Jack Hardaway
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Hold on. With both hands. And don’t let go.
What is it about children?
Always grabbing ahold of both our hands, and standing on our toes, calling out, “Swing me around!”
There were years where my toes were continually smashed and black and blue, from multiple generations and families of children standing on my toes and grabbing my hands.
Then around we would go.
Hands holding on tight.
One time I was swinging my youngest brother around as we stood in the ocean surf, and my hands got wet and he slipped and flew out into the ocean, and I fell backward into the waves. Boy were we both surprised!
Hands holding on, lifting us up, and not letting go.
That’s what I feel like I’m doing when I lift my hands up while celebrating the Eucharist, I feel like I’m saying to God to pick me up and swing me around.
The Ascension of Jesus, forty days after Easter, it is always on a Thursday, it was this past Thursday, Ascension Day, we celebrate it today.
Jesus, fully embodied, as physical as physical can be, rises up into the divine life of the Trinity, carrying our humanity with him, into deep intimate communion with the Holy One.
The hand of Jesus’ risen humanity reaches up, and then on Pentecost the hand of God reaches down with the Holy Spirit. Hands reaching up and down, holding on, with both hands. And don’t let go.
The life of faith, the life of salvation, the life of belief and conversion is the life of both hands holding onto and being held by the Holy One, who is Love.
Lifting us and swinging us around.
Faith is not an escape from the world, not an escape from the physical, the tangible or the painful, it is the life of hands holding onto one another, lifting one another, not letting anyone slip away.
Life in the Spirit is always calling us more and more deeply into the world, the stuff of life, and finding God there.
It isn’t about feeling spiritual, though that is a nice feeling, is always about love, and love is always about physical things.
We are embodied souls, not disembodied spirits.
That is what is revealed in the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus.
The body matters, both now and eternally.
The physical is where God is known and where the proclamation of Gospel happens.
Grace for all.
Refresh. Renew.
The physical form matters.
How we care for and shape and pass along the physical form of the Grace Church property says something about who God is and what God is up to.
It is a physical expression of thanks to God, for creation, for life, for love, for belonging, for salvation and being set free from all that would wither and diminish our humanity.
How many ways can I tell God thank you?
That is what we are doing.
It is like this pulpit, it is a pulpit of thanksgiving that gives thanks for generations, given by returning soldiers from WW 2, giving thanks for making it home.
Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you!
That is what we are doing, building and restoring a physical expression of thanksgiving that shapes the future, that gives a gift to the future, the gift of giving thanks.
Our hands are reaching up in thanks and praise, and our hands are taken and held tight, we are lifted. We are going for a swing.