“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

Let me begin with one of the worst puns imaginable.

Brace yourselves, this may hurt.

100 years ago, give or take, there was a Russian psychologist whose name was Ivan Pavlov, (are you ready for it?) does the name ring a bell?

Good to get that out of my system, and I’m sorry for any pain you felt but I just couldn’t help myself.

Most of you, I’m sure, are familiar with the broad strokes of Ivan Pavlov’s research into conditioned responses among dogs. He would ring a bell and give the dogs some meat, then he would ring a bell and wait a few seconds and the dogs would begin to salivate in anticipation of the meat.

The experiments made Pavlov famous and proved what most of us know to be true, that animals and people could be taught to automatically respond to certain sounds or symbols that had accompanied pleasure or pain in the past. They heard the bell and their entire bodily system went into an anticipatory state, they were ready for the meat.

But Pavlov didn’t stop there. He went on to experiment with the dogs and to try to discover how long they would continue to salivate between the sound of the bell and the delivery of the meet.

He found that there were limits and when the dogs reached those limits, they would do something that he hadn’t expected, they would fall asleep. You see, their attention was so focused upon where the meat was supposed to come from that they wore themselves out by waiting, their nervous systems would begin to shut down and they had concentrated so much on what they were waiting for that they had no energy left to even stay awake.

Which is why it is important for us to wrap our minds around the story of the Ascension of Christ and to get it right.

Because it is too easy to get this story wrong and to focus our energy on the wrong thing.

The disciples did.

Actually they got it wrong twice, didn’t they?

The first time came just before the ascension moment they had said to Jesus “Is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel?”

You gotta love those disciples! I know I’ve said this many times before, but the great thing about the disciples is that they were just as dense as we tend to be!

They couldn’t think any larger than the political restoration of their nation, they couldn’t realize that the Kingdom that Christ was talking about was greater and different than anything that they had ever known.

They were like Bruce Springsteen’s old HS friends, they were lost in boring stories of yesterday!

It’s a common mistake, especially as the years go by and the memories grow fuzzy. We start thinking about the old days and – by and large – our memories are kind to us and we start wishing that we could go through it again, we start to focus on the past as the place and time where God was clearest to see and easiest to find.

And that’s great, there are few people who enjoy stories of the old days more then me, but when it becomes an obsession that we can’t let go of, when we find ourselves, in the words of a poet I enjoy, “knee-deep in the past” and that becomes our primary focus, we exhaust ourselves and we shut down to the present.

The disciples, even after all that they had heard and see, didn’t realize that Christ had not come to take us back to old glories, he came to move us forward to new glories that await us. They thought that life would once again become what they wanted it to be, the familiar and comforting life when Israel was a free and independent nation.

Boy were they in for a surprise!

It is good to look back, it’s good to go to class reunions, it’s good to have these goofy Facebook imitation friendships, but that’s not real life, real life is always lived in the moment, in the present tense, real life is always today.

But looking back is not the great danger in this story.

Go back to Pavlov’s dogs who were so sure that the meat was coming that they wore themselves out with waiting.

That’s the second and greater trap that the disciples fell into that day.

They were so focused upon watching where Jesus had gone, expecting him to come right back, that they were in danger of falling asleep to all that was around them, they were so focused upon the glories of Christ returning that they were in danger of overlooking the work that was now theirs to do in the world.

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

What a familiar moment!

That’s us, isn’t it?

Let me exaggerate it, just to make the point.

Here’s how the thinking of many Christians and Churches goes: Jesus is risen and ascended and his work is done and we can relax and no matter what happens we can simply hang around and wait for his return, whether it is the final return or his return to guide us the place he has prepared for us.

Therefore, and here’s where we get it wrong, therefore the things of this world: the greed of the American economic system; the public sins of people we call celebrities; the common acceptance of foul language and rude behavior; the arrogance of leaders in politics, education and religion; the spilling of oil into the purity of God’s created world; the blind hatred we develop for all of those who look different, worship differently, speak differently, love differently; all of the painful, agony-causing things of this world don’t matter to too many of the people of Christ because their focus is on the Kingdom of God as it will be when it has fully come, but the signs of the Kingdom that surround us every day get missed, the opportunities to put things right get ignored, the crying, sobbing lamentations of this grief filled world that surround us go un-comforted and I hear the angels say, to the disciples, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

I am not sure that I am exaggerating very much.

Now, before you point it out to me, let me confess that I am a chief sinner here. I am a planner to the point of obsession at times and you would think that after almost 60 years of plans that have never turned out the way I wanted or expected, and have usually turned out far better than I could have ever imagined, that I would learn.

But I don’t and so I continue to dream, but I have learned to limit myself and I have learned to laugh at myself and I don’t spend time looking up toward heaven until after I have done my looking around and seeing the tasks that God has given us today.

You and I need to anticipate tomorrow and next year and 10 years from now, but we also need to let God direct our attention back to today, we need to to swallow the saliva and to appreciate today and to love the people in our lives right now, knowing that the day will come when we will not be together, knowing that changes of age and health will, sooner or later, bring about the fabled changes of latitude and attitude.

And you and I need to remind ourselves of that time and time and time again, we need to remember the words of the Prophet Lennon of Liverpool: “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”

We need to look around at the sin and the sorrows of our lives and give voice and tears to those honest words of lament and pain that lead to the healing that only God can give, the healing that our lives and world so desperately need.

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

There was work to be done.

The ascension was not the end of the work, it was the transfer: now it is our task to do Christ’s work and it is work that needs doing every day and it is work that will never be completely finished in this world.

But it is the work that he does through us.

Now, I will admit that there have been times when I have wondered if that was the best idea Jesus ever had, turning it over to people like you and me.

But he did and that part of it is not ours to question.

You see, the Kingdom of God is not off in the future, it is not there for those who are so anxiously latching on to the next fad that comes along, it is here “at hand” Jesus said early in his ministry.

The hand that you shake with when you greet someone, the hand that you place on a shoulder to share and to lessen the grief of another, the hand that you wave with when you see a familiar face, the hands that so many of you worked with Friday and yesterday up at Camp Warwick, the hands that write the checks that let God move more freely through us as a Church, the hand that you hold when you just don’t want to be alone.

The Kingdom of God is at hand, there is no need to go look for it, just open your hand to each other, open your heart to each other and the Kingdom of God will be yours.

These are extraordinarily difficult days, ugly day, that we are living through. Think of just the news stories of the last few weeks: the oil on the waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the bombing attempt in Times Square, the mean-spirited exchanges between the unions and the Governor, the riots in Greece, public officials being indicted so often it barely makes the news anymore, an economy that seems so frail, violence on campuses, the list goes on and on and on and it could almost be enough to discourage you . . . except for the Ascension of Christ and the guidance of angels who save us from staring at the sky and remind us to look around.

Look around and see the people who are journeying with you and realize that we will get through this, because in the middle of these ugly days there are so many people and moments and places of beauty, people and moments and places that God has created for us.

His kingdom is at hand, not up in the sky, not back in the memories but at hand. Reach out and touch it today and you will discover all of the vision and the power and the hope that you need for today.

We have important work to do, holy work and we will not see then of it and it is easy to get discouraged and want to give up, but when we do it is good to remember the words of Reinhold Niebur, in his book “The Irony of American History”, that I have shared with many of my teacher friends lately, because they need someone to remind them that what they do is wonderful and sacred and essential and that God values it even if their neighbors and friends do not:
          Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
          Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of
          history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
          Nothing that we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are
          saved by love.

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”