When you end a dinner or social and are ready to leave, you make a simple gesture of saying goodbye. That lasts, maybe… 5 seconds? Even at a party, you still make a round brief goodbye or handshake perhaps lasting up to 10-15 seconds. Some may at times be good at being direct or abrupt. However, in the deaf world, the briefest goodbye may last 10-15 minutes. Perhaps it is more midwestern culture, but I was often shocked as a child at how long friends and family could take to say goodbye. They could say they were leaving and still be standing and talking in the driveway an hour later.
It can be hard to say goodbye, whether it’s after a short visit from family or friends or a goodbye that lasts a lifetime. I still remember after rehearsing and planning the goodbye for months how unprepared I felt when saying goodbye to my parents and brother as they dropped me off in my freshman dorm room. This time of year many are saying goodbye to their teacher, students, and classmates after deeply forged ways of learning and growing to perhaps never interact more and not to be the same person going into a new chapter. There are goodbyes when dear friends move across the country, when someone retires, or when a relationship ends and the goodbye of a loved one when nearing the end of life and final goodbyes spoken, or sometimes only experienced with deep heartache and longing. It can seem so surreal, odd or painful but I’ve had those moments of church members telling me goodbye at the back church door and on their death bed.
The English word “goodbye” is a shortened version of “God be with you.” So every time you say goodbye to someone you’re giving them a blessing in disguise: God be with you on your journey, God keep you safe, God hold you and keep you in whatever lies ahead. And the French and German phrases for goodbye, ‘au revoir’ and ‘auf Weidersehen,’ mean ’til we see each other again, which is kind of a happy and hopeful, “see you again soon.”
When I traveled back to my alma mater just over a month ago for a conference I saw familiar faces I had not seen in years and was uncertain when we would communicate again. I found myself repeating: “until next time.”
In the rhythm of the church year, this is the season of saying goodbye. For some time now we’ve been watching Jesus prepare his disciples for his goodbye in today’s scripture readings: the Ascension of Jesus into the clouds as he promises the gift of the Holy Spirit which the church calendar marks this week – the 40th day after Easter. As Jesus practices the art of departure, he invites us to think about what it means to say goodbye with intention, with mindfulness, and with love. After Jesus was raised from the dead, imagine how thrilled his followers were to see him again, to realize that that first goodbye, on the night before he died, was more of a “see you again soon,” than a final blessing. But now just before he is lifted into the clouds, Jesus gives them a goodbye blessing—God be with you. Jesus tells them the good news, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses …to the ends of the earth.”
He ascends to the heavens. Yet white-robed men say he will return in the same way. And then he says: Don’t forget. I’m coming back to you. Indeed, at Pentecost, which we celebrate next Sunday, his Spirit comes to all the earth.
How do you explain this most peculiar of a church holiday: the Ascension — just beam me up and Jesus is gone? But really how can we explain the mystery of life and death?
So Jesus leaves. And then comes back. And now he’s everywhere. Transcending space and time. Connected in a mystical, mysterious way that transcends space and time. The scientific concept of quantum entanglement is when two particles that have previously interacted with each other behave as one, even though they are separated by distance.
Perhaps that is how we can feel connected to someone who has died. Think Jesus. Praying for his disciples. Separated by space and time. Yet somehow we are one with him.
For Martin Luther, when the scripture says that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, that doesn’t mean a literal heavenly place. The reformers and church leaders fought over the creed’s words that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God as being more of a place of connection and power than a literal physical place. So Jesus ascended into heaven. But he didn’t “go” anywhere. Or that he is gone. We sense that he is with us. Especially in the bread and wine. But also in the community, both here today, and around the world. And through time as well. But especially in our neighbors and in all who suffer.
Though we cannot explain it scientifically or understand it fully, we confess with other Christians around the world that “on the third day he rose again and ascended into heaven. His body we see and experience through the bodies and actions of others who witness in his name. That remembering Jesus’ resurrection is a resurrection faith [for David and] for all of us.
Yet we certainly experience the absence of such things, don’t we? We know the longing for an unfulfilled life. We know the grief of a broken heart. [Our hearts of sympathy and compassion are with David, Ken, and Denyse and family at the death of your father, of those who mourn and miss Pastor Dave] We know the absence springing from loneliness. We know how overwhelming it is to confront the grief of the cross and climate change, gun violence, racism, poverty, illness, and the many inequities among the children of the earth.
An insight from studying the book of Revelation is the concept that heaven comes to us. For those who enter the book’s apocalyptic vision, we see our world—our cities—in a new way. All who are thirsty, come to the water of life, the author invites us at the end of the book in today’s reading.
As Professor Thomas Long puts it, “In Acts when Jesus is ‘taken up to heaven,’ this is not a spatial claim, but an announcement that Jesus has been taken up ‘into the very life that is now forthcoming toward us.’ Heaven is God’s unbounded love breaking into every situation, stronger than any loss, even death. We don’t go to heaven; heaven comes to us.”
It seems like we are always coming and going. Sometimes going in circles. Trying to figure out our lives. Trying to just go on. Trying to make sense of our place in the vast universe. Even with all the connections around us, we can feel so alone.
We too look heavenward and wonder about the future of our earth. And yet our faith calls us to have our feet on the ground. To tend the world given into our care. To devote ourselves to prayer. And wait with longing for Christ to come again. Whether in a piece of bread. The eyes of a stranger. Or the hand of a dying loved one.
Christ is risen. Christ has gone up but is here. In our coming and goings, may we be open to the mystery. And to connections beyond.
The angels asked, “…why do you stand here looking into the sky?” The new life hope is lived in the mission field Jesus calls us to is down here, in front of us, to our right and our left. We are not abandoned, but allowed to love fiercely and boldly in Jesus’ name. The Holy Spirit is with us now and empowers us to receive the fullness of God’s love and to share that love and peace with others. May go out this day to boldly serve in Jesus’ name right here and to the ends of the earth.
