Sunday after the Ascension by Fr Jack

Acts 1.6-14

1 St Peter 4 12-14,5.6-11

St John 17.1-11

Where are we looking?

‘Men of Galilee why are you looking up there?’

So goes St Luke’s account in the Acts of the Apostles of the events of Ascension Day. On Thursday we marked these events, 40 days after His resurrection Jesus goes home to heaven. And now we await the Holy Spirit, next Sunday, at Pentecost. These are great days. A human being, Jesus, reigns in heaven, so that our humanity will be at home there too with Him. But we aren’t just marking time until we go home to heaven! No, there is wonderful stuff to be done, and the coming Holy Spirit will do it with us. Alleluia!

So, men of Galilee, why are you looking over there?

Today, we might ask ourselves, in the light of these great events and what God is doing, where are we looking?

In asking ourselves this, I think we find something fundamentally true of the human condition on the one hand, and spiritual truth on the other.

First the human condition. Where are we looking?

Everywhere, metaphorically and literally we are building higher fences to keep people and things safe.

We look to protections and fences (in lots of different ways), without ever acknowledging that we can’t actually build a safe and good society by just having more and more fences. Instead, we need to persuade people to choose not to hurt one another, and to love and serve one another. Protection isn’t life-giving, but only ever mitigation.

Where are we looking? We look to political leaders and captains of industry to provide a better world for us all, and are constantly disappointed by their inability or lack of desire to do this. Be they cast as saints or sinners, they disappoint our hopes, and always will.

Where are we looking? A little bit more. A little bit more money or time or health or more of this or that. I know its not true, but I still end up living as if just a little bit more x or y would sort everything.

The trouble is, even when you line up your yacht (literal or metaphorical) in the harbour, there is always someone with a bigger boat than you next-door, and always will be; comparison being the thief of all joy.

Where are we looking? I saw on social media (as if looking at that is going to help me!) a man pouring his whole life into trying to reverse ageing.

I don’t claim to be a Yoda full of wisdom, but what about trying to actually live? Life (this life, anyway) is a finite gift. And as difficult as it is to say and hear, perhaps this life’s finitude is part of its beauty and gift? Psalm 104 today puts such wisdom on our tongues; we would do well to live that way, to take Psalm 104 as our pattern for life.   

Anyway, so you see, ‘men of Galilee’, where are young looking? Why are you looking over there? Is all part of the human condition. looking, often, in the wrong place. Attending, desiring, and being defined by the things that are not life in all its fullness.

So what might it mean to look in a better direction? Here is the spiritual truth.

Here we ordinary Christians can draw on monastic wisdom. And it’s that the life of the monk or nun is, in some sense, an attempt to fill one’s gaze, one’s field of vision, with Christ. All those services, chewing through psalms day after day. All those walls covered in crucifixes and holy images. Structures and habits (both the timetable of the day, and the habits they wear to define their experience of life together); all of it is an attempt to be constantly reminded and returned to God.

And that principle goes for all of us, not just monastics. Living in a particular way, habits and practices and relationships that, in so doing, fill our field of vision, our gaze with Christ.

I remember an eclipse when I was a boy. We went up onto Epsom Downs and all put on plastic spectacles with cardboard lenses, I think, with tiny pin holes in them, through which we could safely look at the eclipse.

Well, the Christian life isn’t blocked out with just a tiny pinhole. The Christian life is acquiring ever-larger spectacles, with ever-wider and more encompassing boundaries, all of which are filled not with cardboard, but Christ.

A life, through which we begin to see the world through Christ. Like seeing through a stained glass window, Christ shapes, colours and interprets how we see the world. We see, more and more through His mercy and love, His gentleness and fire. To see friend and stranger refracted through Christ, because more and more you are seeing only Christ, and seeing Him everywhere in everyone.

And this invitation is not esoteric or vague. It is a way of seeing all of life more truthfully. It’s almost an anthropology, and an intensely practical one. Because to fill your gaze with christ you have to do stuff. Read the Bible, receive Holy Communion regularly and purposefully, spend time in silent prayer with Christ. Have Christ in your homes in images, crosses, icons. Have Christ on your tongue in little prayers and remembrances across the day. Invite Christ to your table by saying a prayer before and after meals, and to your desk by praying before work, or before starting that piece of writing or opening your email inbox. There’s a million ways to begin to do it. They might seem a little artificial at first, but persist and they will simply become who you are.

If we are to follow St Peter’s instructions today, to withstand life’s slings and arrows, and the vicissitudes of this world, then this is how we actually get on and do it. Not by filling our minds eye with slings and arrows and our worries about them, but by filling our gaze with Christ, and meeting life’s challenges through Him, with Him and in Him.

And, men of Galilee, all this takes decades (which is why monasticism takes a whole life to have a proper go at). But we do change, as we see Christ more and more, and our gaze is filled more and more with Him.

The trouble is, we probably won’t know that it’s happening. Because we’re looking at Him, not ourselves. Those who have grown in this way often don’t feel holier or closer to God. Usually, if we think we are holy and close to God, it rather proves that we’re not! But those around us may see the change in us. It is likely to be gradual and faltering. Usually, real things are gradual and faltering.

But slowly, slowly we will be becoming who Christ prays us to be becoming in today’s Gospel. To be people who are stepping into eternal life, here and now. Ones who are one with Him, in the one-ness of the Father. It’s all a matter, men of Galilee, as to where we are looking.