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Easter 7: Sunday after the Ascension St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Canton OH Acts 1:1-11

May 24, 2009 The Rev. Barbara L Bond

On Ascension Day in 2007, Norm and I were in London.  That day we visited the Tower of London and became thoroughly steeped in history, some of it grim, some of it grimmer, surrounded by the ghosts of Ann Bolyn and Henry the Eighth.  Having had enough of the Tudors for the day, we pulled out our tourist’s map to see what was nearby.  Hey, I said.  How about St. Paul’s Cathedral?  It’s right over there! Surely there was some divine plan in this, not just a coincidence, that we ended up at St. Paul’s on Ascension Day.  I had forgotten it was Ascension.  It is easy to forget this church festival, since it always lands on Thursday.  It is forty days after Easter, and commemorates the story we heard in our first reading, how Jesus prepared his followers for his absence, and then he went away.  According to the account in Acts, Jesus was raised up in the air and borne away to heaven.  His followers stood there dumbfounded, craning their necks to see him go, when two angels brought them back to earth, saying:  Why are you looking up there?  Look around you.  There’s work to do!  And sure enough, the followers got busy, turned into Apostles, and changed the world. But, as I was saying, Norm and I ended up in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on this forgotten feast day, which I had forgotten.  We wandered in, and behold!  The cathedral was making a big deal out of it, with terrific music, a wild liturgy and a woman priest, and a preacher who was the chaplain of a boys school.  He told us about their custom, that on every Ascension Day, the boys would run up a hill, would “ascend” to a higher place.  The preacher found this entirely appropriate, to act out this ascent in a very literal way.  And then he started to talk about Mount Everest. I LOVE to talk about Mount Everest on Ascension! And apparently it is not so unusual to make this connection, even in our Mother Church, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.  So hang on – here comes my annual Mount Everest sermon! I first made the connection of Mount Everest and Ascension in the 1990s, when I realized that climbers always go up in the month of May, year after year.  That is the only reliable window of opportunity, when the gale-force winds calm down a bit and climbers can try to reach the top.  It is always around the Feast of Ascension.  A coincidence?  I don’t know.  But we preachers surely like to put the two events together. Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world.  The summit is up there where airplanes fly – over 29,000 feet.  It is as high as humans can go.  Those who make it say they are on the top of the world.  This year, on Ascension Day, I’m sure there were several climbers up there.  The National Geographic team made it two days before, on May 19. Mount Everest has a mystique about it.  The Nepalese people who live in its shadow have a great respect for the mountain, calling it sacred.  They never tried to climb it until Western climbers started up, and needed their help. Today’s climbers will tell you that the mountain has a strong lure, an attraction that they cannot quite articulate.  They always climb in a team, and the camaraderie of the group is important to them.  It takes a long time, as they advance to various camps, and stop for weeks to acclimatize to the altitude.  All this time they are looking at some of the most dramatic scenery on earth, drinking in the beauty, aware of the rare opportunity. They climb high up, and the air gets thin.  They become more dependent on each other and on their Nepalese guides, the Sherpas.  The community of climbers is welded by the common effort.  The physical challenge is enormous.  Those who make it to the summit know an exhilaration that is shared by the whole group.  Some say they have made contact with God.  They have gone the limit of what humans can do. Let’s imagine that we are up there with them.  We have gone as far as we can go, to the top of the world, and God is beyond that, higher, farther, in realms beyond our imagination.  We have gone as far as we can go, and we have experienced a wonderful melding of community in the effort.  We have passed through prayer flags, following deeply religious Sherpa guides.  We come down, with a greater respect for the earth, for its power and beauty.  We have a new respect for our fellow climbers, and for all the support teams that made this ascent possible.  We don’t look up, but we look around. One person who looked around when he came down was Sir Edmund Hillary, who with his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, were the first people to reach the top in 1953.  After that, Hillary took an interest in the lives of the Sherpas, building schools and hospitals, improving their lives however he could.  He no longer looked up, but looked around. We who have looked up and encountered God in our lives – on a mountain top, in worship, in prayer, in an event, in people – we know that we have received a wonderful gift, an empowering experience that will help us to look around.  We come down from the top and see ways that we can help others.  We feel empowered by our community, working together to do God’s work in the world.