The Meaning of the Light

We're coming up on Pentecost Sunday, and I am thinking of light.

More specifically, I am thinking of a particular light (or is it fire?) -- the light coming from the Paschal candle, the large festival candle that we light the seven Sundays of Easter up through Pentecost.

On Sunday, we will light the Paschal Candle one last time.  Then we will not light it again (except for funerals and baptisms) until we light the new fire in the darkness before Easter morning.

What does it mean?  Do we notice the light of the small fire while it is present?  Do we notice its absence in the sanctuary during the rest of the year?  I wonder.

We used to extinguish the candle on "Ascension Sunday", when Jesus meets his disciples on the mountain one last time.  He gives them instructions.  He tells them to wait for the Spirit.  And then he ascends.  He goes up.  He disappears from their sight.  And in that moment when Jesus disappears from their sight, we paused for a moment, and we extinguished the paschal candle.  The flame, like Jesus, disappeared.  And just like the disciples, now we do not see Jesus any more.  For forty days after his resurrection, he appeared to them, talked to them, taught them, showed them his hands.  And then… he disappeared.

Is that what it means, then?  The light of this candle?  It means the visible presence of the resurrected Jesus. We light it on Easter, and for seven Sundays afterwards.  But after Pentecost, we don't light it any more.  Because Jesus doesn't appear to us.

The light is the flame of his life.  Is that it?  But why do we only light it for seven Sundays of the year?  Sometimes I wonder.

I arrived at my first parish in the middle of the summer.  One of the first questions I was asked, at the little country church, was "When do we stop lighting the candle?"  The instructions they read said that they were supposed to light it through Pentecost, and as far as they could tell, it was still Pentecost.   It was mid-July, and they were still lighting the candle every Sunday.

Was that so wrong?

Anyway, we don't extinguish the candle when Jesus ascends any more.  We keep it lit until Pentecost.  We keep it lit until the tongues of fire dance on the disciples heads.  But then we stop.

What does it mean?  What does it mean that we light the candle, but then we stop lighting it?  Do we notice its presence, and do we notice its absence?  Perhaps if there were more darkness, the light of the candle, the fire that dances for seven Sundays up until today, would stand out more.

Sometimes I do wish we could light it all the time.  Why not?  But there is something necessary about lighting a candle for a time, and then not lighting it again.  There is something true about it, too.  The light does shine in the darkness, but we do not always notice it.  The light does shine in the darkness, but there are times when Jesus feels absent to us.

As for me, I wish we would notice.  I wish we were more able to notice the small things, the light coming from the single candle, and how suddenly, after today, there will no longer be a visible flame.  But there's something else too, something else.

I wish we would notice the presence…. the presence of the flame, the flame dancing in each and every one of us, every broken bruised one of us, bearing the light of His life, now.  After Pentecost, I pray that we will notice that the light still shines.  Only now, the light shines in us, bruised reeds and dimly burning wicks, failures and successes, God's only plan for spreading of love and grace and freedom and hope in the world.

Ascension Day

Today was Ascension Day.  I let it almost get past without a blog post.
But, I couldn't quite let it pass.

Because Ascension is not on Sunday, most congregations don't hear the story of Jesus' ascension into heaven, how he took the disciples up to a mountain, promised them that they would received power, and then disappeared from view while they stood with their mouths open, looking up.

Maybe that's okay, because the story of the Ascension is a sort of odd story, if you think about it, especially if you think about it in a sort of 21st Century way.  But, actually, it's hard to really consider Pentecost without Ascension.

We usually read the Ascension story on the 7th Sunday of Easter, and at the point where Jesus disappears, we pause, and someone extinguishes the paschal candle.  There it has been, since Easter, while we've been reading all of those resurrection stories, Jesus walking around, showing us his hands and feet, going fishing, breaking bread.  Now, 40 days later, that's history.  We are not going to see Jesus any more.

There's something poignant about that, and about the disciples standing there looking up.  The angels tell them to stop looking up, which everyone interprets as "start looking around for all the work that needs to be done."  I don't think they are wrong.

But there's this other statement, that Jesus will return in the same way that he left.  Maybe this is just me, but I don't think this is a reference to the Second Coming.  It think it's about what is going to happen 10 days later, when the Holy Spirit falls on the disciples.  Jesus' Spirit, in them, pushing them out into the world, farther and farther into the world. 

Ascension Day is only the day we stopped seeing Jesus with our eyes.  On Pentecost we began to see Jesus with the eyes of our hearts.  And you never ever know where he might turn up.

Give me the Microphone

Tomorrow is Ascension Day, a little-remembered observance in most churches these days. But on Sunday I'll be preaching on the Ascension texts, and, in the meantime, I'm thinking back to church last Sunday, when I saw two things that have stayed with me.

(Okay, three, but the third one is more of an aside.)

At our contemporary worship service on Sunday a fourth grade girl read the lesson from Acts: you might remember, if you think -- "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" was Paul's vision. The reading included lots of difficult names of towns. When I heard this young girl was reading, I immediately felt a twinge of pity: almost as bad as getting the Pentecost reading!

But she strode up to the Lecturn, pulled the microphone down so that it was at the right height for her, and read with something like aplomb. When she finished, she put the microphone up in its rightful place and returned to her seat.

That was the first thing that stayed with me.

The second was this: the Cherubs sang a simple song: "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart." They sang that they had the joy in their heart, and in their feet, and in their hands, and in their legs. It was great. And in the middle of the song, it happened: a four your old boy reached up, and grabbed one of the standing mikes and pulled it down so that it was right in front of his mouth.

This was the second thing.

(The third: from the traditional service -- a fantastic a capalla processional with the choir and a drummer: "Christ is arisen, Alleluia." No microphone necessary.)

So tomorrow is Ascension Day. Tomorrow Jesus stands in front of his disciples and tells them that they will receive power from on high and that they will be his witnesses. And somehow these words --power and witness -- connect with the images I saw on Sunday -- the images of the children taking hold of the microphone and speaking.

That's what the disciples are going to do. They are going to take hold of the power and speak. They are going to tell the truth about Jesus, and the kingdom, and the world. They are going to be God's people, and not just in the church on Sunday for an hour, but where-ever they go in the world.

Church on Sunday is not a bad place to practice, though.

First, Jesus has to ascend.

But then, the Spirit will come down, the power will come down. The microphone will be in our hands. That's the way God has always intended it.