Where to Look for God

Feast of the Ascension
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

It’s now been 40 days since Easter—just over a month. The apostles have been through so much! So much turmoil as they tried to wrap their minds around all kinds of mysteries and miracles: Jesus’ strange appearances and disappearances, his popping up here and there without warning… looking not quite the same, yet there’s something so familiar and compelling about him. Can it really be the same Jesus?

Then today, the eleven are summoned to the Galilean mountaintop. Is Jesus actually going to be there? But this is crazy! How could some of those apostles not have had some lingering doubts… and just wonder if they’re hallucinating… maybe thinking they should turn around and go home for lunch?

But Jesus did show up. He spoke to them. He gave them a few final instructions. And then he levitated into the sky… a cloud floated by… and when it passed, he was gone. Dumbfounded, the apostles kept looking up at the empty sky.

It’s interesting how they kept looking for Christ where he was, not where he is now! But truthfully, don’t we do the same?

When I was back in high school, I had a friend named Bruce who was an amateur magician. I shudder at how geeky we were, but he loved card tricks and other stunts involving sleight of hand. I guess the success of these tricks depends on people’s expectations and making them look where you want them to, so they don’t actually see what you’re really doing to fool them.

In some ways, maybe that describes how we want to see God. Because we find comfort in familiarity and stability, that’s what we expect from the Lord. We pray to God: please make it good and then leave it that way!

Ah, but Jesus isn’t so big on the ho-hum and the status quo. It seems he always wants to lead us to new and better places! Remember what he said a couple of weeks ago: I am the way and the truth and the life. And to experience this way, this truth, this life, means that we’ve got to step out of our comfort zone. In other words, we must seek the Lord not in the old familiar places… not where he was yesterday… but where he is now and where he wishes us to go.

Of all the characters in the New Testament, perhaps no one experienced this more than the apostle Paul. He started out as the Pharisee of Pharisees, so opposed to Christ and so obsessed with his understanding of his religion that he went on a one-man terrorist campaign to rid the world of Christians! Yet after a powerful conversion experience on the road to Damascus, he embraced Christ’s way and truth and life. God wasn’t in the old place that Paul thought. Once he let go, he found him again and took his faith journey to another level.

Paul wants us all to experience the same thing. Listen to his potent and magnetic words to the Ephesians that we just heard: May God give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him. May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory… what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe…

So, where do we begin to look for God? How do we find his new place?

If you’re a fan of CSI or Cold Case or even Hercule Poirot, you might think that you’ve got to do some detective work—track down lots of clues and check them out exhaustively. But no. Jesus isn’t at all trying to hide his tracks or make it hard to be found. On the contrary, he wants us to find him. That’s the whole point!

The Bible is full of passages that tell us how near God is. We read in Acts: God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us (Acts 17:27). And of course, Our Lord’s well-known words in the gospel: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened (Mt 7:7-8). Yes, God is right there!

So we’re faced with a bit of an interesting paradox. On the one hand, sometimes God seems to disappear from view, and it may frustrate us that he’s not there, not answering our prayers, not giving us the answers we want. But then on the other hand, he tells us he’s easy to find if we just ask… yet we hesitate. Maybe that’s because we’re afraid that God will ask more of us than we want to give. Maybe we’re afraid that he’ll want us to change when we don’t want to.

On Ascension Day, when the apostles realized that Jesus was gone for good, they hightailed it back to Jerusalem and barricaded themselves in the Upper Room. They were frightened now that it dawned on them that Jesus wasn’t there any more. So they began to do what the Lord had taught them to do so well: to pray fervently.

Next Sunday, we’ll celebrate another feast that commemorates the culmination of their prayer: the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit, that Spirit of courage, joy and divine power, totally energized them to reconnect with the Lord where he truly was, and that gave birth to the Church. That same Spirit is ours for the asking, as well. The Lord promises that once we let him into our life, everything will change for the better and we’ll do amazing things.

We shouldn’t be afraid. We mustn’t be! Turn to the Lord in your heart and ask him to show himself. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.