Feet Dangling from the Heavens

My children love the story of the three little pigs, which is a great narrative about how to build a secure life, how to protect ourselves, how to prevent our selves from being victims. A similar parable is found in the Bible of course, the parable about building a house on sand or on rock.

‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!’ Matthew 7:23-29

The Gospel reading for the Sunday after Ascension* gives us a very clear expression of how to build a house on rock, for we listen into a conversation between Jesus and His Father. Jesus’ prayer to the Father reveals the extent and nature of their intimacy, founded on unity of will and of being.   That unity is at the heart of Jesus’ courage and sacrifice. He trusts the Father and is at one with Him – he knows he must suffer and yet he puts his trust in Him and willingly gives up His life.

The three little pigs had to leave home, they had to grow up. Jesus also had to experience a moving away from the Father to accomplish his will. Jesus’ vocation is about division and separation in order that the work of reconciling the world might be completed. So, their unity is not that which excludes others, a unity of privacy and closure, it is a transparent unity, a welcoming unity, a unity that is a model for others, so that we might be included: ‘may they be one as we are one’.

Jesus’ adaptability, his willingness to move, to change, to become human, was essential to his vocation, to his challenge; his willingness most of all to give up the security of heaven in order to rescue the world. A journey of the most extraordinary risk, involving loss on a scale we can only imagine: ‘who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’. Yet, we realise that he hasn’t given up the essential security which is his relationship with His Father.

Human beings seek stability and security, yet to learn we must seek new environments, we must be willing to adapt, to change and to challenge ourselves. Moreover we must give up or sacrifice things in order that we live the life of love. For Jesus to come to earth, he was giving up his safety, yet he knew that Love was and is His Father’s identity. As Jesus contemplates his return to the Father his prayer is for us that we might be protected because we are ‘still in the world’. He prays that we might enjoy the relationship of unity that he enjoys with the Father.

Jesus shows us that true security can only be found in the depth of our relationship with the Father, with our God. It is that only, the small still centre, which will enable us to cope with, to move through the challenge of being subject to so much change, at times so much suffering, so much challenge. The Father could ask so much of Jesus, because He was His Son, they were totally united in will and in being. God will ask so much of us and we will achieve as much as our faith in God is strong: the rain comes down, the wolves come prowling, but we remain firm, steadfast in the faith.

Unity then with the Father is the way that unity is achieved between us as people. We need not concern ourselves with what others are doing or not doing, but we need to focus on building and strengthening our relationship with God. Jesus all the time that he was on earth, continued to keep that deep and abiding link with His Father, it is what enabled him to do all the things that he did.

If all of us focused on our most important relationship with our God we may just find that our human relationships are transformed. When we learn to wait upon God, we see things differently. We begin to see the depth of the love that the Father has for me as an individual, despite all my failings, all my sins, that we look at our neighbour differently. Jesus looked at us on earth not as hopeless sinners but as humans with the potential to be glowing with love – he saw that and knows that the way to enable people to be transformed by love is not to condemn them, whatever they have done, but to love them, to lift them up to Heaven.

The story of the Incarnation, the indwelling of God on earth, the story of which is finished historically speaking in the Ascension, is the story of God stooping so low so that we might at the last rise with Him to Heaven, perform our own feet-dangling in the air miracle. That was the purpose of that journey, the journey from the centre of God to His other centre, his people, his creation.

*John 17:1-11      Jesus Prays for His Disciples

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.