SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah, Christ is risen.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is risen indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Almighty God, do you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_00: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord be with you, and also with you.
SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: O God, the King of Glory, you have exalted your only Son, Jesus Christ, with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to that place where our Savior Jesus Christ has gone before, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God in glory everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: A reading from Acts.
SPEAKER_03: When the apostles had come together, they asked Jesus, Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?
SPEAKER_03: He replied, It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.
SPEAKER_03: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
SPEAKER_03: And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_03: When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.
SPEAKER_03: While he was going, and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in a white robe stood by them.
SPEAKER_03: They said, Men of Galilee, while you stand looking up toward heaven, this Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.
SPEAKER_03: Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away.
SPEAKER_03: When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, the son of Alpheus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James.
SPEAKER_03: All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer together with certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
SPEAKER_03: The word of the Lord, thanks that be to God.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 68.
SPEAKER_02: O God, arise and let your enemies be scattered.
SPEAKER_02: Let those who hate you flee before him.
SPEAKER_02: Let them varnish like vanish like smoke when the wind drives it away.
SPEAKER_02: As the wax melts at the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.
SPEAKER_02: But let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God.
SPEAKER_02: Let them also be merry and joyful.
SPEAKER_02: Sing to God, sing praises to God's name.
SPEAKER_02: Exalt the one who rides upon the heavens.
SPEAKER_02: The name of our God is the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Rejoice before the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Defender of widows, father of orphans, God in heaven's holy habitation.
SPEAKER_02: God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom, but the rebels shall live in dry places.
SPEAKER_02: O God, when you went forth before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, the earth shook, and the skies poured down rain, at the presence of God, the God of Sinai, at the presence of God, the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: You sent a gracious rain, O God, upon your inheritance.
SPEAKER_02: You refreshed the land when it was weary.
SPEAKER_02: Your people found their home in it.
SPEAKER_02: In your goodness, O God, you have made provision for the poor.
SPEAKER_02: Sing to God, O realms of the earth, sing praises to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: God rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens.
SPEAKER_02: God's voice thunders forth a mighty voice.
SPEAKER_02: Ascribe power to God, whose majesty is over Israel, whose strength is in the skies.
SPEAKER_02: How wonderful is God in the holy places, the God of Israel giving strength and power to the chosen people.
SPEAKER_02: Blessed be God.
SPEAKER_01: A reading from 1 Peter.
SPEAKER_01: But rejoice in so far as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.
SPEAKER_01: If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.
SPEAKER_01: Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.
SPEAKER_01: Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.
SPEAKER_01: Discipline yourselves, keep alert.
SPEAKER_01: Like a roaring lion, your adversary, the devil, prowls around looking for someone to devour.
SPEAKER_01: Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.
SPEAKER_01: And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who call who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.
SPEAKER_01: To him be the power forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus looked up to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come.
SPEAKER_00: Glorify your Son, so that the Son may glorify you, since you've given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.
SPEAKER_00: And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you've sent.
SPEAKER_00: I glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do, so now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
SPEAKER_00: I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.
SPEAKER_00: They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
SPEAKER_00: Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm asking on their behalf.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.
SPEAKER_00: All mine is yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them, and now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Praise to you, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In the seventh Sunday after Easter, we're again invited to consider what the resurrected life of Jesus looks like and means, and how it invites us to be a new people, a new community, and to live into the heritage that God intends for us.
SPEAKER_00: And so once again, the gospel reading goes backward to words that Jesus said before he died, because since he's come back from the dead in such a way as he'll never die again, since he's been resurrected, the disciples, we cannot help but hear them in a different way.
SPEAKER_00: And this week, Jesus prays for something.
SPEAKER_00: He knows that Friday is coming, he knows that he's about to be crucified, and he prays for those who have he's called alongside him.
SPEAKER_00: He prays for God's own.
SPEAKER_00: And notice that he says a few things for us.
SPEAKER_00: One is that eternal life is to know God, especially to experience God through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Second is he prays that we might be one as he, as Jesus, and God, the Father, are one.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a really interesting thing because uh I don't know what your religious heritage is, but I'll speak of my own.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we were taught that um there was something fundamentally wrong with us, that somebody had to do something uh to appease God's righteous judgment, and so Jesus came and took our penalty.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the way that we then could delight God, having taken that away, the way we could be pleasing to God is to make sure we no longer stray into things like, well, sin, uh, because to continue to sin would be real, really disappointing for God.
SPEAKER_00: What's really interesting about this prayer Jesus has, he's praying for disciples who were much less than perfect people.
SPEAKER_00: These were people who were not successful in their own professions.
SPEAKER_00: They would go out to fish for hours and hours and fail to bring in a single one.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus would show up as a land lover, a carpenter, or a day laborer and say, look, the fish are on the other side from where you're casting your boats, and he was right and they were wrong.
SPEAKER_00: These were people who constantly got Jesus' teachings wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Just a few chapters earlier, Jesus goes to a village and they don't roll out the red carpet for him, and two of his disciples say, Well, Jesus, shouldn't we call fire down from heaven to blow these people up for their lack of hospitality?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus just shakes his head.
SPEAKER_00: These are people who follow him for three years and are amazed that he can calm the storm or drive out an unclean spirit.
SPEAKER_00: These are people who constantly get him wrong, time after time.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest to you we could hear that, oh, Judas has betrayed Jesus and that doesn't go well.
SPEAKER_00: But consider that his friend Peter denies him three times.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we don't know if that's as bad as the other.
SPEAKER_00: What if Peter had said, Yes, that's my friend.
SPEAKER_00: I'll add my testimony to his.
SPEAKER_00: You've got two weaknesses.
SPEAKER_00: What we know is that this group of people followed him imperfectly.
SPEAKER_00: And here is Jesus, not after that imperfection, but in the middle of it, saying, God protect these people and let them be one in the midst of their difference and their imperfection, as you and I are one.
SPEAKER_00: And this I think means, reminds me anyway, that God's love and acceptance and joy for us is not predicated on our perfection.
SPEAKER_00: Our response to God is largely irrelevant to what God intends for us.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder then if that's how the Father and Jesus are one, if that isn't how we might be invited to grow in a resurrection faith.
SPEAKER_00: And I have to tell you that I've lost friends because we had different theological opinions.
SPEAKER_00: I've lost friends because I believed a certain way that was too fill in the blank.
SPEAKER_00: It was too liberal.
SPEAKER_00: It was too wishy-washy.
SPEAKER_00: I lost those friends with great sorrow.
SPEAKER_00: And I think in Jesus' prayer, he says, you don't need to do that.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to do that.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrected community is not predicated on us getting everything right.
SPEAKER_00: God's pleasure in us is not predicated on getting us right.
SPEAKER_00: God is pleased with the wounded, resurrected Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest to you that we are called to be a community in which we can be one.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says this, we can be one in the middle of diversity.
SPEAKER_00: We can be unified in mission.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to be uniform, and I think this is the invitation of a resurrected faith.
SPEAKER_00: If we had to be uniform, the wounds of the resurrected Jesus would go away.
SPEAKER_00: If we have to be uniform, if we always have to get it right for larger life to be an option, to be available, to enshroud us.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, who has any hope at all?
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus says a couple of things to us this week as we prepare for the gifting of the Holy Spirit that will enable us to live into this vision.
SPEAKER_00: You can be unified in diversity.
SPEAKER_00: You can be one even in the middle of disappointment, of different politics.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you, the disciples had radically different politics.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them supported Rome, some of them were actively assassinating Roman soldiers to cause terror, and Jesus united both of them.
SPEAKER_00: That's a wonder.
SPEAKER_00: That's a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: That's a resurrected community.
SPEAKER_00: To bring about that kind of unity, to reconcile different ideas of that strength, I want to tell you, I think requires a little bit of wounding.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it requires us to say, I will bear that, because you matter more than our difference of opinion does.
SPEAKER_00: We can be unified in saying that that larger life should not have to cost people that aren't willing and able to pay for it.
SPEAKER_00: We can be unified in saying we're willing to bear the bumps and scratches of creating that kind of community.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest to you that's part of the invitation to resurrected life that we get to hear today.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the other thing that we get to hear today, this is three days after the ascension.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the text we start with today, that the story Luke gives us in the book of Acts, is that shortly after the resurrection, Jesus ascends up to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think it's really helpful to say, did that literally happen?
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_00: What I know is we don't live in a three-tiered universe anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Yuri Gagarin just last month was the first one to go up in space and said, Look, I've been outside the planet and I don't see God.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, what he did not do is disprove God.
SPEAKER_00: He disproved our mental map for how God works.
SPEAKER_00: So in the story, consider the story is speaking to our mental map.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is perfect and descends, becomes incarnate.
SPEAKER_00: He goes from heaven to earth.
SPEAKER_00: He takes on our humanity completely.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what it's like to be tempted, to be disappointed, to be anxious, to be oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what it's like to experience fundamental inequity and unfairness.
SPEAKER_00: He was, as scholars say, a marginal Jew.
SPEAKER_00: He descends even further to the bottom.
SPEAKER_00: He descends to the place of the dead, whether we call that place the place of the dead or Sheol or Tartarus or Hades or in the early version of the Apostles' Creed, to hell.
SPEAKER_00: And then on Easter, Jesus comes back up from the grave to earth, and the resurrection faith is that his wounds are still there.
SPEAKER_00: He spends 40 days, that biblical number of completeness.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, 40 years in the wilderness, 40 days of temptation, 40 days of rain in the Noah story.
SPEAKER_00: He spends 40 days teaching his disciples about what it means not just to have new life, but to have resurrected life.
SPEAKER_00: And then he ascends to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And it might be really easy to hear, oh, look, Jesus has left us.
SPEAKER_00: But of course, he goes to finish the narrative.
SPEAKER_00: That is, that the God who cared enough to become incarnate and to experience death, to suffer the indignity of rejection, has not only come to have life again in this plane, but has come to bring all of humanity and the grave back up to God.
SPEAKER_00: The story is telling us not only does God get it, because God has done it in every way, been rejected, died, but that those experiences are part of God forever.
SPEAKER_00: It's as if Jesus brings wounded humanity up to heaven on this ascension day.
SPEAKER_00: And of course we know that Jesus being God, being eternal, everything he does, even within time, is an infinite reflection.
SPEAKER_00: This bit about our woundedness and our disappointment and our bumps and bruises of living together, of being one, as God is one will always be not only a part of our experience, but will always be a part of God.
SPEAKER_00: We've been celebrating Jesus' resurrected life with this paschal candle since Easter, and it has been a visible light for us that Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, is among us.
SPEAKER_00: Today is the day where that visible light changes.
SPEAKER_00: This I think is really important.
SPEAKER_00: I love both godly play for teaching this to me, teaching me that it is part of our funeral liturgy.
SPEAKER_00: That in the Lord, our light is never extinguished, but life is changed.
SPEAKER_00: And on Ascension Day, the disciples will no longer be able to see the visible light from the resurrected Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that visible light will change right in front of them as he rises.
SPEAKER_00: But of course, the beauty of Jesus ascending to heaven and completing this story in the three-tiered universe for us is also the beauty of light itself, which is that the bandwidth of visible light is about that much on the spectrum.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say, all the light we do not see.
SPEAKER_00: This is the day in which Jesus says, I want you to look for, to experience, to project light further than that much.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, light is enshrouding us and emanating from us all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And we're invited now, without the physical Jesus in front of us, to shine his light as he did on earth.
SPEAKER_00: A couple interesting things about light.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, apparently it's the fastest thing there is.
SPEAKER_00: Really hard to do anything faster than the speed of light.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing, of course, about light that's interesting is that even though it does not have mass, it has momentum.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say, that light moves us.
SPEAKER_00: Even if invisibly.
SPEAKER_00: These I think are marks of a resurrected community.
SPEAKER_00: These are marks of a resurrected community.
SPEAKER_00: That we exert momentum on the world.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I should tell you, I'm not a physicist.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even really a good mathematician, but I do understand from reading a brief history of time that Stephen Hawking tells us that the arrow of time is pointed in the direction of increased entropy because entropy is more probable than order.
SPEAKER_00: But I also know that Martin Luther King Jr.
SPEAKER_00: once quipped that the arc of history bends toward justice.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest to you that our invitation as a resurrected community is to do exactly what Jesus did in his 40 days, which is to take the invisible light, the light on the spectrum that we don't see, that we often write off, to take forces, frankly, that are invisible, whether those be faith, hope, and love, or goodness, kindness, gentleness, self-control, that we take those forces and make them visible to the world while we also exert their momentum on the arc of history, especially within our own community.
SPEAKER_00: This, I think, is the invitation of the resurrected community we celebrate here on Ascension Day.
SPEAKER_00: We are now invited to be Christians, which means, of course, little Christ, to make the invisible, the ineffitable, the infinite wavelength light of God visible on our world and to move it somewhere, to move it to new and greater life.
SPEAKER_00: And for the next week, of course, we don't get to see the light of the risen Christ because he has ascended.
SPEAKER_00: But remember, his light hasn't gone out, it's changed.
SPEAKER_00: And if we'll listen to the messengers from heaven, when the disciples were standing gaping up at the ascension, wondering what they would do next, and look down to the light that Jesus has made visible in each and every one of us, then we live this resurrected faith that God has in mind.
SPEAKER_00: And folks, I have to be honest with you, there are people in my world whose light burns visibly brightly.
SPEAKER_00: And there are other people whose light I cannot see.
SPEAKER_00: But that I suggest to you for the resurrected community is not their failure, but mine.
SPEAKER_00: And so I invite you to join me in trying to open our eyes to the light of Christ and those for whom it is hard to perceive, knowing that it's there.
SPEAKER_00: And I invite you as we start to grow into the resurrected community at Pentecost to think how it is our lights might increasingly coalesce.
SPEAKER_00: Coming from distance, different sources might burn as one to not only light a world that often struggles in darkness, but to bend our history toward God's justice.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let us renew and reconsider our faith in the words of the Iona Creed.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that God is present in the darkness before dawn, in the waiting and uncertainty where fear and courage join hands, the conflict and caring link arms, and the sun rises over barbed wire.
SPEAKER_00: We believe in a with us God who sits down in our midst to share our humanity.
SPEAKER_00: We affirm a faith that takes us beyond a safe place into action, into vulnerability and onto the streets.
SPEAKER_00: We commit ourselves to work for change and to put ourselves on the line, to bear responsibility, take risks, live powerfully and face humiliation, to stand with those on the edge, to choose life and be used by the Spirit for God's new community of hope.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_04: For the community we live in, for clean air to breathe and safe water to drink, we praise you and thank you, O Lord, for the courage to protect creation and the persistence to make informed decisions every day.
SPEAKER_04: Equip us, God, for the victims of oppression throughout the world, especially those who have been silenced by government abuse and poverty, empower their voices and our ears to hear them.
SPEAKER_04: For refugees and those displaced by war or strife, may they know peace and hope again.
SPEAKER_04: For those who hunger, satisfy their physical and spiritual needs, mentor and guide elected and appointed officials throughout our world that they might pursue justice with compassion.
SPEAKER_04: For 43 years of female clergy shining your light in the Episcopal Church, we praise you and we thank you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_04: Enable our laity, deacons, priests, and bishops to discern your work in the world and boldly join it.
SPEAKER_04: May your church function as one body.
SPEAKER_04: Bless our day school, its teachers, staff, families, and students.
SPEAKER_04: May St.
SPEAKER_04: Thomas School grow and empower wisdom, love, and knowledge in our world.
SPEAKER_04: We praise you for the constant love, compassion, diligence, kindness, and guidance of spouses, siblings, parents, friends, and extended families who have put us and others before themselves.
SPEAKER_04: May we join you in making Christ visible.
SPEAKER_04: Mend broken relationships and comfort those who are alone.
SPEAKER_04: Strengthen our patience and embolden our forgiveness.
SPEAKER_04: Equip us to empathize even when we are in pain.
SPEAKER_04: Grow our hearts to love as you do.
SPEAKER_04: Protect the dignity of those who are in physical decline or hardship.
SPEAKER_04: Remembering especially Larry, Chris, Britta, Jerry, Kristen and Maya, Sean, Jerome, Susie, Ted, Godfrey, Andrea, and the celebration or petitions the congregation wishes to name at this time, silently or aloud.
SPEAKER_04: Holy Spirit, may they and we experience your compassion.
SPEAKER_04: We pray for all who have died, especially Arnell.
SPEAKER_04: May they have a place in your eternal kingdom.
SPEAKER_04: Compassionate God, make your healing and peaceful presence known to the world.
SPEAKER_04: Comfort those who mourn, strengthen those who are weary, encourage those in despair, and lead us all to fullness of life.
SPEAKER_04: Lord, hear our prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And now the peace of the Lord be always with you, and also with you.
SPEAKER_00: And as our Savior Jesus Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: May God the Father, who has redeemed us and made us children of God through the resurrection of Christ, bestow upon you new joy, the riches of God's love.
SPEAKER_00: May the Holy Spirit, who through the waters of baptism has raised us from sin and into newness of life, lead you into the mission and holiness of being God's own forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: May Jesus, who has brought us out of bondage to sin and into true and lasting freedom as our Redeemer, guide you to live into your eternal inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you this day and remain with you forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Alleluia, Alleluia.