May 25th 2003

Pastor Christa von Zychlin

Our Savior’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Hartland, WI.  53029

Ascension Sunday

Hidden By a Cloud

It happened again this past Monday.  I always love it when it happens, particularly if it’s my day off, which it was.  My mother, on the other hand, wasn’t pleased one bit.  She had somewhere to go, a friend to visit, and a four hour car trip home. 

But I was pleased, to look out the window & see it again, the fog, “on little cat feet”, as Carl Sandburg puts it,

Do you remember his exquisite 22 word poem?

 FOG 

The fog comes to our house in Merton township, softening the contours of the trees, the road.  Our neighbors barn dissolves, and it is as if we are sitting on a magical mountain in the clouds.

That’s when, if like me on Mondays, you have no particular place you’ve got to be, & you have the leisure to sip your morning coffee, trusting your kids’ school bus driver to know the route like the back of his hand,  you can delight to rest in the cloud of unknowing until the air clears, much later, and you set off to do the things that must be done.

But for my mother, it was very different, she had an appointment to keep, and to misquote another Carl Sandburg poem:

“The fog is lovely, soft and deep.
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

+++++++++

How often is your connection to God clouded, by something like a fog, misty, nearly impenetrable, & depending on all the other factors going on in your life, either discouragingly murky, or maybe, deliciously mysterious?

Today we are celebrating the Ascension of Jesus.  This little understood event takes place after the Death & the awesome Resurrection of Jesus and before the Big Blast of the Arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. What happens is this, Jesus has spent the days after his death & resurrection, making appearances to the disciples.  He shows himself to the women first.  With his new, resurrected body, he can & does go through locked doors, he can & does eat a Sunday night  fish fry with his disciples, he can & does show the cynics in the crowd the nail scars in his hands & feet., and apparently conducts a review session with his disciples Acts 1vs 3:  “After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”

The disciples then, understandably,  want to know the plan: Acts chapter 1 vs. 6  “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

What’s the next action step?  Show us the 5 year plan!

And almost by way of reply, the fog rolls in.  A big fat cumulous cloud begins to cover Jesus.  He responds:

Vs. 7 “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority…”

How I wish that some of our earnest, fundamentalist, Christian brothers & sisters would reread this verse, and not spend quite so much time trying to pinpoint the second coming of Christ & the end of the world as we know it;

…how I wish that I as a pastor could better appreciate this verse when it comes to knowing the exact future God has in mind for the growth of this congregation. 

…How I wish that we all would hear this word as good news when it comes to believing that God has a plan & an authority over each of our individual lives, even though we may not know what those plans & purposes are. Acts ch 1 verse 7 is a good one to have underlined in your Bibles:  It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority…”  but also underline verse vs. 8 “you will receive power and you will be my witnesses.”

Now the  Ascension of Jesus into heaven  takes place 40 days after his resurrection. The coming of the Holy Spirit takes place on Pentecost, which we know is 50 days after the resurrection, which to my calculation,  gives us 10 days of…fog: Jesus is ascended – he’s not physically here on earth anymore, neither in his old body nor in his new resurrected body, and that promised blast of the Holy Spirit, when the disciples are given the ability & the drive to speak the Gospel, teach the Gospel & do miracles that change people’s lives in the light of the Gospel… that’s not happened yet.

So in a sense it’s an obscure little holiday, a (    )  parenthesis, this Ascension Day, but as we read God’s word in the first chapter of the book of Acts, if you are one of those people, who feels right now that  there is a cloud surrounding this Jesus of Nazareth, that there is a cloud surrounding your faith connection with God, if you’re a person who’s got places to go and things you want to DO in this life, and every time you pick up the Bible or go to church or listen to one of Pastor Christa’s sermons, you can just feel that big old cumulous cloud coming & surrounding your brain, (or maybe that’s just with Pastor Wayne’s sermons)  if you’re a person who  like the earnest disciples just wants to know what the next step is exactly--

Then this Ascension Day parenthesis is some pretty good news, I think.

Maybe you’ve just graduated from  college and you haven’t a clue what the next step is going to be.   Maybe like Brianne, Chelsea, & Dylan, you were just baptized last night and you don’t know exactly what God’s next plan is for you.

Maybe you’re about to be an empty nester, or you’re a step away from your first retirement, and You want to know what the future holds, you want Jesus to be clear in his directions for the next step in your life.

Then this is the holiday of the church for you! --  Ascension Day, when the clouds roll in.

For some of us this little church holiday is rather painful, deeply humbling,  for some of us, it comes as an enormous relief  & respite to rediscover

To reread

To realize

that

We have a God who

Sometimes purposefully hides himself from us.

There is a lovely theological term for this

Deus absconditus   --  The hidden God

“Verily,”  the King James version of the Bible –which I do occasionally dig out –reads

“Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Savior…

They shall be ashamed and confounded  (the unbelievers)… but Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded…” (Isaiah 45:15)

Deus absconditus is not the absence of God

But the hiddeness of God

The Ascension of Jesus reminds us that occasional hiddenness is part of the plan & (!) personality of God:

How often is your connection to God clouded, by something like a fog, misty, nearly impenetrable, & depending on all the other factors going on in your life, either discouragingly murky, or deliciously mysterious?

May the Word of God comfort you today, knowing that you can delight to rest in the cloud of unknowing until the air clears, the Spirit moves,  and then you will set off to do the things that God gives you to get done.

“You will receive power, you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth”, says Jesus.

So listen to the angels in Acts 1 vs. 11: stop gawking up, stop sighing in despair,

Wait, watch & pray

The fog will lift, and God’s action step will come clear.

AMEN.

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