Always

Always--June 3, 2019

"Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age'." [Matthew 28:16-20]

And with that, Matthew's version of the story is over.  Scene finished, movie ended.  The End.  Fade to black.

That's really all there is to the resurrection appearance of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel (the one and only resurrection appearance in this gospel). That's all we get--something that sounds vaguely like the story Luke tells (but which he sets outside of Jerusalem at the end of his gospel-movie) about Jesus ascending into heaven, up on a mountain with Jesus and his disciples gathered. But did you notice what was missing from this scene?

He never leaves.

Seriously.  Look again.

The risen Jesus appears, having told the eleven disciples to meet him on a mountain in Galilee, and gives them a commission to go to "all nations"--much like Jesus does in Luke's story, where he says they will be his witnesses from Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth.  But after giving them this commission, which presumably would have sent those disciples outward in every direction, Jesus' final words to the disciples are, curiously, "And remember, I am with you always."

And that, as they say, is that.  Curtain goes down.  The cast comes out for a bow.  But Jesus has never left.  We get no ascension story.  Jesus gathers them for a departure, and then he never leaves them.  Now what are we to make of that?

You can either take the position that Matthew is a dummy and forgot to give us the story of Jesus floating up to heaven, even though he has primed the pump for it... or you can give the old evangelist the benefit of the doubt and consider that he has told the story the way he intended to, precisely to tell us that Jesus is not only alive, but with us.  And the promise is that he will be with us... always.

I'm convinced that Matthew is a gifted movie-maker, and he knows exactly what he is doing when he edits this final scene the way he does.  He cuts to black before Jesus' feet leave the ground, not because he doesn't know that Jesus ascended "into heaven" (whatever that means), but because Matthew doesn't see it as an absence.  Jesus ascends, as the old Creed says, "to the right hand of the Father."  But that's a bit of a tricky phrase--after all, where is God?  Everywhere.  So in the ascension, Jesus can be in all places at once, because that is where the Father is--everywhere at once.  Always.

That's exactly how it needs to be if Jesus' commission is to be taken seriously.   If we really are sent out to all the world to bring the news and the way of Jesus to all peoples, then that will either mean that we'll have to leave Jesus behind on the mountain, or he's really going to come with us.  And if he's coming with all of us, he will need to somehow slip the limits of our three-dimensional life, so that he can be with Simon Peter in Joppa and James in Jerusalem and Philip on the wilderness road headed toward Ethiopia, and Saint Paul on his journeys, too.  If Jesus means it that he will be with all of us, always, and not just dropping by in helicopter mode for a quick check-in with one apostle, before he zips away to check on the next, then somehow Jesus himself must be transformed to be able to be in all places.

And that is just what Matthew wants to make clear.  The good news is not simply that Jesus is alive, but locked in one spot on earth, and only accessible by making special trips, but that Jesus is now able to be with us, wherever we are, always.

We need that assurance, because to be utterly honest, it is the only "always" you can count on in this life.  Everything else--and everyone else--on God's green earth is always in flux, always changing.  Every person you know is on their own journey, and theirs will overlap with yours for a time before it veers off in a different direction--or yours does.  That is the nature of life, and it is not a sin or a design flaw when it happens.  Jesus himself has just given the disciples directions to scatter in different directions as they go into "all nations," after all.  But because Jesus is not just alive but has ascended into God's kind of space, he really can mean it when he says, "I am [note: already in the present tense, and not even "I will be"] with you always."  His course of life will forever track with mine... and with yours... even when you and I head in different directions.  When Jesus says "always," it really means "always."

Even when everything else seems to be going in different directions--and, my goodness, scientists even tell us that in a cosmic sense, everything in the universe is expanding away from everything else!--Jesus is alive and present.  That is enough on this day.  

He has never really left.  For Jesus, and therefore for us, always means always.

Lord Jesus, let us trust your Always promise, and let it give us the courage to bear the changes unfolding all around us all the time.