Desire Lines
Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Acts 1:15-17, 1 John 5:9-13, John 17:6-19
No one tells you when you’re young, or perhaps you just don’t listen or believe, but on passing 30, as a man, you become engaged in a fight to the death battle against your waistline. I have been slugging it out against a 32-inch-waist for quite a few years. Lent, this year, saw a promising offensive on my part, but paternity late-night snacks have brought about an almost desperate retreat.
Running is my artillery here and the last few weeks have fought a come-back with me finding some new routes. On one such occasion I turned down a new path on Wimbledon Common only to find myself diverted off towards the golf course, which I loathe for fear of judgement raining down on me from above and the hellish vision of plus fours below. Keen to minimize my detour I was soon hacking through long wet grass, cursing the wombles under my breath. I was not the first to take this route, though; my footsteps were tracking those of others already cut into the long grass. In this way, usually through misdirected runners, or large dogs, trails emerge and turn into established paths. A lot of innocent grass suffers but that is the price of innovation. This phenomenon is charmingly called ‘desire lines’. Architects, town planners and transport controllers all study these desire lines as they create a freely evolving picture of movement – democratic route construction, if you like. And with the best planning in the world, you can’t quite predict how humans will behave – desire lines may be short-cuts, they may be aesthetic, they may intend time-wasting – because they reflect desire.
Now we’ve entered a sort of between-times in the Church calendar. Ascension was last Thursday, when Jesus was seen no more. Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, God, part 3 if you like, is not till next week. We’re left figuratively looking into the sky; and if following Jesus is our desire, much like trying to travel West on a Hitachi train, we have a serious problem.
The story of Ascension is of an unusual desire line. Less horizontal, more vertical take-off, Jesus intends us to follow him on a new path, following his desire to reconcile creation with God; as the Christmas carol tells us: ‘and he leads his children on to the place where he has gone,’ or in the standard funeral Gospel: ‘if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.’
It’s a confusing story and leads to all sorts of difficult questions – like ‘where is Jesus’ body now?’ And it’s odd what the angels say to the disciples: ‘why do you stand looking up towards 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.’ If Jesus is to return as he left, then there’s clearly good reason to stand looking up towards heaven.
The point is, though, that the disciples need to change the way they relate to him. They need to stop looking for the man – now close, now far away – they need to see in Jesus the revelation of God, linking heaven and earth like Jacob’s ladder.
We may find ourselves in a similar position. The creed almost encourages us to believe that there’s the Father who is God – creator, mysterious and transcendent. And then the Son who we have the stories about and is basically a great guy, someone we can relate to, and feel for. And if this is our Gospel then we’re still clinging to Jesus the man, looking for him in the distance. Instead of desiring just the man, we need to desire what he desired. We need to follow his ‘desire line’, seeking to join earth and heaven. We also need to ascend to God.
Now before you get your glue and feathers out — and we know how that ended for Icarus and the Heaven’s Gate cult — what I’m talking about here is being taken out of ourselves, raised by our desire for God. The early church experienced this in the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost – a strange empowering flood of quasi-magical activity. Whatever we think of this sort of charismatic religious expression, moments like these often define our faith. Experience of God as feelings is certainly not essential, but experiences of conviction, beauty, passion, compassion can transform our faith, our understanding of what God and we are about. And that brings us closer to God in that sense of ascension. This might be through prayer or meditation; a moment of realisation as scales fall from our eyes in realising a deception, or a very genuine truth – like Archimedes’ shout of ‘Eureka’ in the bath, – a sudden flood of compassion for a person or situation; in prayer, music and liturgy, or even as it was for St John of the Cross, hearing a popular Spanish love song, we may be raised. It might be a rush of wonder at a mountain-top panorama. In our relationships, an ecstatic taking out of ourselves, the sudden empathy with a stranger, the incomparable love felt for our beloved or children: transformation and ascension. This is most important when it is a ‘rational passion’. Feelings often pass quickly, and cold sense-making doesn’t change us – but rational passion can alter the course of our lives, a transforming ecstasy. Rational passion is what takes you from the outrage of witnessing prejudice to social action.
The nine days between Ascension and Pentecost are traditionally a time of prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit. We should desire this gift – and seek to emulate Christ’s desire in rising to the Father, in marrying heaven and earth. And even if we feel a strong discrepancy between the formality of our prayers and our real desires, which are often chaotic and unruly; and if it’s late night snacks to perhaps strive harder to emulate Christ’s weightlessness. Knowing the difference between what we want and what we know we should strive for is a way of understanding ourselves, trying to be better, and getting further up the ladder to the place where he is gone.
For us, now, we’re on that mountain with the disciples, only it’s our worship we’re raising up to heaven, in word, song and sacrament. Here we are witnesses to the union of heaven and earth wrought in the story we are retelling. And our prayers are what drag up our desires from the gutter to gaze briefly on the stars. Here we may follow the desire line initiated by Christ and trampled over by countless generations of Christians. Here we are blessed by Christ, as our great high priest blessed those he was going before. The story of Ascension is a story about the bringing together of heaven and earth. For us now, in the middle of life, it’s a reminder to follow Jesus, to seek the love of God, and pray: ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’. Amen.