These days, I serve in a thriving church that is a miracle. The pews we once roped off are full on Sundays. Babies squall in the nursery. The leaky roof has been replaced. We have stupid-big plans for a future with affordable housing and expanded staff. We do not have a lot of money, and no one would describe our church as institutionally secure. But we live by faith. And day by day, we have enough.
Before this resurrection of life, we went through a long, slow season of dying. In those days of failure and shame and loss, I frequently turned to one scene in Scripture, because it felt so true: Matthew’s account of the Great Commission and Jesus’ Ascension (28:16-20). In spirit, if not in flesh, I was standing, stunned, with the 11 disciples at the foot of a mountain: mouths open, necks craning, hands held to forehead to shield squinting eyes from the sun, desperate for a last sight. Behind us was a season of whiplash: full of dread, hope, fear, tenderness, violence, shattering loss and emptiness, followed by unfathomable presence, joy and holy confusion. And now Jesus was gone. Again.
For a season, his followers had him back, walking and eating and praying and ministering with them. In that time, they saw and experienced convincing signs, but his physical presence must have strengthened and reassured them most.
For a season, his followers had him back, walking and eating and praying and ministering with them. In that time, they saw and experienced convincing signs, but his physical presence must have strengthened and reassured them most. Now, he has ascended to the right hand of the Father. Good for him, but . . . they must have felt abandoned. Not only had he left them again, but look what he had left them with: an impossible and undesirable assignment. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (28:19-20).
Jesus, for all his cryptic promises of presence, is gone. The disciples still love him — they remain absolutely committed to his teachings and worldview. Once you’ve decided to follow Jesus, as the song goes, there’s no turning back. However, it appears and feels as though they are on their own for this next part of the journey. That being the case, they unsurprisingly found ways to delay and deny the final assignment. Before we go to any other nations, we’ll return to a secure location in Jerusalem. Before we make any disciples, we’ll design a decent and orderly process to fill the opening on the board of the apostles.
Abandoned by the one who had turned their lives upside down, overwhelmed (and maybe even repelled?) by the work given to them, the disciples busied themselves with institutional succession plans.
If Jesus is with us, then where is he?
Perhaps you can relate? At the center of your life and identity is a real and authentic love and commitment to Jesus Christ, but also a profound experience of his absence and your own abandonment.
Perhaps you can relate? At the center of your life and identity is a real and authentic love and commitment to Jesus Christ, but also a profound experience of his absence and your own abandonment. If Jesus is with us, then where is he? The work he left us to complete is impossible. Revitalize the church? With what power? With what money? With whose children? Make disciples? Even if we could, do we want to? Surely we would do better to fill critical vacancies by recruiting from within. After all, we are a connectional church.
In our church’s long season of death and disorientation – when what I knew and loved didn’t work anymore, but I was afraid to know anything else – I functioned like an atheist. Everything was up to me. What I could not accomplish myself could not be done. I practiced faith and ministry as though I lived in the three-tiered cosmos I first encountered in cartoons.
You’re too sophisticated to believe in it. Still, you know what I’m talking about: that primitive view of the cosmos that places earth in the middle, above a lower level where bad people suffer eternally, but separate and beneath the upper, outer realm called heaven.
You’re too sophisticated to believe in it. Still, you know what I’m talking about: that primitive view of the cosmos that places earth in the middle, above a lower level where bad people suffer eternally, but separate and beneath the upper, outer realm called heaven. If you are good, you go up when you die. If you are bad, you go down when you die. And while you are alive, you just hang out in the middle waiting to find out whether you’ve rolled a chute or a ladder.
Even though I never would have preached it, I did not experience the presence of Jesus in the way I used to. Despite a mildly promising start, I was not capable of completing the assignment that lay before me. So I stood with the disciples watching Jesus’ toes disappear into the clouds, trying to smother my despair with more appropriate feelings of gratitude. Jesus had come down and done his thing for a time. But now he had gone up there somewhere, and we’re left down here with memories and vibes. Someday, thanks to amazing grace, it will be our turn to go up too.
What do we do now?
When we think that Jesus left us on our own, the thought typically leads us to one of two lived responses. In the first, we get serious about working. Jesus made a good start, so let’s finish the job. Let’s build God’s kingdom on earth for God: feed people, keep the children safe and make God’s covenant the law of the realm, by carrot or stick. We are people on a holy mission. So we will work every day of the week, sacrifice everything we have, and hold nothing back. This response leads to all kinds of evil. Nothing is more dangerous than a depleted human convinced that God has authorized them to do what it takes to rid the world of evil.
The second typical response is equally dangerous and destructive. When we believe we are on our own, we get serious about hiding. For some believers, hiding looks like moving to the middle of nowhere and building a bunker. But for Presbyterians, hiding looks like turning our full spiritual attention inward, seeking a Presbyterian expert for every problem — fearing and (politely) shunning anything that doesn’t come branded with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) logo. We avoid anything we do not already know how to accomplish with excellence and expediency. We invest in our endowments. We protect ourselves at all costs, because what we have is all we have. What we know is all we will ever know. Jesus is up there, and we are down here on our own.
Both responses are very natural. And each makes us so, so vulnerable to evil. Each is based on this ubiquitous misunderstanding of creation as a three-level hierarchy. Our spiritual ancestors certainly understood reality in that way. That is one reason Jesus astonished them when he said not “the kingdom of God is up there, and here’s how to be good and earn your spot” but rather “the kingdom of God is at hand” (4:17). The kingdom of heaven is near … here. Most astonishingly, the kingdom of God is in our midst. God is not up there in some other realm, looking down on us. God is here, in the midst of us foolish, feeble, half-hearted, weak believers.
We are not abandoned
Even in those seasons when we stand looking up with the 11 disciples – straining for a last, fleeting glance, feeling alone and overwhelmed – we are not abandoned. Jesus has not left us on some holy elevator. He tells his followers so in the very moment of his apparent departure: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:20). Jesus’ return to the Father does not mean what we think it means. Jesus has not left us, because God’s kingdom is not up there or out there. Now and always, it’s in our midst. It’s near to us now. It’s hidden but present in our tense session meetings, our half-empty sanctuaries, even as our faith is smothered by fear. We can straighten our necks because it’s not coming from the top down — it’s growing from the bottom up.
Jesus has not left us
…our new life begins when we are filled with the Holy Spirit.
But he has commissioned us. He has chosen us for a particular life, one that isn’t possible apart from him. So our new life begins when we are filled with the Holy Spirit. And the indwelling of the Holy Spirit manifests differently for each of us. Not everyone experiences ecstatic gifting or powers. But when we invite the Spirit that animated the body of Jesus of Nazareth into our hearts, we will no longer be people who love Jesus, know about him or work for him. We will be the people filled by his presence. We will become wholly new — not just reformed, but always reforming in Christ. And the Spirit that is in us won’t be of us. We will become wholly new and, at the same time, more authentically ourselves than we have ever been.
And we will begin to see through the eyes of Christ, which means we will no longer live as though what we can accomplish is all that is possible. We will embrace failure and loss as acceptable outcomes. We will know things that we do not understand. We will make choices that only make sense because we already live as citizens of the shalom kingdom of God. Our first question will be “Is it faithful?” not “Will it work?” And for many of us, life with Christ will involve as much unlearning as learning — and beauty and glory are found in that.
We can live like Jesus
When we are filled with the Spirit of Jesus, we begin to live like Jesus: free and unafraid.
When we are filled with the Spirit of Jesus, we begin to live like Jesus: free and unafraid. We don’t live this way because we believe nothing bad will ever happen to us, or because we naively think we will never fail or lose. Rather, we know the wisdom revealed on the cross: the destructive powers of sin and death and violence are real, but the loving goodness of God is the greater power. Sin could not make God stop loving us. Death could not hold on to Jesus. And the cross, fashioned by the Roman Empire to compel obedience through the threat of violence and death, has itself been transformed by divine love.
What does it mean not to know this for a theology exam, not to agree with it in a sermon, but rather to live in community as though this transformation is true? When the community I serve felt bleakest, I turned to a mentor for guidance and encouragement. I explained how the treasurer had told me that we would run out of money in three months, how another four households had left the church in disgust, and how only 22 people had attended worship the previous Sunday. I asked him whether it was time for me to quit all this foolishness, to resign and begin looking for another call.
He told me instead that it was time to reach out to every member of the congregation who had left and offer to pray with them and listen to them. When I complained, he told me that new people wouldn’t come unless I remained a faithful pastor to those who left as well as those who remained in the community.
I was so frustrated that I couldn’t help expressing my bitterness: “But I can’t get new people to come!”
His eyes widened in surprise: “Of course you can’t. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.”
I opened my mouth to protest again about how unfair it was that I had to depend on the Holy Spirit in my work as a pastor. In that moment, I knew that I did not trust the Holy Spirit. I wanted to work for Jesus. But I wanted to do ministry with guaranteed outcomes. I wanted to depend on myself. In that moment, I realized how foolish I was being. Anne Lamott said the opposite of faith is certainty. I agree, and I also would boldly add “control.”
When it comes to church vitality, only one thing matters. Jesus is with us – even when we cannot see evidence of his presence, even when all we feel is his absence. It is OK to be afraid. It is OK to be weak. It is OK that we are called to do a thing we do not have the capacity to accomplish. We don’t get to choose our assignment. We don’t get to choose our outcomes. No matter how hard we work, we don’t even get to choose whether we survive. Only one choice is open to us, only one thing is in our control: whether we will risk being faithful. Today. With what we have, be it much or little. But that is all Jesus asks of us. Good news: only when we are forced to trust Jesus can we discover that he is trustworthy.
