The eCrozier

Since we’re now in Ascensiontide (you can look it up), I’m reminded of one of my favorite icons of the Ascension: The disciples are gathered in a circle with their eyes gazing into heaven. And just at the top of the icon one can see just the feet and ankles of Jesus as he ascends. That icon serves as a cautionary tale for the Church. We can spend much of our time figuratively looking into the heavens. We can focus so much of our energies on the fine details of liturgy or the intensity of committee work that we fail to look out at a world that’s dying for the Gospel of Jesus. There’s an old Johnny Cash song that sums this up well. It’s called “You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good.”

Now there’s nothing wrong with looking into the heavens. We all need time for rest and retreat so we might gain wisdom and perspective on our lives. The temptation, however, is to stay there. As long as we look up, we don’t have to look out for one another. We don’t have to deal with the hard work of human community. With our eyes to the heavens, we can honestly report that we can’t see the pain and struggle of others.

That’s why, I believe, those two men approached the disciples as Jesus disappeared from their sight. They pointedly asked the disciples: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Nineteen Centuries later, Bishop Frank Weston asked a similar question as he addressed the Church of England at the height of the Industrial Revolution. He asked: Can we claim to worship Jesus in the Church if we do not show Jesus compassion in the street? Can we worship Jesus in the Sacrament of his Body & Blood while we are ignoring Jesus in the suffering of his sisters and brothers?

A poem written by the Orthodox nun, Maria Skobtsova, illustrates this charge. She practiced and lived radical hospitality in her ministry in Paris during World War II.

I searched for thinkers and prophets who wait by the ladder to heaven,
see signs of the mysterious end, sing songs beyond our comprehension.

And I found people restless, orphaned, poor, drunk, despairing, useless,
lost whichever way they went, homeless, naked, lacking bread.

There are no prophecies. But life performs in a prophetic manner;
The end approaches, the days grow shorter; You took a servant’s form — Hosanna

When the Nazis invaded, Jews began coming to her convent in Paris to get baptismal certificates, which she gladly provided them to fool the Nazis. Later, many came to live in her convent and she helped most escape. Eventually the Nazis closed the convent and took her to a prison camp in Germany. On Holy Saturday, 1945, just days before the war’s end, she was executed. As Maria suggests in her poem, we can wait by the ladder to heaven for all sorts of “signs, thinkers, and prophets.” But if we do, we’ll miss the restless, the lost, and the despairing ones. Our Lord’s Ascension proclaims to us that you and I have the privilege of leaving the safety of our church buildings to follow Jesus into this beautiful, yet broken and hurting, world he so loves. 

+Scott