Abandonment Issues
Seventh Sunday after Pascha – the Sunday of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council.
- Vespers:
- Genesis 14:14-20
- Deuteronomy 1:8-11
- Deuteronomy 10:14-21
- Matins:
- John 21:1-14 (Matins Gospel 10)
- Liturgy:
- Acts 20:16-18, 28-36
- John 17:1-13
- Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
- Psalm 1
- 1 John 5:9-13
- John 17:6-19
And now I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.
E ARE IN A between time, a liminal time. Christ has ascended into heaven (on Thursday) but the Holy Spirit won’t be here until next week. In the Eastern Rite liturgy we’ve stopped singing, “Christ is Risen from the dead” to begin every service. For the last 40 days this has replaced the prayer, “Come Heavenly King”. But, as of yet, we do not sing “Come Heavenly King” either. There is, in fact, no opening prayer: services just start… and this 9 days without opening always feels to me as if it were a dead time. Ironic since we are still celebrating the 50 Days of Pascha. Kneeling is still prohibited and, in the old rite, there was no fasting now. Among the Antiochians there is still no fasting in this season. But the even-older tradition of the church was for there to be a 10 day fast leading up to Pentecost… all things change. Perhaps that switch back and forth – fasting, no fasting, fasting, no fasting, is another reason these few days seem liminal and vague.
In liturgical space, Jesus has ascended but not yet prayed the Father to send the Holy Spirit. In one Gospel Story, though, the Holy Spirit came after the Resurrection, Jesus breathing it on the Apostles. In the others it’s an assumed thing. Only Luke gives us this break and his version of ascension and tongues of fire has become the official liturgical story of the Church.
And so we have a vague time.
In the more-modern western Churches, today is celebrated as “Ascension Sunday”. Throwing a feast day onto the nearest Sunday is ok, I guess, but I don’t much like interrupting the calendar’s flow without good reason. Traditional western liturgy has this as the Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension and/or the Seventh Sunday of Easter. I like that. But the Eastern Rite has this Sunday commemorating the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicea in 325. This Gathering of 318 Bishops from all over the Roman world and beyond represented the first time the Church as it then was gathered together in such a meeting. Prior to this there had been, of course, regional meetings and local ones. But this was an international event and that Paschal season of 325 can be said to be the birth of the “institutional” church, the church as a functionary of Empire.
The RCL Readings for today include part of the traditional ER Gospel. The full RCL three-year cycle includes the entire ER passage. It’s Jesus’ prayer for the Church. While I doubt these words are authentically Jesus from the night of the Last Supper, recorded, as it were, by dictation, I do not doubt these are Jesus words. Like many of the more rambling passages in this Gospel, this seems to be a “delivered” passage, one spoken to the community by Jesus through a prophet. I note especially that Jesus says he is “no longer in the world” but coming to the Father. I don’t think this would have had any meaning before his passion…
Just this last weekend (the weekend before Ascension) several things fell through and a couple of things changed in existing relationships. I felt stranded, lost and terribly alone. As often happens to me at such times, I started to grasp at friends in a rather needy way. Since I’ve recently committed myself to a life with less drama – and since drama is mostly in one’s own head (and projected out on others) I decided to examine this feeling of Neediness, this experience of Chaos resulting from a sense of being abandoned by people (who hadn’t really abandoned me, I need to be clear).
And with the Ascension on Thursday and us in this liminal space before Pentecost, I feel something like what the Early Christians must have felt, right there in the first 75 or so years. No matter which version of that time you accept as historical (the folks who accept the literal story of the Gospels, or those who deny even the Resurrection or those who fall some where between the extremes) that first century, of Apostles passing away and Jesus not coming again on the clouds, of the Temple’s destruction and Israel’s collapse, of the Bar Kochba revolt and the expulsion of Christians from the Synagogue… in all that Chaos, it must have seemed as if they were strangely alone or, at least, in a rather different place than had been expected.
I’m projecting my feelings of abandonment on them exactly now because we are liturgically commemorating that feeling. We do not have the john of Pascha – nor the regular comfort of O Heavenly King. What are we to do? What does Jesus mean when he promised to be with us for ever?
And how?
What does it mean to the Apostle who laid his head on Jesus’ breast now? What does it mean to the Mother who held her dead son in her arms? What does it mean to Peter (do you love me?) now? What does it mean to Mary Magdalen? I will be with you always…
Is it possible that, post-Resurrection, the Apostles felt even more alone because their Ever-Living Jesus was gone?
The Roman ecclesial community and those who follow her traditions says (liturgically) that Christ left his presence in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar to be with us until eternity. Would John have reclined his head upon the tabernacle and found such comfort? Or Mary have washed it?
The ultra-Protestant traditions offers us the idea that this presence is the Bible + Jesus “spiritually” in our hearts. Does this work for you? How about for the fist generations of Christians that would not have even had a Bible to use here?
To these, the Eastern tradition adds the icon, the holy image, as a sign of Christ’s presence…
Yet, the Bible itself – and the Church Fathers – partially affirm all of these options, but goes further still. They underscore that Christ is present with us in the stranger, in the person on the street, in the other. St Benedict tells us to prostrate before the stranger as if he were Christ himself. Indeed, he is! Jesus says doing to the “least of these” is also “doing to him”. And although some commentators have read the “least of these” to mean other Christians, no one has read it to mean “Bible” “Bread” or “Painting”.
I’d always thought to take my own sense of abandonment – stemming from any number of times when I was younger and felt abandoned by those adults I loved – and offer it to Jesus for help: Jesus present in the sacrament, or in the Bible, or what have you. Imagine my shock to discover that he wants me to turn to him present in the world, active, needing my love, my service, my action…
The fathers of the first ecumenical council will tell you Jesus is God and Man and they will get rather explicit about hot that might be so and how it might play out. But they will also tell you that no amount of their right-doctrine will save you if you don’t see Christ present in front of you. That God becoming human means that humans are God’s icon, present, God’s presence.
Even in this vague time, when it feels like it’s not quite right… but not quite wrong either… Not quite heaven, but no longer just earth, God’s here. When we’re feeling alone, lost, stranded, God has given us his very self.
There.
Here.
As close to you as your lover.
As far away as the homeless man on the street.
He is with us, always.
