May 4, 2008
Acts 1:1-11

This would be a tough topic for me, because I would almost inevitably have to confront some entrenched perceptions of the Bible as a factual, literate, account of events. The Ascension narrative in Acts 1 (and the earlier version in Luke 24:50-53) repeatedly state that Jesus went “up.”

There’s no point in quoting Rudolph Bultmann at these people, that the old mythical three-story picture of the cosmos (heaven above, earth in the middle, hell below) is obsolete – they don’t care.

So I think I would use as my primary prop a large globe, a model of the earth, as big as I could find. I would take it out into the congregation and have somebody identify our location. Then I would stick onto the globe, with some Plasticine or other removable goo, a drinking straw, pointed “up.”

Then I would do the same with some other locations, preferably on the far side of the globe.

Visually, it becomes clear – “up” is a relative concept, that depends on your location, your culture.

Most cultures have viewed heaven (whatever that means) as being “up.” Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:10 ff) had angels ascending and descending. A chariot of fire carried Elijah up to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11). The Greek gods lived at the top of Mount Olympus; Hindu gods lived at the top of Sagarmatha, the mountain we call Everest.

But Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay found no gods at the summit of Everest; Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, returned from space to announce that he had looked for heaven up there and didn’t see it.

So what was the writer of Luke and Acts trying to say to us in this story?

I would suggest it’s about saying goodbye. No relationship lasts forever. We move physically; we move on emotionally and intellectually; we die. Short of a suicide pact, it is inevitable that we will have to say goodbye even to the closest of friends or loved ones, someday. (See also the excerpt from a column by Stan Chung, associate dean of arts at Okanagan College in Kelowna, reprinted by permission below.)

Perhaps some worshippers have recently been called to the bedside of a dying relative: “You’d better come now...”

Why do we make the effort to say goodbye?

I believe it’s to affirm – to ourselves and the person departing – that it is NOT over. We may be separating, but we have been changed by our encounter. The relationship will continue to shape us, even though we are apart.

So it is for us. And so it was for the early church, that didn’t even know it was becoming a church.

Excerpt from “Seeing father for the last time,” by Stan Chung, published in The Okanagan Saturday, February 10, 2008, reprinted by permission of the author.
I’m here to see my father, I say. They’ve been waiting for me. I don’t tell them I am afraid. Room 26. They point to the left.

The hallways are still. Some doors are open. Some are closed. Here is the door. Pause. Breathe. I knock. Move in. The bed is empty. No him. He might still be in the shower, I remember a nurse saying.

A man walks down the hall. Hair still wet. Slim. Mental illness works like a preservative, my sister tells me. He doesn’t look like a dying man. But the stomach cancer is closing off the top of his stomach. His organs are failing.

“Hello, Dad,” I hear myself say. “Do you have time to see me?”

“Come in,” he says. The invitation is polite, courteous. I’d forgotten his manners.

So this is how it goes.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I’m Stan.”

“Stan?”

“Your son. Stan and Heidi. Your children.”

He nods, a memory firing in the distance. “You have children?” he asks.

“Yes. Two.”

“How old?”

“Seven and nine. A boy and a girl.”

“You live in Prince George?”

“In Kelowna, now.”

“You came down.”

“Yes, we came down.”

“Why?”

I freeze. “To see you.”

“Me? Why?”

I move to the bed and sit beside him. “Hey, Dad, how are you doing?”

“Not so good,” he says. Points to his stomach. Closes his eyes. “My time is up,” he says quietly. “It’s not long now.”

My sister says his body will shut down soon. It’s a matter of time. That’s why I’m here. It’s a matter of time. Eyelashes flash. Eyes open.

I talk about going on vacation. Where we camped. Where he picked oysters along the beach and ate them raw.

“Yes, it’s coming back.” He smiles. “Yes.”

We laugh.

“I should get going now, Dad.”

“Yes, it’s okay. You drove down?”

“Yeah. It’s just over four hours.”

“Why?”

“You’re my father. You’re my father.”

He looks at me. I face his eyes. Black coals. I cannot bear it. I move my hand to cover his. Hold his warm hand. Tight.

“It’s okay,” I say. He faces me. A sob comes from deep in his throat. I move closer. Hold his body in my arms. His chest is hollow, like a bird’s. Ribs so light. So fragile.

“You were a good dad,” I say. “You were a very good dad.”

I release his body. He stands up. The moment is gone. My father walks me to the door. Courteous again. I cannot look at him. I cannot look back.

Excerpt from Letters to Stephen: A Father’s Journey of Grief and Recovery, by James Taylor (Northstone Publications, 1996).

Saturday September 24
Dear Stephen

We were housecleaning. Joan wanted me to do something with the glory hole at the back of the basement. Her excuse is that she wants to find me some more room in which to work. But the fact is that she can't stand the mess back there.

Then I started on the top of the workbench.

And as I started to throw out some things, and look for places where I might possibly be able to put others away, I realized why I have been avoiding this small space in the house for the last while.

There is just too much here that is you.

I picked up the old hammer with the wooden handle and the red head. We never had anywhere to put it away, so it just sat there on top of the workbench. That was a special hammer. Bob Little gave that to you when you were about five, along with a child's carpentry kit. You used it for years, until Grandpa Anderson died, and you got his hammer. He was a professional carpenter, and his was a better hammer than mine.

Wherever I put down my hands, your tools remind me of you. I know the story behind every one of those tools. You always considered the screwdriver with the rubber handgrip to be yours. "Why is it," you would ask, "that you people are always using my screwdriver instead of your own?"

There are two hacksaws. Two variable speed electric drills. One yours. One mine. Stored together on the shelf. All through the years, those tools accumulated. Always I kept thinking that someday you would be moving to a place of your own, and you would need some tools to go with you.

But where you have gone, you can't take tools with you.

When I went to bed, I cried and cried again, for the first time in many days, cried the way I did the morning after you died. There was salt in my beard this morning when I got up. I washed it out in the shower.

It was as if you had died all over again last night.

Perhaps that is what I needed to feel. Perhaps what I have been waiting for happened last night, when I dropped your old red hammer into the garbage bin.

Goodbye, my son. Goodbye.

I love you. I always will.

Dad.

JIm's full List of suggestions for preaching these stories