Sermons Blog
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We see that with Jesus Christ.
Jesus got down low, just like a good football lineman,
Jesus humbled himself by taking on human form.
And thus became much more powerful,
more able to take on the enemies of sin, death
and all that separates us from God and one another.
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One of the most popular and successful marketing campaigns of the last decade was made to promote the chocolate candy bar Snickers.
Part of a major overhaul of their brand,
the motto for the new advertisements were:
“You are not you when you’re hungry.”
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God calls, and humans respond.
God is revealed in times of trouble, when people cry out in pain,
out of fear, out of anger over injustice.
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Is God angry at us?
Is God punishing us through this coronavirus pandemic?
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But perhaps suffering in the past two weeks has really risen to our consciousness in what’s being called the racial pandemic,
or the greatest global racial unrest in history.
At its core is the suffering of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour who suffer at the hands of systemic injustice and racism in structures of our society.
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So this passage (Numbers 11) is perhaps a good pandemic reference for us.
The Holy Spirit is poured out on those even if they’re not present,
And if we hold this as true, we can say that communion
(mediated by the Holy Spirit) is also valid if we’re scattered all about.
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So the Feast of the Ascension should be important to us as worshipping Christians, but it isn’t.
Why not?
I think part of it, is that it’s an awkward story for us
modern enlightened people.
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God is a source of comfort, not just in theory, but in real situations,
like what we are in today.
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Paradoxically, it is the Doubting disciple who gets the most attention.
It is the hurting, isolated disciple with whom Jesus spends the most time.
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Perhaps important to acknowledge
is that we are in a time very similar to the very first Easter!Easter 2020 is like Easter 33,
Where the disciples were huddled together in fear.
Things were deadly quiet. Things were weird and strange.
