A lot of the symptoms look like epilepsy or things we might categorize as some sort of mental illness-a disorder that medicine of the time simply couldn’t explain or easily treat. I often wonder about the evil or unclean spirits the Bible talks about Jesus casting out. I’ve been thinking about spirits a lot lately. However, in Acts, which you might think of as a sort of sequel to Luke, that promise becomes explicit: “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” I know it isn’t Pentecost quite yet, but this subtle shift of emphasis toward the Third Person of the Trinity intrigues me. In his Gospel, Luke tells us that Jesus is about to send “what Father promised,” but the author never specifies what that promise is. Because of his attention to minutia, it’s interesting to note the one obvious difference between the two presentations. That same tradition tells us that in addition to being an author, Luke was a trained Greek physician as well, and many preachers point to the technical details found in his two books as corroborating evidence of that claim. And they should be, because according to early Church tradition, Luke the Evangelist wrote both of them. This morning, both our first reading and our Gospel gave us stories about this last of miraculous event surrounding Jesus. And I don’t have one to offer you today, so the mystery will just have to keep waiting. I’ve never really seen a satisfying explanation. If so, was Jesus using alien superpowers to take the quickest route home? Theologians have been trying to come to terms with this odd story-or, more often, avoiding it-for thousands of years. Is “ascension” some sort of ancient metaphor that we just don’t have the context to understand? Or maybe Heaven is somewhere in outer space. Flying people are something from dreams and movies, not real life. Although the early Church clearly thought it was important enough to pass on to later generations, from a modern worldview, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The Ascension is one of those “huh” events in the Bible. It may not be a big deal in the United States overall, but as one of the Major Feasts of the Liturgical Calendar, it’s something we really should take time to observe. We read and talked about the Ascension at church and in Bible class, but I’d never heard of anyone celebrating it until the summer after my senior year of college. This is a holiday I never even knew existed for the first half of my life. This past Thursday-forty days after Easter-was the celebration of Christ’s ascension. It’s like something new is in the air, like society’s hearts and minds are beginning to recover the ability to breathe deeply. But no matter what it is, the world just feels different. Or maybe it’s the early inbreak of summer with our recent streak of sunshine and warm weather. Even Neela, our super-anxious, dog-hating dog, hasn’t been nearly as reactive as usual on our walks. ![]() ![]() More kids and teenagers are hanging out on their porches or playing street basketball. Cars have been passing a little more slowly. ![]() Our whole neighborhood seems to be connecting with that same, calmer energy. It was strange-good strange-but still strange. Instead of carrying it over in one of those clear boxes like they have for the past year, one of them actually handed me my drink-with her hand! When another customer came in to pick up their order, they didn’t have that familiar cloud everyone’s been carrying. Everything looked like it has for the past fourteen months, but even with no other customers in the shop, something felt different. You can practically smell it.įriday morning I stopped by our local Starbucks. “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” – Acts 1:5
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