Anyone who travels internationally know
what it is to cross borders. When I lived in Toronto I was always anxious returning,
after a visit to the US. I had a study visa that granted entry, but you never
know. The border guards were usually surprised when I stood at the desk and
handed them my US passport. They’d ask my business in Canada and my usual response
was “I live here,” leading them to study the visa, ask some more questions—because it was granted for an unusually long period (6 years)—but then eventually
they’d stamp it, and I’d be let back in. As a white person with considerable
privilege, I am rarely subjected to deeper questioning because of my racial
identity, as countless others are.
Our border crossings are nothing compared
to what people around the world encounter as they seek new lives and safe
homes. Many die as they make their journeys over water or land—they drown in
leaky rafts, suffocate in transport vehicles, or even are shot as they try to
leave one country and enter a new one. Upon arrival in new lands refugees and
asylum seekers often are forced to live in prisons and detention centers as
their cases are investigated. Sometimes, we’ve learned, children are separated
from parents—perhaps never to be reunited. Border crossings can be occasions of
joy and hope, or of fear and trepidation, and sometimes all of these at once.
This week, on Thursday, Christians around
the world observed a border crossing of sorts on the Feast of the Ascension—when,
it is believed, the risen Christ ascended into heaven, to take his place at the
right hand of God. In a sermon a few weeks ago I suggested that in the earliest
Christian belief the Easter resurrection and the ascension were more closely
related, perhaps even unified. These earliest Christians believed that in the
resurrection Jesus was raised and exalted to the heart of God. So, when Jesus
appears to his friends on Easter day and following, he returns from God’s heart
to confirm that he is not dead, and that in the resurrection God had unleashed
a new power into the world: the power of life.
Over time those appearances were less frequent,
leading Luke to tell the story of the Ascension in the Acts of the Apostles.
But it’s not inconsistent with the earlier view, at least not necessarily. It
may be that the Ascension essentially represents the final time that Jesus
appeared among his friends in that way, closing that chapter of the
resurrection story, while simultaneously beginning a new one—helping his
friends to get on the with work of being his disciples; helping them to
spiritually grow up; to be, really and truly, the risen and living Body of
Christ.
It is there that we seemed to have
struggled. Too often, we have come to believe that God is far away, even out of
the way, rather than in our midst. How else could we abide by so much violence
and chaos in our country and across the world? Another mass shooting in
Virginia, leaving 12 dead. Children at the U.S. border kept in cages. People across
the world targeted for their faith or race or sexuality. Would we allow such,
if we believed that God were still here among us? Would we turn away from the
cries of the poor, hungry, and oppressed if we believed that God was among us? If
we believed that God lives among and in those on the margins?
Rather than going away, when Jesus ascended
he crossed the border between humanity and divinity. In fact, he broke down the
border between God and us—such that it no longer exists, at least not as it did
before. While in the short span of his life Jesus was, we believe, the earthly
dwelling place of God—teaching, healing, reconciling and inspiring—that dwelling
now is us. He is not gone. He is alive and present in us and through us—still
teaching, still healing and reconciling, still inspiring, in and through all
who are baptized into his life. His life is our life. Our life is his life. He
is not gone. He is here. Or, he can be.
This is a heavy calling. If we are to make
Christ present, it requires that we live like Christ. That we love like Christ.
And most especially, it requires that we cross borders like Christ—the borders
of exclusion and discrimination, the borders that seek to divide color, gender,
sexuality, language, economic status, religion, or national origin. It requires
that we cross them. And then tear them down. Just as Germans of the 1980s tore
down the Berlin Wall, piece by piece, reshaping their nation and the world.
As the Body of Christ, we likewise are called
to reshape our nation and our world—tearing down walls and borders, drawing people
closer and closer to God’s heart, and in the process defeating the powers of
sin, and evil, and death. In other words, we are called to live resurrection.
We are called to be resurrection. Not in a misty, other worldly way. But
in a real way, in a human way, in a broken and bruised and crucified, and yet
living way.
I believe Jesus left his friends’ sight so
that they could live the resurrection life themselves. So that they could cross
and overcome the boundaries of life and death. So that they could realize that
who he was, is also who they (and we) are—God’s presence living and undefeated
presence and power in and for the world. A power through which the borders and
divisions of the old world—borders that exclude and promote death through guns,
war, and hatred—are transcended, dismantled, and destroyed. As they are torn
down, new and abundant life will flourish—the life and the power of God,
unleashed in and for us and for the whole world.
Jesus said: “As you, Father, are in me and
I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you
have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may
be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely
one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even
as you have loved me.”
The life of resurrection. The life of God. The
Life of us. May we find it so. With God, may we make it so.
© The Rev. Matthew P. Cadwell, PhD
