Ask

Today’s gospel reading is a doorway into the farewell discourses of Jesus, those words puzzled over and treasured which helped the disciples and earliest Christians, and ourselves as well, to navigate the newness of post-resurrection life.  This time after Easter is not easy, is not just a matter of simple rejoicing in resurrection and new life, because we are still on the road to new life, still finding our way.  We do not yet know what rising from the dead means.  We celebrate it, yes, and we believe, but we do not understand, and we are troubled by the new reality that faces us.  Where is Jesus?  He is not here?  Then where?

Judas leaves to do his deed and Jesus speaks strange words:
“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him…. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you.” (Jn 13:31, 33)
What are we to make of this?  All expectations and hopes are about to be dashed in Jesus’ passion and death.  As everything falls apart, the questioning begins.  
Where are you going?
Why can’t I follow you now?
We do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?
Show us the Father.
What happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?
What does this mean that he is saying to us, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?
These questions sound foolish and we want to laugh at the disciples for asking them.  But no, they are exactly the questions that need to be asked, and we are still asking them.  When everything falls apart in our world or in our own lives, we have to ask questions.  What happened?  Why?  What does it mean?  How?  When?  Where will we again find life and hope and a sense of direction?  If we do not ask, then we resign ourselves to live in quiet despair, without understanding of the mystery that is unfolding and its promise for our life.  The disciples’ questions allow us to be foolish in pleading for deeper understanding.

At times like this, the liturgy directs us gently to the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, one discourse after another: chapter 3, chapter 6, chapter 10, then the great farewell discourse (or discourses) of chapters 14-17.  We notice that Jesus rarely if ever gives a straight answer.  We might be frustrated by this, as we are in daily life.  Like the Jews, we say to him: speak plainly, tell us clearly!  And he says: I have told you; I have shown you; I AM.  What?  Yet we need to hear this familiar voice again, even if the words tumble over one another in our minds without yielding clarity.  We have to listen again and again, without understanding immediately.  We have to listen year after year, decade after decade, to these words.  We come to each Eastertide of our lives perhaps a little wiser in the ways of God, but still seeking answers, still asking:  Why?  Where?  How long?  What does this mean?

I recently read something from Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, which helped me to come to terms with the experience of ongoing discombobulation and need for questioning.  He is responding to one who says the Church is struggling to manage a death (its own death), by countering with his own vision of reality:
“What the church is trying to manage today is not a death, but an ascension. What needs reshaping in our imagination today is the same thing that needed reshaping in the imagination of the first disciples in the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. We need to understand again how to let go of one body of Christ so that it can ascend and we can again experience Pentecost. What’s at stake here? …
In the days before the ascension, the disciples were overjoyed whenever they recognized again their risen Lord, but most of the time they were confused, despondent, and full of doubt because they were unable to recognize the new presence of Christ in what was happening around them. …
However, during that time, Jesus slowly reshaped their imaginations. Eventually they grasped the fact that something had died, but that something else, far richer, had been born, and that now they needed to give up clinging to the way Jesus had formerly been present to them so that he could be present to them in a new way. …
The church today is in that time between the resurrection and the ascension, feeling considerable despondency, with its imagination attuned to a former understanding of Christ, unable to recognize Christ clearly in the present moment. For many of us who grew up in a particular understanding of the faith, our former understanding of Christ has been crucified. But, Christ is not dead. The church is not dead. Both Jesus and the church are very much alive, walking with us, slowly reshaping our imaginations, reinterpreting the scriptures for us, telling us again: Wasn’t it necessary that the Christ (and the church) should so suffer ….
For many of us today, to live in faith is to be in that time between the death of Christ and the ascension, vacillating between joy and despondency, trying to manage an ascension.  On the road of faith, there’s always bad news and good news. The bad news is that invariably our understanding of Christ gets crucified. The good news is that Christ is always very much alive, present to us still, and in a deeper way.” (Ronald Rolheiser, “Managing an Ascension” May 2, 2022, ronrolheiser.com)

As we struggle to manage an ascension, Jesus says to us:
“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” (Jn 13:31)
And Revelation adds its voice to the chorus:
“Behold, I make all things new.” (Rv 21:5)

Image: Eucharist by Lyuba Yatskiv