• Acts of the Apostles 1:15-17,21-26

After the ascension of Christ and before the feast of Pentecost, Luke provides in another sermon, this time before 120 “friends,” an explanation of the fate of Judas.  The role and fate of Judas, he explains, was foretold in the scriptures.  To fill his place, two men, Justus and Mathias,  are put forward, both of whom were genuine witnesses to the entire public ministry of Jesus, from his baptism by John to his ascension  After a prayer expressing confidence that the Lord will identify the right person, one is selected by drawing lots–Mathias.

• Psalm 1

The psaltery begins with this description of the proscribed posture of the wise person: she does not walk with the wicked, stand with those who offend God, nor sit with scoffers, but instead follows the way of “the Lord’s teachings.”

• I John 5:9-13

Accepting or rejecting human testimony about Jesus is to be expected, the writer of the First Letter of John writes.  But, rejecting God’s “testimony” jeopardizes life itself.  What is God’s testimony? “The Son” is “God’s testimony!”

• John 17:6-19

While still at table with his disciples for their last meal together before the humiliation of his arrest and standing before a kangaroo court and humiliating execution, Jesus offers in John’s gospel a lengthy discussion of the significance of his life, death and resurrection, culminating in this prayer to the Father for the future of his followers after his ascension.  Jesus reveals that they were given to him by the Father and now he returns them to the care of the Father;  “while I was with them, I protected them in your name….”  And all were protected, “except the one destined to be lost….”  They will experience the same derision and skepticism that I endured, Jesus continues to pray.  “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”  “Sanctify them in truth; your word is truth.”

These readings and gospel assigned for this transitional Sunday between Ascension Day and Pentecost address the situation of those who will not have known Christ before his return to the Father, but will have heard or read the testimony of others.  Which, of course, includes us.  We live on this side of the resurrection/ascension.  In the absence of first hand experience of Jesus, we rely on the testimony of others.  We test that testimony and decide if it is true for us.

Michel de Certeau, (1925-1986) was trained and ordained as a Jesuit and had an intellect that ranged over many contemporary questions.  In the middle of his publishing career, 1971, he wrote an enduring essay, “How is Christianity Thinkable Today?”  He ponders the situation raised in the appointed readings and gospel for this last Sunday in Eastertide, the situation of those of us who know Christ after his departure from human encounter in the flesh.

These excerpts from de Certeau’s essay, which are taken from The Postmodern God, (pp 135-158),  consider the “disappearance” of Christ, which makes room” for a new “presence:” 

“However it is taken, Christianity implies a relationship to the event which inaugurated it: Jesus Christ.”  Which has “…two contradictory characteristics: the will to be faithful to the inaugural event: the necessity of being different from these beginnings.”(p.142)  “Whatever types of transmission or of reading of the ‘original’ exist, they never repeat the Gospel.”  “(This fidelity is not a repetition or an objective survival of a past.)  Each explication postulates the reference to a past event that makes other expressions possible.”(p.143)  “But this fidelity itself is not of an objective kind.  It is linked with the absence of the object or of the particular past which inaugurated it.  The past is not our security.  Beside the first statement of this fidelity (possible only after the disappearance of Jesus) is the Scripture, supposing its own conditions, the death of the ‘Son of Man.’  The Christian language begins with the disappearance of its ‘author.’  That is to say Jesus effaces himself to give faithful witness to the father who authorizes him, and to ‘give rise’ to different but faithful communities, which he makes possible.”  “The process of the death (the absence) and the survival (the presence) of Jesus continues in each Christian experience.”(p.145)  “Christianity is still capable of opening a new space… discovering a living necessity (linked to the disappearance of an objective security because this truth has the form of a creative, risked freedom…)”(p.147)  “For Jesus to die, [and be removed from  human time and place] is to ‘make room’ for the Father and at the same time ‘make room’ for the polyglot and creative community of Pentecost, for the plurality of Scriptures, for the multiplicity of the future Christian generations.”(p.150)

The testimony we read as “truth,” –(“Sanctify them in truth; your word is truth,” Jesus prayed)– are addressed “to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may have eternal life.”  Now, we are the intended witnesses and the builders of God’s reign!   It is not possible to “repeat” the original “event.”  We have heard the “testimony” about  the “event”  of the Son (I John), whose “absence” creates a new kind of present/”presence,” every bit as urgent and consequential as the historic event. The decision to be made is not about the past, nor about an historic event, but is current, contemporary and individual.