We just heard what’s called the Ascension Gospel, from Luke. 

At Easter Jesus returns from the dead, but things don’t just go back to the way they were before. He’s alive again, but he’s not with his friends in the same way – walking and eating and talking and laughing together, the way they used to.

He’s there sometimes – but he’s different, even when he’s there.

And then there’s a moment when he says, I have to leave now. You’re not going to see me anymore – at least, not the same way. It’s time for you to take this on, take this out – what you’ve seen and heard and experienced with me. It’s time for you to stop being a community gathered around me, and start being a community scattered out into the world. No longer disciples, which means a community of students, learners, but apostles, which means, people sent out to do something. 

The Gospels describe this moment in different ways, but there’s a common thread of receiving marching orders. In John’s Gospel, we heard the story of Jesus’ last appearance to his friends a few weeks ago, when he made breakfast for them on the beach and told Peter to tend his sheep. In Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples, Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them and baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In Luke – well, actually, in the first chapter of Luke’s sequel, the Book of Acts, when he tells the same story again with a little more detail – Jesus tells the disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit, and then, once they have received the Spirit to empower them, to be Jesus’ witnesses and spread the Gospel in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. 

But even as Jesus is telling his friends what they’re supposed to do once he’s gone, he’s also telling them that they are not left alone, not abandoned. 

In Luke there’s the promise of the Holy Spirit to dwell with them and guide them. In John’s Gospel, on the last evening before his death, Jesus talks a lot about how he and those who follow him will always be bound together in holy love. Abide in me, and I will abide in you. And Matthew’s Gospel ends with Jesus’ words, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” 

Abide in me, and I will abide in you. 

Lo, I am with you always. 

It’s easy to think of God as far away. Something we have to go looking for, probably at a great distance and with considerable effort. 

It’s harder – at least, I find it harder – to recognize, to remember, that God is as close as my next breath. 

Even though that’s what Scripture assures us. 

Even though I have found it true, many times over.

The fifth century North African theologian Saint Augustine wrote, “O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, you were within me, but I was outside myself, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you.” 

Elsewhere he writes that God is “closer to me than I am to myself.” 

Sometimes, I know this. 

I am working on knowing this more deeply and more consistently. 

My fledgling and faltering contemplative practice helps. 

But it’s not easy. 

It’s not as if I can just go into a quiet room, put down my phone, close my eyes, and experience the presence of God, guaranteed every time. 

There’s at least as much jumble and chaos and noise inside of me as there is outside. 

But I’m very slowly learning to trust, just a little bit more, that God’s in there too. Waiting in my heart, in my depths, to meet me. 

Jalaluddin Rumi was a 13th-century Muslim poet and mystic – meaning, someone who seeks oneness with God. 

In Islam Jesus is seen as an honored prophet, thought not as God. And our Gospels are taken seriously as holy texts, though the Quran is primary. 

I think it’s important for Christians to be cautious and respectful in using other traditions’ holy texts and symbols as part of our own religious reflection. 

But in the poem I’d like to read you, Rumi quotes the Gospel of Matthew, so I feel like this is fair game. 

He begins with a playful idea: one night, the full moon appears inside his house. 

But he and his friends run outside, looking at the sky. Where’s the moon? The whole neighborhood wakes up; everyone’s out in the street, looking for the moon, or just confused. Is the cat-burglar back? What’s going on? … 

All that commotion, looking for the moon, when the moon is right there inside Rumi’s house. 

Then he writes, 

“Lo, I am with you always, means that when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, 

In the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self, 

Or things that have happened to you.

There’s no need to go outside. 

Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.”

Pause. 

I love this story from Acts. We’ve done it as a drama before – with the girl shouting over and over again, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation,” until Paul sends the spirit out of her in sheer exasperation. 

I think we’re meant to understand that the “spirit of divination” that makes this unnamed girl holler at Paul and Silas made good money for her owner, because it could predict the future, perhaps helping people make good investments or bets. That’s why Paul and Silas end up in jail for performing this exorcism, sending the spirit away. 

Luke would probably say that the point of this story is the power of God, working through and for the apostles. But I also see something here about human worth. This girl is only valued because of something she can do – or something that a spirit can do, though her. I hope that this story is an unbinding, a liberation, for her, a chance to be more fully herself. She matters because she’s a beloved child of God, not because she makes money for those who claim to own her. 

And then there’s the jailer – who is ready to take his own life because he expects to be executed, for having failed at his duty, having lost the prisoners placed in his charge. But he, too, matters because he’s a beloved child of God, not because of how he does or doesn’t perform the work of his role. 

Today I have the privilege of baptizing a child into God’s church. I will never, ever take that for granted. Today we all have the privilege of praying for and welcoming that child.

Our baptismal rite testifies to our belovedness, and to God’s nearness. 

Each of us: named before God, in God’s name.

Each of us: marked as Christ’s own, forever. Lo, I am with you always. 

Each of us: endowed by the Holy Spirit with curiosity, insight, courage, and the capacities for love, wonder, and joy. 

Beloved and worthy – as our human selves, mortal, messy, and magnificent; and also, always, as temples of the presence of the Holy, that Beauty, ever ancient and ever new, as near as your next breath. 

Let’s continue with the rite of Holy Baptism…