning the behaviour of dogs. He would ring a bell, then immediately give them a piece of meat. He rang the bell again, and again gave the dogs a piece of meat. Yet again he rang the bell, and yet again he would give the dogs a piece of meat. The dogs began to catch on, and this is where it began to get interesting. Now Pavlov rang the bell, but withheld the meat, cruelly withheld the meat, one might say, if this were not dispassionate scientific experimentation. Ah! The scientist observed that when the bell rang, the dogs would salivate in anticipation of meat. Wouldn't you? Pavlov wondered what would happen if he extended the time between the bell and the gift of meat, and he found that if he waited ten minutes after he rang the bell before he gave the dogs their meat, and repeated this often enough, the dogs would wait ten minutes before they started salivating. It was like clockwork. He kept extending the time, and it kept working. The dogs could go on for quite a long time before automatically salivating, once they were conditioned to a particular interval of time. But then Pavlov ran into a problem. If the time got too long, the dogs started to fall asleep in exhaustion before they salivated. Once the bell rang, they fixed their attention so firmly on the anticpated meal that they had no energy left with which to keep themselves awake. Waiting for the meat, the rest of the world ceased to exist. Their entire nervous system would shut down. "Men of Galilee," the two men in white robes say, "Why are you standing there looking up into heaven?" Like well-trained dogs, the disciples fix their total attention in the direction of the one who has fed them, comforted them, led them. They have to be reminded that they are in fact not dogs involved in psychological experiment. They are human beings, disciples called together to be taught, now apostles sent into the world to act. They themselves, now, will feed, comfort and lead. "Why are you standing here, looking up into heaven?" This morning is the Sunday celebrating the Ascension, in which we see Jesus exalted to the heavens above. "He ascendeth into heaven," says the creed, "and sitteth on the right hand of God the Fatrher Almighty". The more ancient creed quoted in Philippians 2 says that Jesus humbled himself, emptied himelf for others, and therefore God exalted him that everyone should call him Lord. The Ascension itself is a graphic, pictorial representation of this earliest of all statements of faith, isn't it?, that Jesus Christ is Lord, exalted as such by God and confessed as such by the faithful. The disciples, like faithful dogs listening to their master's voice, are more than willing to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. Gathered here at Bethany, they want toknow if THIS is the time when he is going to fix things up once and for all. Is this the time we will take care of them? All they need to know is when it's going to happen, and they will start salivating. There is a story in Buddhism about the disciple who asks his master when he will achieve enlightenment. "As long as you are still asking this question," the Master says, "you will never be enlightened." The response of Jesus is similar here. Don't worry about when, he says. That is not for you to know. For the disciples, and for all of us, Jesus is Lord not because the bell rings and he satisfies our every hunger, but Jesus is Lord because we have opened our lives to be conformed to his ways. When will he restore the kingdom to Israel? Not to worry. They will receive the spiritual power to transform this world, they will be witnesses. The disciples want to know when it is going to happen, as if it didn't concern them. But if they have said 'Jesus is Lord,' if they with God have exalted him in their hearts and minds to be guided and transformed by him, allowing his will to be done through them on earth as it is in heaven, as the prayer says, then just possibly one day, certainly one day they will wake up to discover that Christ has indeed returned and is alive in their midst, as indeed we are the body of Christ insofar as we behave like the body of Christ. The message for us here in this church on the eve of Pentecost is that we have gathered like those early disciple, to be empowered. The bell rings, the bread is broken, and those who hunger see the body of Christ coming alive as the bread is shared out and the cup is passed. We come to be fed by our master. And then there's this amazing twist: we discover that we are only truly nourished when, having exalted Jesus as Lord of our hearts and minds, we become bread for the hungry world around us. The Christian faith has this crazy way of answering questions. Are you hungry? You will only be satisfied when you become bread for others. Do you seek consolation? You will only be truly consoled once you learn to console. Do you seek pardon? You will learn to pardon. Imprisoned? You will liberate the lives around you. Will you live? You must learn first to die. One great concern of our society is security. We live in fear that the world around us is overwhelming us, so we strike out. In the Observer this morning it says we experience more incidents of racial harrassment and violence in Britain than any other European nation. Do you want security? Then, for the Christian, that means GIVING security, welcoming asylum seekers and providing for their welfare. Too often we want to view our faith as an insurance policy when what we need is a driving license. "Why are you standing there looking up into heaven," the two witnesses dressed in white ask the disciples. This Jesus will come in the same way you saw him go, they say, verse 11.. In other words, as he is exalted by God and by us through our faithfullness, by our living, teaching and serving as he did, so he will come when all confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; when justice, compassion and truth reign, we can say Jesus is here. Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus. As he is exalted among us, so he comes.... We are invited to take up our discipleship and walk together into a future that is unknown, by nature a mystery, equipped only with our faithfulness and the world-changing power of the Spirit that lives through us. Paul says, 1 Corinthians 13, that we only know in part. But we should not therefore be discouraged, for we are also part of what we know. As companions of Christ we are called, empowered by the Holy Spirit and filled with the fullness of God our Father to bring Jesus Christ to this world, that there be justice, mercy, peace and thanksgiving in his name. Rev Dr Tom Arthur
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