When I was a little girl I had a big backyard. I loved to lay down in the grass, or lean way back in a swing, and look at the clouds move against the blue sky. I was brought up going to Sunday School each week, and taught that Jesus is always with me and looks down on me, and loves me. And having a vague idea from cartoons or somewhere that God is in the sky, I decided Jesus was up there too. So I can remember as a kid spending fair amounts of time in the backyard trying to see Jesus in the clouds. I mean, if he stands on the cloud, maybe sometimes he gets close enough to an edge, and if I just were to look at the right angle, I'd have to glimpse the top of his head! I must've been a weird kid, hours spent in this search. . .
In retrospect, maybe I got this idea from hearing the readings on one Ascension Sunday. Acts reads, “When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”
When you picture this, Jesus being lifted up and taken away by a cloud, you probably picture puffy white, “heavenly” clouds, which would be illustrated by preschoolers with cotton balls.
But our news lately has not just been blue skies and puffy clouds. It seems that this spring, or this last year, has brought news of an irregular number of dark clouds. These clouds have brought tornadoes, floods, or even holding out and caused droughts, as in some parts of the Southwest. Last week after church a member showed me pictures of their families' homes in Joplin, Missouri, practically leveled by the tornado. It is scary, and I say that as someone completely safe and sheltered from these storm clouds.
Perhaps closer to home, clouds are also a metaphor for depression and sadness. We sometimes describe our darker moods and sadness as cloudy, and recognize immediately the mood of cartoon characters with stormclouds drawn around the head.
Clouds are associated with heavenly, angelic imagery, but they also hold powerful force and darkness. All of it can leave us wrapped up in watching those clouds – the destructive ones in the news and the clouds hanging over our heads in our personal lives.
Clouds are an important part of biblical imagery. Some of the most pivotal parts of the story of God's people involve a cloud. The cloud descends on Mt. Sinai when Moses ascends to speak to God. The cloud leads God's people by day out of Egypt in the Exodus. A cloud descending and appearing at these climactic moments is a clear indicator of the close presence of God. I picture a cloud breaking when the heavens open and the dove descends as God's voice speaks at Jesus' baptism. At Jesus' transfiguration, a cloud descends on them, and God's voice comes from the cloud.
These dramatic scenes of clouds rolling in and signaling a special event leave us standing agape, mouths open, waiting for the next act in the show. I can relate to the disciples, standing there as the cloud takes Jesus away from them. In Acts it says “they were gazing up toward heaven,” and maybe those disciples just kept standing there, long after Jesus disappeared, just watching that spot. So two angels appear to help out – to refocus them from their stares at the sky. The angels say to the disciples, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
This is why the ascension of our Lord is so important. When I was a little girl and used to look at the clouds for Jesus, it was tough. My neck would get sore from craning it around, and I felt so much pressure to find Jesus. And looking at our own lives and the building clouds is tough. If we are stuck looking to the clouds, we are chained to this one stance. But in the ascension, we are freed from looking always up, and refocused right here on earth. In the ascension, Jesus returns to the Father, but also Jesus is ascending to be present with us here, at his table. Jesus blesses the disciples right before he ascends, and that blessing continues. Because Jesus ascends, we are freed from trying to find – Jesus finds you! Jesus finds you here at the table, and in each way that we are church, the very body of Christ, together. It was a relief when I realized I could not find Jesus in the clouds, but rather in communion, in ministry, in the work the Holy Spirit does around us. The ascension helps us realize how God has freed us to the Spirit's work here on earth. N.T. Wright puts it, “To embrace the ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.”
The first disciples of Jesus got to see him, and spent their time following him from place to place, learning. The ascension turns the disciples, who had learned from Jesus through firsthand knowledge, into apostles, now sent out to serve. And you notice in Luke's account the disciples respond to the ascension with worship! Worship, and joy, and blessing God in the temple.
In ascending, Jesus makes us his body, the church together. Jesus is present where this meal is served, and how we serve as church in the world. The church that stands together, no matter what clouds may gather. When the tornado struck Springfield Massachusetts last week, it hit just down the street from where the New England Synod gathering was to be held in just a couple days. But drawn together in Christ's name, the synod gathered as planned, and their service projects in the Springfield area yesterday took on deeper meaning.
The clouds may gather, but we are freed to serve, freed to worship with joy. Jesus ascension does not mean he disappears from us, but fulfills all, including his presence among us always in the Holy Spirit. Here at the table, Jesus promises to be present, and from it we stand and are sent out into the world. Amen.
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