Closure

The concepts and vocabulary of psychology and psychotherapy are common in the church these days. Some might say, too common. Ultimately the goals of psychology and religion are not the same, although they are often complementary. Topics like peace of mind, personal fulfillment, acquiring a positive self-image and maintaining a hopeful outlook crop up as often in sermons as they do in therapy sessions. In the end, faith in God offers us far more than the most remarkable therapist ever can. Especially in the end. And I’ll come back to that. But it also strikes me that the church from its earliest beginnings grasped some of the basic concepts of modern psychology. Millennia before the vocabulary of psychology would be invented, Jesus was enacting the principles that underlie that vocabulary. For example, the Ascension. Jesus’ ascension is all about closure. I wonder which prober of the human psyche first coined the term "closure." It is used so frequently, so commonly, these days as to have become almost meaningless, but the concept is a good one. And it is one of the most important elements of the story of Jesus’ ascension.

Thursday was Ascension Day and we continue to celebrate the Ascension today and throughout this week ahead that leads up to Pentecost next Sunday. Imagine what it was like for Jesus’ disciples after his death. Jesus had died on the cross. It is hard for me to imagine what that must have been like for those who had walked with Jesus, eaten with him, spoken with him, touched him. Jesus had died. Jesus, their Lord, was dead and gone. But after three days of indescribable, paralyzing loss and hopelessness and confusion, they had seen him again. Alive. Alive and back present with them. Mary had seen him in the garden. The others had seen him, spoken with him, as they gathered frightened in a room in Jerusalem. Thomas had reached out his hand and put it in Jesus’ side. Peter, Nathanael, Thomas, James and John Zebedee, and two other disciples met Jesus at dawn by the Sea of Galilee. He ate breakfast with them, fish cooked over a fire on the rocks by the lakeshore. He spoke to Peter. "Feed my sheep," he said. They must have cherished, clung to those moments and those places. Perhaps the wonder would never end.

And I can imagine Mary feeling drawn back to the garden, day after day, searching behind each tree for the gardener who had called her by name. I can imagine the disciples lingering in the upper room, reluctant to leave, hoping that, if they stayed in that same place, he would come to them again. Surely if they could recreate the same circumstances, the same place, the same words or actions, they could touch him again.

This morning’s lesson from Acts tells us that after his Easter resurrection, Jesus appeared alive on earth for forty days. And then, "as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight." As they were watching. Closure. Psychology 101. The disciples saw Jesus ascend. They saw him leave the earth, leave their presence. They were meant to know that Jesus’ physical presence would no longer dwell with them on earth. That chapter of their lives was over.

Had it not been for Ascension Day and for the witnessing of Jesus’ ascension, Mary might still be haunting the garden waiting for another glimpse of her Lord. Peter might still be drifting the Sea of Galilee in his fishing boat with the nets slack trying to find just the right place at just the right time, straining his eyes towards shore looking for the familiar figure of his Lord. The disciples might still be huddled in that room in Jerusalem, staring blankly at the closed door Jesus had come through that first Easter day.

But Jesus’ ascension, in their sight, brought closure to that chapter of their lives.

But the funny thing about closure is that it isn’t about closing at all, it’s about opening. The whole point of closure is to open a pathway into the future. We seek closure not as an ending, but as a beginning. It’s also important to remember that achieving closure does not close out or eliminate or in any way diminish the past. Good God! The wonder and mystery and vitality and re-creation that the disciples experienced during their time with Jesus, God incarnate, can never fade or be put aside. Nor could it last forever. So the closure of the ascension offered the disciples (and us) a pathway into the future, an opportunity for a new beginning, a different, but growing and ongoing, life with Christ.

It’s much easier to talk about closure than it is to achieve it. Even after they saw Jesus ascend into heaven, saw his heel disappear into the clouds forever, I expect that Peter and James and John found themselves back by the shores of the Sea of Galilee a few times. Looking. Hoping. Seeking to recreate the past. But they couldn’t have lingered too long. Remember the passage describing the ascension comes from the first verses in the first chapter of Acts. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles has twenty-eight chapters. The ascension is the beginning.

The draw is also strong for us, as individuals and for every parish community, to seek Jesus by recreating the places, the occasions, the specific words or actions where we have found him in the past. To encounter Christ is a wondrous thing. Praise God for those times and places when we have known Christ’s spirit with us. To desire Christ is the heart of our faith. But to haunt the places of past wonder or to cling so tenaciously to memories as though by hanging on to them we could give them life again is to miss the Good News of Jesus’ Ascension.

Listen to the collect, the prayer, that is appointed for Ascension Day. "Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things; Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages." That is the future that began on Ascension Day. Christ left one time and place so that he might fill all times and places and things and people onward to the end of the ages.

This morning’s Gospel reading is from the long farewell discourse that Jesus gives in John’s Gospel before his death and resurrection. In this morning’s Ascension tide reading Jesus speaks a familiar theme… his prayer that his followers may be united, may be one, in the same way that Jesus and the Father are one. What a future. Elsewhere in John’s Gospel Jesus elaborates: "As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us… 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 be completely one…"

One commentary on this passages says: "The whole of the discourse has been exploring the manner in which Jesus would continue to be present with his disciples after the [ascension]. Something of heaven, Jesus has been saying, would attend their life on earth. But one could put it the other way round. It was not only that life in this world would be transformed by something external, by influences from another world. Even more, Jesus says, human beings, while still in this world, could have an experience of heaven." Human beings may be one, united with Jesus, in the same way that Jesus and the Father are united as one, inextricably linked beyond all time and space. Jesus physically ascended above all heavens so that his heavenly presence might abide eternally on earth. Something of heaven accompanies our human lives on earth.

With the closure of the ascension, the disciples would learn not to seek Jesus only in the places where they had seen and known him in the past. Not to haunt the garden or the upper room or the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Now Jesus was to be found in their own hearts and souls. Probably to their surprise, they would hear Jesus’ Word in one another’s voices as the Gospel was taught and preached. They would discover Jesus’ own healing touch in the many hands of the growing Body of Christ. On Ascension Day, these discoveries, this new life in Christ lay yet ahead. But you can read about in the next 28 chapters of Acts. Or in the stories that have brought the Body of Christ through the last 2000 years up to our day. Closure is a pathway into the future. We are that future. And it still lies ahead of us.

Whatever the circumstances in our human lives, closure brings psychological health. To always be hovering in memory, seeking to hang onto or recreate the past is not healthy. But God offers us even more than mental health. God offers us hope. The Christian piece, the amazing faith piece of all of this, is the assurance that the future will always, ultimately, be better than the past. Always. That is what a faithful celebration of the past teaches us. Jesus does not promise us Hallmark happiness, but it is his prayer that, in the future, we may be one. One with one another and one with God. As we give thanks for all that is past, a fuller, deeper, closer, more vital, more lasting, more enlivening, more inspiring union with God always lies ahead.

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