Knowing which way is "up!"

There is an old story that comes from the heady days of the space race between the USA and the former Soviet Union sixty-five years ago. The story goes that when Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit the earth, made his voyage in 1961, that he looked out the window and observed that he did not see God.

It gets weirder. 

It turns out that Gagarin never said anything one way or the other about seeing God out the window of Vostok 1! But we do know this: in the days before his rocket lifted off from Star City on the Wednesday after Orthodox Easter, Gagarin took his daughter, Yelena, to be baptized that Easter Sunday.

The infamous comment was actually made by Nikita Khrushchev about a month or so after the flight. And he didn’t quote Gagarin but rather, in an attempt to mock religion, he said what he thought Gagarin didn’t see. The Western press, perhaps spotting an opportunity for propaganda (and probably also unable to understand Russian) immediately attributed the words to Gagarin. 

Never missing an opportunity to have fun, the speech did inspire a 1963 film called Heavens Above!, a screwball British comedy starring Peter Sellers who plays a naïve but well-meaning vicar who is accidently appointed to small parish basically run by the wealthy lord of the nearby manor. The new vicar started doing exactly what Jesus taught: he gave away food to poor, sold all his (and his parish’s) possessions, and welcomed the poor into his church, becoming such an annoyance that the folks complain to the bishop. But he has generated such publicity that they can't really remove him, so instead he is appointed as the new Bishop of Outer Space, stuffed into a Mercury-like capsule, and shot into space. From there, as he orbited the earth, he read the psalms over the radio from his space capsule. 

A more famous (and lasting) response to the Gagarin mis-quote came from three real American astronauts, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman as they orbited the moon in Apollo 8 seven years after Gagarin's flight on Christmas Eve, 1968. The three astronauts took turns reading Genesis 1:1-10, the creation story, on the same flight that gave us the iconic image of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon.

Which just goes to show that the geography of holiness is a tricky and dangerous thing!

The Feast of the Ascension, which comes forty days after Easter, describes and celebrates the return of the living, crucified, and resurrected Jesus to heaven. Many people, especially today, when we can peer into deep space at other galaxies, get hung up on what is meant by “up.”

Which raises a question: which way is "up?" 

What is described in both the Book of Acts and in the Gospel of Luke is not a mere disapparation. Jesus doesn’t just disappear into the ether, but instead physically rises up into the sky, leaving the disciples staring into the heavens, mouths agape, until an angel comes and tells them to “snap out of it!” and come back to earth.

As sophisticated as we are, no matter how many airline flights we take, and no matter how many space shots we’ve witnessed, we still tend to think of heaven as “up” and hell as “down”, with us living somewhere in the middle. But as interesting as this cosmological hot-hero sandwich might be, the real significance of the Ascension is not geography but relationship!

Our catechism in The Book of Common Prayer reminds us that “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (p. 854)

In both the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts, before he returns to heaven, Jesus tells his friends and apprentices to stay put in the city and await the gift that God will send them.

He also teaches them one last time how everything they have seen and heard fits together as God intended. We discover that the disciples, in this period between resurrection and Pentecost, were not powerless, alone, nor afraid but spent their time together in what must have seemed like a transformed community: they prayed and sang and worshipped. They were not hiding but lived out in the open going between their home(s) and the Temple through the streets of Jerusalem for all to see!

What changed was the geography of holiness. Their place, their city, once a place of foreboding and death, is now a place of wonder and worship. They saw the world and their place in it with new eyes, and this even before the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, would arrive on Pentecost!

You see, the Ascension didn’t just take Jesus back into heaven, into God’s realm in the cosmos, the Ascension revealed how the friends and apprentices of Jesus were now living in a new relationship with God and each other through Christ because heaven had come to earth!  And this changed them! Their relationships with God each other and even with the world around them was transformed because they were restored and renewed. 

Finally, the Ascension shows us the sneakiness of God. Its importance is exactly backwards from what we expect. We think it is about going “up,” when in fact it is God coming “down,” to meet us and all humanity and creation right where we are, tuning our hearts and our senses towards Christ! Giving us the gifts, the power, and the skill, to see humanity and creation more and more through God’s eyes. The Ascension shows us that that prayer we pray every day us, the one that Jesus taught us, that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven is in fact happening—all around us!

So which way is “up?”

The Ascension shows us that as we are drawn to Christ, to each other, and to the world, we are being drawn to God. That way is “up!”

The Ascension reminds us, as Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Anthony Bloom once said, “that the realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it.” Look at what happens in Luke and Acts. Jesus draws to heaven and invites us to work in The City—in the places and in the relationships where God has placed you. And the only place where we can receive “power from on high” is in “the city,” where we, his people, live, pray, work, and worship.

This is the geography of the holy. We don’t need to go elsewhere to find God because God is right here, right now!

It is said by some who knew him, that Yuri Gagarin carried in his pocket a small icon, right up until he died in a plane crash in 1968. I don’t know. But I do know this: we here in this city, in this place, in our witness, worship, and in our holy work, we baptized people are icons of the holy. What God is doing on earth with us now is what happens in heaven, just as Jesus said when he taught us to pray.

The Ascension invites to look up and see heaven and, at the same time, look around into the city because right here, right now, we baptized people inhabit the geography of the holy.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Sunday, May 17, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Which way is "up?"

There is an old story that comes from the heady days of the space race between the USA and the former Soviet Union sixty years ago. The story goes that when Yuri Gagarin, the first person to fly in space and orbit the earth, made his voyage in 1961, that he looked out the window and observed that he did not see God.

It gets weirder. 

It turns out that Gagarin never said anything one way or the other about seeing God out the window of Vostok-1! But we do know this: in the days before his rocket lifted off from Star City on the Wednesday after Orthodox Easter, Gagarin took his daughter, Yelena, to be baptized.

The only record of the infamous comment in fact comes from a speech by Nikita Khrushchev in the month or two after the flight. And he didn’t quote Gagarin but rather, in an attempt to mock religion, said what Gagarin didn’t see. The Western press, perhaps spotting an opportunity for propaganda (or else not being able to understand Russian) immediately attributed the words to Gagarin. 

I wonder if this comment, and the minor media and geo-political flap that arose from it, didn’t inspire a 1963 film Heavens Above!, where Peter Sellers plays a naïve but well-meaning vicar accidently appointed to a snobbish parish but who did exactly what Jesus taught: he gave away food, sold all his (and his parish’s) possessions, and welcomed the poor into his church, becoming such an annoyance that he is shot into space as the new Bishop of Outer Space, orbiting the earth reading the psalms over the radio from his space capsule. 

The misquote attributed to Gagarin was definitively answered by three American astronauts, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman as they orbited the moon in Apollo 8 seven years later on Christmas Eve, 1968. The three astronauts took turns reading Genesis 1:1-10, the creation story, on the same flight that gave us the iconic image of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon.

The geography of holiness is a tricky and dangerous thing!

The Feast of the Ascension, which comes forty days after Easter, describes and celebrates the return of the living, crucified, and resurrected Jesus to heaven. Many people, especially today when we can peer into deep space at other galaxies, get hung up on what is meant by “up.”

What is described in both the Book of Acts and in the Gospel of Luke is not a mere disapparation. Jesus doesn’t just disappear into the ether, but instead physically rises up into the sky, leaving the disciples staring into the heavens, mouths agape, until an angel comes and tells them to “snap out of it!” and come back to earth.

As sophisticated as we are, no matter how many airline flights we take, and no matter how many space shots we’ve witnessed, we still tend to think of heaven as “up” and hell as “down”, with us living somewhere in the middle. But as interesting as this cosmological hot-hero sandwich might be, the real significance of the Ascension is not geography but relationship!

If you turn to the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, you will discover that “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (p. 854)

In both the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts, before he returns to heaven, Jesus tells his friends and apprentices to say put, and await the gift that God will send them.

He also teaches them one last time how everything they have seen and heard fits together as God intended. We discover that the disciples were not powerless nor afraid but spent their time together in what must have seemed like a transformed community: they prayed and sang and worshipped. They were not hiding but lived out in the open going between their home(s) and the Temple through the streets of Jerusalem!

What changed was the geography of holiness. Their place, their city, once a place of foreboding and death, is now a place of wonder and worship. They saw the world and their place in it with new eyes, and this even before the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, would arrive in another ten days!

You see, the Ascension didn’t just take Jesus back into heaven, into God’s realm in the cosmos, the Ascension revealed how the friends and apprentices of Jesus were now themselves drawn living in a new relationship with God and each other through Christ. They were changed. Their relationships with each other and even, in their eagerness, with the world was transformed.

The Ascension shows us the sneakiness of God. Its importance is exactly backwards from what we expect. We think it is about going “up,” when in fact it is God coming “down,” tuning our hearts and our senses towards Christ! The Ascension is daily living the prayer we pray every day: that God’s work is being done on earth—all around us! —just as it is in heaven!

So which way is “up?”

The Ascension shows us that as we are drawn to Christ, to each other, and to the world, we are being drawn to God. That way is “up!”

In God’s strange incarnational economy, Christ draws us towards heaven while at the same time showing us the only place we can really find that God is right here-- where we live, work, study, and play. The Ascension shows us that God’s power and healing is not reserved for the someday but is ready for us now. The Ascension demonstrates that in all of our everyday living, the Risen and Ascended Christ continues to be present.

The Ascension reminds us, as Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Anthony Bloom once said, “that the realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it.” Look at what happens in Luke and Acts. Jesus draws to heaven and invites us to work in The City—in the places and in the relationships where God has placed you. And the only place where we can receive “power from on high” is in “the city,” where we his people live, pray, work, and worship.

When we do heavenly worship, with glorious music, we usually think that we are drawing ourselves towards heaven—and we are—but we are also witnessing to the reality that God is all the time bringing heaven to earth. I told you… God is sneaky that way.

This is the geography of the holy. As God’s people, the more we are drawn to heaven the more we live in service to the world; the more we are drawn to that ascended vision, the more we are invited to stay in the city. In the geography of the holy, we don’t need to go elsewhere to find God because the place where we find the power of God is right here all along!

It is said by some who knew him, that Yuri Gagarin carried in his pocket a small icon, right up until he died in a plane crash in 1968. I don’t know. But I do know this: we here in this city, in this place, in our witness, worship, and in our holy work, we baptized people are icons of the holy. What God is doing on earth with us now is what happens in heaven, just as Jesus said when he taught us to pray.

In the Ascension, we are invited to at once look up and see heaven and go out into the city and so inhabit the geography of the holy.

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Bulletin for Worship for the Seventh Sunday of Easter-- Sunday After the Ascension , May 21, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 7 Easter A- Sunday after the Ascension, May 21, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on May 21, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on May 21, 2023.

Come, Lord Jesus, and quench our thirst!

There is an old saying in journalism circles: if you want to know the truth of what going on, follow the money.

It doesn’t take a bloodhound to follow the money in today’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles. Paul and Silas are making their way through Philippi, when a slave girl with powers of divination sees them and announces to everyone within ear-shot that these two men are “slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

For some reason, this really annoys Paul, even though this is exactly why they came to Philippi in the first place! Maybe Paul does not believe in advertising, or maybe her words disrupted whatever his plans were. Whatever! Paul stops and performs an exorcism that silences the girl and frees her from demonic possession.

As great as it was for the woman to be healed, her owners were nonetheless very unhappy. Remember—follow the money! The slave woman’s abilities were a lucrative source of income which is now, thanks to Paul's exorcism, gone! So, they have Paul and Silas locked up.

Follow the money… and you’ll discover where people’s hearts are all the time. Here a woman is restored to wholeness, healed from her demon, and freed from slavery, and all anyone cares about is the money!

I pause here to note that you never seem to hear the religious charlatans throughout the ages, who love to take people’s money under revival tents or on television screens talking about this passage. But I digress.

When Paul and Silas are thrown into jail, they pray and sing hymns all through the night, when all of a sudden an earthquake hits and causes the prison doors to pop open! The jailer assumes that the prisoners must have all fled and is about to take his own life, when Paul stops him from harming himself, saying, “Look! We are all still here!”

What frees Paul and Silas, and what will lead others to faith, is not the money but an earthquake. It is not the idea of sudden riches that changes hearts, but the awareness that God is present to us even at the moments that shakes us down to our very souls.

The sudden terror of the earthquake, and the guard’s fear of being blamed for even a failed jail break, gives way to the recognition that these Christians are truly care for him. He is astounded by Silas’ and Paul’s compassion for him, their jailer. Before you know it, the jailer and his family are baptized and are added to the ever growing church described in the Book of Acts.

In John’s gospel today, Jesus is praying. It is Maundy Thursday, the night before his crucifixion. He knows he has been betrayed. He knows he faces execution at the hands of the Roman Empire. Oddly enough, Jesus never follows the money, even as one of his followers is bribed to betray him. No, instead of worrying about himself and what lies ahead Jesus prays for his disciples. And he prays not only for his immediate group of followers and friends, but he prays for all of us. Jesus prays, “… on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. … So that they may be one, as we are one.”

Jesus is taking the long view. He is looking far, far ahead as he prays for you and for me, and for every Christian in every place and in every time.

Jesus’ prayer for us meets up with the prayer that makes up the final words of Holy Scripture: “Come, Lord Jesus!” In the Book of Revelation, the Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” But the prayer is also invitation. Let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who would take the water of life as a gift from God come. The prayer is not only that Jesus will return to us, it is also a prayer—and an invitation—that we will come to him! Come, Lord Jesus!

I don't know about you, but I am very grateful for Jesus' prayer for us, especially these past few week which have rough indeed!

I think that we are living through one of those pivotal moments when we wonder if it is possible to hear the voice of God. Between successive mass shootings, in a grocery store, in a church, and in a school, and the apparent helplessness of our leaders to come to useful solutions, not to mention the Monday-morning quarterbacking by people who weren’t there, or who playing to their constituencies, it is clear that today, we are a people who are feeling very thirsty, very hurting, and very lost.

And you know what is really troubling to me? That there are good people of good faith who won’t even come together to talk to each other constructively about how to address this because they fear the people with the money. We are left looking on as our corporate wheels spin as we bury our dead.

You know what we learn when we follow the money? That we are as a culture spiritually thirsty.

Never has Jesus’ invitation in the Gospel of John more important—and more needed!

As Jesus’ people, we hold the pitcher of living water. Can we invite the thirsty to come? Are we willing to let “anyone who wishes” to take the gift of the water of life? Can we find ways to listen and dialogue and problem solve together without falling into our silos of blame, shame, and fear?

I worry that too often the Church mimics the world’s division and pain instead of ministering to it. The truth is that the world is in too much pain to keep doing this. We can no longer continue to hold people – faithful, seeking people – at arm’s length from the waters of life! Now is the time to open the floodgates of God’s unconditional love and mercy!

The time is now to cry out with one voice, as John the Divine does in Revelation when he implores Jesus to come! Revelation shows us a picture of the world where God is in charge and all people everywhere who are gathered before Christ are loved, known, valued, and cherished, and where our petty differences fall away before the throne of the Lamb.

The invitation on this Last Sunday of Easter is to allow ourselves to be shaken open by the Holy Spirit, just as the earthquake opened the doors of the prison in Philippi, and loosed the chains on all those in the prison. More than that, we are called to be the earthquake that opens people’s hearts and loosens their shackles holding them in fear that turns into anger and rage. The world is in desperate pain and too many hurting people are deeply thirsty for hope, direction, presence, and love.

In Christ, through our faith and baptism in the Spirit’s power, we are unbound, our shackles have dropped away, we are shaken loose so that we might be a word of hope and comfort to those who are  those people who make the waters of life, the waters of God’s unconditional love and mercy, truly and honestly available to all persons.

The first words of the Bible are “In the beginning God…” and the last words in the Bible are “Come, Lord Jesus!” We are created to be God’s people in God’s world, and we are sent into a hurting world to proclaim, baptize, and teach the love of Christ, hearing and meet the deep longing of all the people God has given us. And the best part is that the prayer we prayer has already been answered. The promise of the Ascension is that Jesus is with us, even through all the troubles and uncertainties we experience. He is always with us … even to the end of the age... ready to quench our deepest thirst! 

As we pray, so we affirm: Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Seventh Sunday of Easter at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater

Here is a link to the Scripture readings for 7 Easter C.

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.

Here is a link to a video of the  liturgy.

A dynamic and glorious in-between time

A sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 16, 2021 at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida. 

This is a very strange moment in the Church year, don’t you think?

Here we are smack dab in-between Ascension Day (when we remember the Risen Jesus returning to the nearer presence of God) and Pentecost (when God the Holy Spirit openly descending upon the Church). It is a very strange, in-between time!

So, was this gathering of Jesus’ people merely a Church-in-waiting. Or worse, was it a church asleep? Was this very young, very small Church described in Acts today merely “on hold” waiting for the Spirit to come and kick them into gear? Not at all!

The great theologian Paul Tillich once wrote that the whole history of the Church can be understood as a movement between charisma and order, an oscillation between activity and rest, and where these meet (or are in tension) is where the Holy Spriit lives!

This is helpful in sorting out the paradoxes that arise when we compare the various Gospels on this moment in the life of the early Jesus movement.:

Matthew’s Gospel shows us Jesus giving out marching orders--go into all the world, proclaim good news and baptize new Jesus-people.

Luke remembers things a tad differently. In Acts 1:4, the apostles are told to go to Jerusalem and to “stay in the city, where they will receive power from on high.”

Which, if you look at the themes of each Gospel, is kind of strange.

Matthew organized his Gospel like a little Torah with Jesus setting out a new law, but he recalls the Great Commission as Jesus’ last words on earth—Go into the world to baptize and teach!

Luke, on the other hand, who is all about the movement of the Spirit and the flames of Pentecost, talks today in Acts about the disciples having committee meeting to get organized!

And John spends serious Gospel real-estate reporting Jesus’ prayer that the ones who have encountered the eternal logos live in a community that mirrors Jesus in their common life.

So, perhaps, the time between the ascension and Pentecost was really a grace-filled, active moment in their life together. Could it be that once again God is challenging our expectations?

The Anglican priest John Wesley, who founded the Methodist branch of the Jesus Movement, talked a lot about grace in his preaching and teaching. The great hymn “Amazing Grace” summarizes Wesley’s teaching quite well.

Wesley taught that grace is the active, dynamic action of the Holy Spirit. Today in Acts we see “prevenient grace,” the grace that goes before us and readies the heart and mind for the “saving grace” that strangely warms our hearts and sets them on fire. We are next led to “sanctifying grace” which comes as we grow in holiness of life and into the full stature of Christ.

We’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit in power next week. But today’s lessons remind us that the Holy Spirit didn’t just hang out in the bull pen waiting for her turn at bat! While yakking and praying in tongues is exciting and might make what we hear today seem kind of boring—it is the same Spirit moving each time!

All through Acts we see this pattern of how the Spirit works: Moments of great energy and moments of prayerful rest. After they draw straws to choose Mathias (order) then Pentecost happens (charisma)!

Soon the fast-growing early church discovers that the widows and orphans are being left behind. So, they stop and decide how to care for each other (order), appointing the first Deacons to care for the neediest among them (charisma).

Then they go into the entire known world, bringing in people they never imagined into this new young church—Gentiles who never knew about Judaism who want to follow Jesus! And that charismatic innovation will cause them to stop and figure out how to include Gentiles who loved Jesus and were filled with the Holy Spirit just as much as they did!

Acts shows us that even in the earliest church, they had to learn both charisma and order. They needed charisma to enliven. They needed order to make sense of the charisma.

We learn that the Holy Spirit is more than the power of God to excite, the Spirit of God also brings order out of chaos. The dynamism of God both creates and nurtures. It is neither destructive nor accidental.

The Sunday after the Ascension (today) and the Feast of Pentecost (next week) together teach us this basic truth of Christian life: the constant cycle between charisma and order is where the Holy Spirit shows up!

Charisma gives us the gifts of the Spirit which are our gifts of ministry. The fruit of a life lived in the Spirit shapes and re-shapes our character. The power of the Spirit energizes us. Charisma creates vision and energizes Christian living.

But charisma alone can be chaotic and disruptive. Jesus was always calming down erratic disciples and chaotic spiritual expressions in the form of demons or demagogic religious leaders.

We need order. We need grounding in community, and a steady rhythm in life. Order provides us a framework within which to grow. That is why Christians need a rule of life—a framework within which to build our spiritual lives. In our culture of impatience for anything except the next new thing, we need to hear, mark, learn and inwardly digest scripture, sacrament, and prayer.

But order alone can be stifling. Jesus told that to the religious folks of his day all the time! We need the spirit’s action to nurture and activate us.

The whole life of the Church throughout history can be seen as this movement between charisma and order. And in the tension where charisma and order meet is where we find the Holy Spirit!

Another of my spiritual heroes is a woman named Frances Perkins. She come from a wealthy New York family and one day witnessed the terrible fire at the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory in Greenwich Village. Dozens of women and children died because the workers were locked into the burning building with no escape. This experience changed her and she went to Columbia University to become a social worker. From there she worked to reform labor laws, end child labor, promote tuition-free public education. As FDR’s secretary of labor, she was the first woman cabinet member and invented social security, food stamps, and during World War II, she organized both industry and labor to function effectively together. She was a faithful Episcopalian of the Anglo-Catholic variety, who received Communion at least weekly, and took retreat every single month with a group of Episcopal nuns. As a lay person she preached in New York City and Washington churches on the direct link between prayer, the sacramental life, and a life of service.

Frances Perkins’ life and ministry demonstrated how both charisma and order reveals the Holy Spirit.

In the book of Acts, after the drama of resurrection and ascension, the Spirit caused the disciples to stay in the city where they prayed and chose a new apostle. And then the Spirit stomps on the gas and drives them into the world, speaking a variety of languages and exercising a variety of spiritual gifts. And then they come together to raise up people to care for widows and orphans. And so it goes… charisma, order, charisma, order… and in that movement, we see the Holy Spirit at work, moving forward the Gospel of Christ with grace and power. 

Our worship and sacramental life, our study of scripture and our common prayer, our parish life in community sets the stage so that the Spirit can work in us in power. The Spirit is manifested in how we feed the hungry, care for the poor and the lonely, how we pray and worship, and do all the fun stuff together! 

God’s grace prepares us, changes us, teaches us. The Holy Spirit uses our craving for order and our hunger for charisma to ignite us, and our parish community! And in that rhythm of rest and action we become vital messengers of Christ’s life-changing grace and world-changing power!

Here is a video of the Liturgy for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 16, 2021 at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater. (YouTube)

Here is a video of the Sermon only. (Vimeo)

The geography of the holy

Ascension Day - 2018

There is an old story that comes from the heady days of the space race between the USA and the former Soviet Union. The story goes that when Yuri Gagarin, the first person to fly in space and orbit the earth, made his voyage in 1961, that he looked out the window and observed that he did not see God.

It gets weirder. It turns out that Gagarin never said anything one way or the other about seeing God out the window of Vostok-1, but we do know this: before his rocket lifted off from Star City on the Wednesday after Orthodox Easter, Gagarin took his daughter, Yelena, to be baptized.

The only record of the infamous comment in fact comes from a speech by Nikita Khrushchev in the month or two after the flight. And he didn’t quote Gagarin but rather, in an attempt to mock religion, said what Gagarin didn’t see. The Western press, perhaps spotting an opportunity for propaganda (or else not being able to understand Russian) immediately attributed the words to Gagarin. 

I wonder if this comment, and the geo-political flap that arose from it, didn’t inspire the 1963 film Heavens Above!, where Peter Sellers plays a naïve but well-meaning vicar who gives away food and welcomes the poor into his church, becoming such an annoyance that he is shot into space as the new Bishop of Outer Space, orbiting the earth reading the psalms over the radio. 

The misquote attributed to Gagarin was definitively answered by three American astronauts, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman as they orbited the moon in Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968. The three astronauts took turns reading Genesis 1:1-10, the creation story, on the same flight that gave us the iconic image of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon.

The geography of holiness is a tricky and dangerous thing.

Here we are, forty days after Easter, on another Feast of the Ascension, celebrating the return of the living, crucified and resurrected Jesus to heaven.

What is described in both the Book of Acts and in the Gospel of Luke is not a mere disapparation. Jesus doesn’t just fade into the ether, but instead physically rises up into the sky, leaving the disciples staring into the heavens, mouths agape, until an angel comes along and tells them, essentially, to snap out of it and come back to earth.

As sophisticated as we are, no matter how many airline flights we take, and no matter how many space shots we’ve witnessed, we still tend to think of heaven as “up” and hell as “down”, with us living somewhere in the middle. But as interesting as this cosmological hot-hero sandwich might be, the real significance of the Ascension is not geography but relationship.

If you turn to the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, you will discover that “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (p. 854)

In both the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts, before he returns to heaven, Jesus tells his friends and apprentices to say put, and await the gift that God will send them.

He also teaches them and reveals to them one last time how everything they have seen and heard fits together as God intended. We discover that the disciples were not powerless nor afraid, but spent their time together in what must have seemed like a transformed community, praying and singing and spending time in worship. They stop hiding, but now live out in the open going between their home(s) and the Temple.

The geography of holiness had changed. Their place, their city, once a place of foreboding and death, is now a place of wonder and worship. They saw the world and their place in it with new eyes, and this even before the Paraclete would arrive in another ten days.

You see, the Ascension didn’t just take Jesus back into heaven, into God’s realm in the cosmos, the Ascension revealed how the friends and apprentices of Jesus were now themselves drawn living in a new relationship with God and each other through Christ. They were changed. Their relationships with each other and even, in their eagerness, with the world was transformed.

The Ascension shows us the sneakiness of God. It’s importance is exactly backwards from what we expect. We think it is about going “up,” when all along is about tuning our hearts and senses towards Christ, so that we can see more and more that God’s work is being done on earth—all around us!-- just as it is in heaven!

The Ascension shows us how we are drawn into Christ, to each other, and toward the world. Christ draws us towards heaven while at the same shows us that the only place we can really find God is right here.  The Ascension shows that God’s power and healing is not reserved for the someday but is also right now. The Ascension demonstrates that in all of our everyday living, the Risen and Ascended Christ continues to be present.

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom reminds us, “that the realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it.” Look at what happens in Luke and Acts. Jesus draws us to heaven and directs us to "stay in The City"—in the places and in the relationships where God has placed you. We hope for heaven, and the place where we receive “power from on high” is in “the city,” where we his people live, pray, work, and worship.

When we do heavenly worship, with glorious music, we certainly are drawing ourselves towards heaven at the same time we are witnessing to the reality that God is all the time bringing heaven to earth. 

I told you… God is sneaky that way. This is the geography of the holy. 

As God’s people, the more we are drawn to heaven the more we live in service to the world; the more we are drawn to that ascended vision, the more find the sacred in the city. In the geography of the holy, we don’t need to go elsewhere to find God because the place where we find the power of God is right here all along!

It is said by some who knew him, that Yuri Gagarin carried in his pocket a small icon, both in his space flight and later when he died in a plane crash in 1968. I don’t know about that. But I do know this: we here in this "city," in this place, in our witness, worship, and in our holy work, we baptized people are icons of the holy. What God is doing on earth with us now is what happens in heaven, just as Jesus said when he taught us to pray.

In the Ascension, we are invited to both see heaven and live in the city and so inhabit the geography of the holy. 

Acts 1:1-11, Luke 24:44-53

A sermon for the Feast of the Ascension, May 10, 2018 at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.