The Wounded in Glory

A sermon by Rev. Andrew Colman on Ephesians 1:15-23 and Luke 24: 44-53.

Today, we are celebrating the feast of the Ascension. It is worth saying
that to speak of one of the major events of Jesus' life is to speak of
them all. His Birth finds its meaning in the cross, and the cross finds
its meaning in his Birth. In the same way, the Birth and cross find
their meaning in the resurrection and then finally his Ascension, and
vice versa. Jesus' life on earth was one big, beautiful act of God.

The Ascension is often said to be the moment when the boundary between
heaven and earth is eternally blurred. It's the moment when the flesh of
the Virgin Mary, who was made man in Jesus, moved back to where he came
from, heaven or the heavenly places, if we must give it a name, back to
the "place", if we must locate it, of the eternal, essentially back to
the workshop from where the whole cosmos was set into motion.

It's worth it to take a moment to pay attention to just how Jesus moving
"into the neighbourhood," as Eugene Peterson so beautifully puts it, and
his moving back to that cosmic workshop are different and speak into
each other.

When God in Jesus came to be with us, Emmanuel. In that act, it was God
taking on the vulnerability of humanity, placing Godself at the mercy of
a breastfeeding mother to feed him, of a carpenter father to work for
him, for both to protect and nurture him. But also to be at the mercy of
the world around him in all its brokenness. Eventually leading to his
death on the cross.

This is the moment when God became human in all of our frailty—the edges
of what it meant to be human were starting to blur. The question of what
was possible of this human body and soul started to find its way forward.

And Now let's hear again how Paul describes what  Jesus made possible in
his ascencion, when he was was raised from the dead and made to sit at
God's right hand in the heavenly places.

"the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a
spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the
eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to
which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance
in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us
who believe, according to the working of his great might which he
accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit
at his right hand in the heavenly places."

When we hear the words immeasurably great, this is the only time that we
find these words in the Greek bible, "hyperballon megethos." Paul is
reaching here with his language, trying to communicate the truth of God
that he has experienced. Both these words imply excess and greatness in
unmeasurable ways. It actually feels hard to exaggerate the bigness of
this idea (which, for me, is saying something... )

This is one of the moments where we find the edge of what God has done
and our capacity to express it.

Karl Barth speaks of this edge as "an event that takes place precisely
at the boundary between what is possible and what is impossible, what is
historical and what is unhistorical, time and eternity."

And maybe just one of the things that makes this greatness so
immeasurable is that Jesus ascended as one with wounds in his hands,
feet and side. To Thomas, he said, "Put your finger here, and see my
hands, and put out your hand, and place it in my side."

 For a man who had been dead for three days was raised up, was
radiant in being, and appeared in locked rooms, had it been essential
that his body be without wounds for immeasurable greatness, it could
have happened.

But it did not happen that way. He rose from the dead Christus
Victor, with wounds in his hands and feet, immeasurable great, with a
pierced side, worthy of sitting at the right hand of the Creator of the
cosmos, wounded.

This not only blurs the lines between the heavens and the earth - but it
shatters the lines that we hold in this world.

This week, Rachel and I watched a bit of the Met Gala red carpet. Where
there was an outfit worn by Alia Bhatt; it was an Indian sari that had a
train at least 15 feet long. It was all hand embroidered and was
absolutely stunning. The train itself took up an entire flight of stairs
and more. When interviewed, she talked about how the time that it took
to embroider this magnificent sari was almost 2000  hours by something
like 150 different people. If you are interested in fashion at all, I
recommend looking up this outfit. You'll not be disappointed.

But was the train 15 feet or 20? Were the hours spent 2000
or 1,965? Was it 150 people or 162? Whatever it was, the bar was set for
what was magnificent.

 So maybe not next year, maybe it will be a few years, but
the bar will be set higher; it will be 2500 hours by 210 people on a
train the full length of the grand staircase leading to the entrance of
the MET gala. The lines of greatness, spectacular as they may be, as the
world sees it, are measured.

And one of the first things that will stop the world from measuring this
kind of greatness in its tracks is an open wound. And fair enough, when
we see a wound, it means someone has been hurt, and we ought to work
towards the betterment of that person's well-being.

Then, so often, we become blind to everything else that makes that
person beautiful.

That person may be wounded; that is, however, not all that they are;
they have been wonderfully made in God's image.

But God, God does not stop measuring at the presence of an open wound.

God moves towards it. Because God knows that our wounds bear no
significance on our God-given nature - which in Jesus has been shown to
be immeasurably great.

It is not our wounds that define whether we are seen as glorious; it is
God, God's work of creation and redemption in the incarnation, life,
death, resurrection, and Glorious Ascension of his Son Jesus Christ.

The boundary between heaven and earth, the glorious and the wounded, has
been blurred. Not only has the Glory descended, but the wounded have
also ascended.

And so we find ourselves needing to be careful here once again, which
always happens when you work at the edges.

I am not here glorifying the wounds//.

The wounds themselves are the result of the power of sin in the world.
In an unbroken world, wounds have no place; we are not yet there... the
fully realized Kingdom has not yet come.

The wounds are deeply painful reminders that we have work to do within
the Kingdom that is already here. Reminders that we are to draw on the
Glory that has been bestowed upon us to heal those wounds - in whatever
ways that is possible.

That was the work of Christ here on earth, and that is the work for the
Body of Christ now.

So, in all of this, it is not to glorify the wounds

It is to say that the wounded, which is all of us, have a place in Glory.

All of us have been lifted into Glory,

not because of our wounds or our works but by the life, death,
resurrection and Ascension of God in Jesus Christ.

So, as we move through these few weeks of celebrating the Holy Spirit
and the Trinity and then in the slower summer months of ordinary time,
let us be mindful of our place in the cosmos. This place where the
distinction between heaven and earth are blurred - because God made it
so. This place where we find in ourselves and one another as wounded
individuals and people groups desperate for love and care and healing
and protection -

But also in that same place, these same individuals and people groups
are wonderfully made, bursting with creativity and ideas, with life and
love.

This place in the cosmos where the lines between the heavens and the
earth are blurred because when we look at each other, we see the
Glorious ascended Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit, Wounded and
ImmeasurableWonderful.    

Amen