Imagine, if you will, the disciples, gazing up into heaven, witnessing yet another miracle, and wondering that exact thing — the same thing that we now wonder about the end of the pandemic.  They, like we, had lived through something awful, whilst at the same time wonderful, traumatic, miraculous, and wholly unprecedented.  And now, who would they be?  Who will we be, after this?

It’s a question that anyone who has ever lived through a significant event has inevitably pondered.  You can even hear the thought echoing through the very pages of the Bible, after every story from the Garden of Eden to the exodus, to the fall, and the destruction of Jerusalem in the Old Testament, to the foot of the cross, and all the way through the Ascension and Pentecost!

Who are we going to be after this?

Who has this event made us?  How has it shaped us?

How is this extraordinary thing that is happening changing us, and fashioning us in ways that we can only begin to imagine right now?   Our parents and grandparents wondered it while wars raged, and plagues took their toll, and other great events occurred.

After all of this ends — who will we be?

As we begin to see the possibility of something like normality on the horizon, at least in certain parts of the world, this is a thing that we wonder, and that we would do well then to consider.

Everyone in crisis turns into a typically moody teenager, in a way.  We think, “No one has ever gone through anything this bad.  No one would understand!”  But it’s never true!

Our history books, and the Bible, tie up all of these monumental stories with these nice endings, and that can be deceptive to us.  How easily we forget that the people who were in those stories didn’t know those endings until they happened.  We are living through history, and we, just like everyone who has ever lived through a significant event, have felt lost and afraid and angry, and really, this whole time, have just wanted a return to normality. Everyone who has ever lived through a war, has dreamed of a time when they could go out in safety and calm again.  We are not living through a war, but there are some parallels.

We, too, dream of normality.  With vaccines being increasingly widely distributed, if not yet here in Thailand, we can finally almost taste it!

Someday, children who have yet to be born, will read their history books and see how all of this ended, but they will not know what we have lived through.  No, not really.  Not as intimately.  In the same way that we do not truly know the events that we did not live through.  We do not know the fears and anxieties of war, until we have lived through one.  We don’t know the hardship of national crisis, until we live through it.  In the same way, children yet to be born will not understand the coronavirus pandemic, when they read about it in their history books!

Yes, they will see the photographs of the angry protestors, and the people in masks in the shops, and on the street.  They will see the photos of outdoor church services.  They will read politicians’ speeches, and learn about famous scientists who developed safety protocols and vaccines.  They will learn of the mistakes and the triumphs of this time.  The ones who are especially emotionally intelligent and empathetic, will be able to imagine the fear and the anger, and the frustration that we feel right now, but they will not know it.  We should pray they never do!

Who are we going to be after this?

We, too, don’t know what it must have been like to live through Christianity’s first days.  In this story, with Jesus floating off into the sky, the disciples must have wondered, “Who are we going to be after all this?”

After all they’ve seen and been through, they can now no longer go back, to the lives which they were living before they met the carpenter turned rabbi from Galilee.  They wanted answers, too!  Before Jesus ascended, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

In much the same way, for the past many months now, we have asked anyone who might know, when some semblance of normality might be restored to us!

We are lucky enough to have the story of Jesus, and the disciples nicely bound in the pages of our Bibles, and in our history books.  We know how everything turned out: the Church got started, the Gospel spread, and Christians ended up doing some really great things, and some really awful things in Jesus’ name for the next 2,000 years.  And now, in 2020 and 2021, we were also not the first to be kept away from our church worship by the threat of communicable disease!

The disciples, for their part, knew none of that history.  All they knew, was that they were now part of something extraordinary, and something hard, that had yet to work itself out.  They didn’t yet fully understand their part in it, or its impact on them.   They just knew that their lives were changed forever!

Who are we going to be after this?

The answer was up to them.  And the answer, now, is up to us!

As we imagine Christ, floating far up into the sky, on this Ascension Day, we wait with the disciples for the coming of Pentecost.  In our 1^st Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard:

While Jesus was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.  They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

This moment is perhaps vaguely amusing.  We imagine the disciples, gazing up in amazement, mouths open wide, and some angels coming by, and saying those words.

“This Jesus, who has been taken up into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Don’t stand there and wait for something to happen.  Trust us, the angels say, you’ll know it when it happens.  For now, you’ll just have to trust that it will happen, and that his promise is true:  Christ is with you until then.  That will have to be enough!

We will indeed know when the pandemic is fully over.  There’s no need to stand staring at the sky, or at the news bulletins, for that matter.  For now, we’ll just have to trust that it will happen, and is already happening — this will end, and is ending — and the promise is still true.  No plague in the whole of history has lasted forever!

We are one in Christ Jesus.  We are bound together in love – Christ is with us still, and that is enough.  You are enough!

No, we don’t know how this all ends.  But we are not the first to feel uncertain.  So, “who are we going to be after this?”

We are, were, and will be God’s own, beloved people, fully human, and fully loved.  That’s all we’ve got, and luckily, pandemic or not, that’s all we’ll ever need.  Amen.