change

The End Is the Beginning (Look out!)

/ reverendjoannwhite / Leave a comment

Sabbath Day Thoughts — “The End Is the Beginning” Acts 1:1-11

Here in the United States, the Ascension of Jesus is perhaps the least celebrated of Christian Feast Days. That isn’t true around the world. From Indonesia to Ivory Coast to Iceland, Ascension is both a religious and a public holiday—no work, no school. In Germany, Jesus’ ascension to his heavenly Father has been a good reason to also celebrate earthly fathers since the 1700’s. Families enjoy outdoor events and picnics together. Teams of men push Böllerwagens through the streets, brightly painted carts that carry food, beer, and favorite sweet treats for all.

In Spain, Ascension is one of the most important festivals of the year. In Santiago de Compostela, where the Camino de Santiago ends at the burial site of the Apostle James, there is a weeklong celebration. Fields and cattle are blessed. There are parades. Cabezudos—figures clothed in bright costumes with huge papier mâché heads—dance through the city streets to the sound of the Galician bagpipes. Inside the cathedral, the monks fire up the Botafumeiro, a five-foot-tall, 176-pound incense burner that takes a team of 6 men to swing from the rafters.

In Austria and Switzerland, the faithful like to go on hikes for Ascension. They climb hills or mountains in commemoration of Jesus going up. Then, they feast on pheasant, geese, quail, or chicken. The poultry dinner is a nod to Jesus flying to heaven, surrounded by the sacred cloud of divine presence. Traditionally, a new friend or neighbor is invited to join the celebration. If our neighbors around the world are right, then the Ascension is worth celebrating big time. Here in the US, we may be missing something.

Let’s talk about our reading from the Acts on the Apostles. For forty days, the risen Lord was with the disciples, encouraging them, teaching them, holding them together as a community of faithful people. As he prepared to return to his heavenly Father, Jesus had some parting instructions for his friends. Stay in Jerusalem. Wait for God’s promise. Prepare for a baptism in the Holy Spirit. Not a lot of details there. Can we blame the disciples for wanting to know more?

Perhaps it was Peter who spoke up and asked the question that was on everyone’s mind, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Despite everything that Jesus had shown them and taught them, the disciples were still holding onto old notions of the Messiah as a military hero like King David, who could vanquish their enemies and restore their political fortunes. Unable to imagine a future mission without Jesus at the helm, they hoped that God would step in. Why not conquer the Romans, bring down Herod and the Sadducees, restore the fortunes of Israel, and initiate the Kingdom of God? That sounded like a happy ending to the disciples, with ringside seats in Jerusalem for the Kingdom’s arrival.

Jesus didn’t leave the disciples with the neatly resolved ending that they wanted. Instead, he left them with a mission. He shared a vision of his friends as witnesses. They would start in their Jewish comfort zone—Jerusalem and Judea. Then, they would move into enemy territory, reaching out to their Samaritan neighbors. Eventually, they would go to a never-imagined mission field—the nations of the Gentile world. It was a daunting mission, especially since they knew that Jesus was leaving them. He wouldn’t be there to work miracles, feed the crowds, and preach those incredible sermons. Were they really up to the challenge? Jesus may have cast an inspiring vision for the future of his friends, but faced with his impending departure, the disciples felt frightened and overwhelmed, grieved and abandoned.

Endings and beginnings are hard. We mourn what is left behind and we worry about what lies ahead. We wonder if we are up to the challenge. We fear that we may fail. We may not even know where to start. We know all about that.

It’s graduation season. Yesterday morning, students of North Country Community College celebrated commencement in the Sparks Gymnasium. Last week, the Smitties graduated, outside along the lakeshore at Paul Smiths College. On June 26th, Saranac Lake High School seniors will likewise say farewell to a school that has felt familiar and become routine. Some students will step into jobs or commit to further studies. All will feel both the grief of an ending and the anxiety of a new beginning. Will they be enough? Will they have what it takes?

Endings and beginnings continue long past our school graduations. On average, a professional American works twelve jobs throughout their career. Long gone are the days of a single job that is worked across a lifetime. Each career move comes with its challenge. We say goodbye to workplace friends, mentors, and familiar tasks. We take a chance in a position of increased responsibility and pressure. We must learn new skills and adapt to different expectations. There is always a moment on the first day of a new job when we think, “What have I gotten myself into?”

I am told that even retirement bears the mixed feelings of grief and accomplishment, worry and anticipation. We bid farewell to our workplace identity and settle into a new and nebulous role that isn’t defined by our boss or our paycheck. We may miss the sense of purpose and daily routine of the workplace. We may feel the burden of time on our hands. We may wonder how many years we have left or if we have saved enough money. Or we may find a fresh purpose in volunteering, travel, or family that is gratifying and joyous.

Endings and beginnings are hard. We constantly face them. Graduations, new jobs, and retirement. Engagements, weddings, and relationships coming to an end. Births, illnesses, deaths. Something seems to always be coming to an end. Something is always bidding us to a new beginning. It was true for the disciples wondering how they would tackle a new mission without Jesus. It is true for folks like us, who navigate transitions and changes in our lives, mourning what is past, facing our fear, and stepping forward into the mysterious future that God holds ready.

When Jesus left the disciples, they stood looking up, caught in that tension between ending and beginning, wondering how they could go on. Maybe that’s why the Lord sent two messengers with a gentle nudge to move them from grief to action, saying, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” It was time to redirect their gaze. They needed to stop looking up and start looking out. There was a wide world out there in need of the good news of God’s amazing love.

If we continue reading in the Acts of the Apostles, we discover that that the disciples found a way to make it through those ten long days of waiting for the arrival of the Holy Spirit. They gathered in the Upper Room. James and John set aside their rivalry about who was the greatest. Mother Mary and Jesus’ brothers got over their former misgivings about Jesus’ radical sense of family, and they joined the crowd of disciples. Even the women, who were once begrudged a place at Jesus’ feet, found that they were welcomed. Jesus’ friends came together in their brokenness, and they found community. 

In the sharing of their loss and fear, they found the courage to wait and wonder and trust. With one mind, they devoted themselves to prayer.  They got down on their knees, and they gave thanks for all that Jesus had done for them. They confessed their fears and worries and doubts.  And then they asked God to give them what they would need to set about this business of being Christ’s witnesses and sharing the good news from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.  As they came together in prayer and mutual support, they realized that they weren’t alone—they had one another. They weren’t lost. God had a plan for their lives. They might be afraid, overwhelmed, and uncertain, but they trusted that God would provide what was needed when the time was right. There is wisdom there for us.

Endings and beginnings are hard, whether we are graduating or venturing into a new job or stepping out of the workforce and into retirement or managing the myriad curveballs that life brings our way. There is that tension between anxiety and excitement. There are big questions about whether we can handle the mystery of what is next. But it is in stepping into that mysterious future that we grow into the people whom God created us to be, just as the disciples grew into spiritual leaders and bold witnesses. It is in living faithfully through our big changes and in turning to one another in community, that we learn to trust that Jesus truly is with us. The end can be a beginning. With the Lord’s help we are, indeed, enough. We can stop looking up and longing for the past. We can start looking out in readiness for the future. There is a wide world out there still in need of the good news of God’s amazing love, still in need of disciples willing to step out in hope and faith.

So maybe all those countries that make a big deal out of the Ascension really do have something to teach us, after all. The end is often the beginning. That is a fact worth celebrating.

Resources

Mariana Manzanares. “5 Ascension Day Traditions” in CATHOLIC MASS TIMES. https://catholicmasstimes.com/5-ascension-day-traditions/

Brian Peterson. “Commentary on Acts 1:1-11” in Preaching This Week, May 12, 2013. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ascension-of-our-lord/commentary-on-acts-11-11-2

Rebecca Dean. “Commentary on Acts 1:1-11” in Preaching This Week, May 14, 2026. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ascension-of-our-lord/commentary-on-acts-11-11-11

Sharon Bettsworth. “Commentary on Acts 1:1-11” in Preaching This Week, May 18, 2022. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ascension-of-our-lord/commentary-on-acts-11-11-8

Acts 1:1-11

1 In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach 2 until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4 While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11 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.”

Photo by Chris wade NTEZICIMPA on Pexels.com

The Message We Do Not Want to Hear

/ reverendjoannwhite / Leave a comment

Sabbath Day Thoughts–Mark 6:14-29

Our nation has a long tradition of people who have spoken hard truths to those in power. In 1777, Midshipman Samuel Shaw and Third Lieutenant Richard Marven blew the whistle on the torture of British prisoners of war by Commodore Esek Hopkins, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy. Commodore Hopkins was well-connected. His brother was the Governor of Rhode Island and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In response to their truth-telling, Shaw and Marven were dismissed from the Navy, jailed, and slapped with a criminal libel suit in the Rhode Island courts. When the Continental Congress learned of the injustice afoot in Rhode Island, they unanimously enacted America’s first whistleblower protection law on June 30, 1778. Shaw and Marven were exonerated and Commodore Hopkins was censured for misconduct.

Perhaps the most notorious whistleblower of the twentieth century was Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst with RAND Corporation. In 1971, Ellsberg and colleague Anthony Russo leaked a top-secret study—the Pentagon Papers. The study revealed a web of deception and misinformation about the war in Vietnam. The Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations had lied to Congress and the American people about the viability and success of the war effort. Ellsberg was charged with espionage. He would likely have been convicted if Nixon conspirators G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt—The Whitehouse Plumbers—hadn’t burgled Ellsberg’s workplace, illegally tapped his phones, and plotted to have him dosed with LSD. When their efforts to quash Ellsberg’s truth telling were uncovered, the case against Ellsberg was dismissed.

Employees who speak hard truths in the workplace also face harassment and persecution. In 2010, Everett Stern was working as an anti-money laundering compliance officer with HSBC when he blew the whistle. Stern uncovered a massive, multi-national, money-laundering network at HSBC tied to terrorist groups in the Middle East. Stern sent numerous alerts to his supervisor about the problem, but his boss quashed every effort to stop the illegal wire transfers. Out of options, Stern made contact with the FBI and CIA. As the government noose tightened, Stern lost his job in October 2011. Blacklisted by the financial industry, Stern couldn’t find work. He resorted to waiting tables at PF Chang’s before eventually launching his own business in fraud detection. HSBC paid the federal government $1.92 billion in fines but never faced criminal prosecution for their actions.

John the Baptist knew all about the danger of speaking truth to power. As our reading from Mark’s gospel began, John was imprisoned at Machaerus, Herod Antipas’s mountaintop fortress and retreat. John was the only man in Israel with the chutzpah to call out Herod on his illicit marriage to Herodias. Herodias was Herod’s niece, the daughter of his brother Aristobulous, who had been murdered by their father Herod the Great. Herodias was also already married to his brother, Herod Philip I, who was very much alive and living as an ex-patriate in Rome. The incestuous and illicit union of Herod and Herodias was proscribed by the Torah. Leviticus eighteen and twenty expressly condemned their marriage. But not one priest, not one scribe, not one rabbi in Israel would confront the king about his sin. Everyone at Herod’s Feast knew that the king’s conduct was scandalous, an affront to the Torah, a sin against God, and an embarrassment to the nation.

They left it to John the Baptist, who was known for his blunt and fiery speech, to deliver the message that neither Herod nor Herodias wanted to hear. The Baptizer blew the whistle. He exposed the whole sordid scandal. His condemnation set tongues a-wagging and invited questions and scrutiny. As a result, John found himself a permanent guest of the king, confined to the dungeon at Machaerus, where he continued to denounce Herod and call for the king’s repentance. The king listened to the Baptizer with mixed fascination and fear.

Every message John preached from his prison cell was an opportunity for change. Herod could return to righteousness. He could make the choice for a holier life. Herod knew his guilt, and so did Herodias. As a woman in a deeply patriarchal world, John’s truth telling could lead to her banishment or execution. Rather than renounce her illegal marriage and return to her rightful husband, Herodias waited for the opportune moment when the whistleblower could be silenced, once and for all.

Being a whistleblower is risky business. We may not ever expose military misconduct or the abuse of Presidential power or corporate fraud and profiteering, but we all face moments when our moral sensibility tells us that something doesn’t smell right. Something is wrong. We know that if we remain silent, we will be complicit. Refusing to speak up, to say, “Stop. No.” is really a “Yes” because we have allowed wrong to go unchallenged. We know that if we speak out, there will be painful consequences for our lives: job loss, broken relationships, angry arguments, malicious gossip, outright rejection. Speaking the truth can be the hardest thing we ever do.

Although we may know the ethical challenge of being the whistleblower, we also know the shock and shame of having the whistle blown on us. We have heard hard truths that have confronted us with our bad behavior and sin. Our John the Baptist may have been the father who told us to swallow our pride, straighten up, and go home to the wife and kids. Our John the Baptist may have been the friends who confronted us about our addiction and insisted that we seek professional help. Our John the Baptist may have been the boss who noticed that we were cutting ethical corners and gave us the “Come to Jesus” speech. Our John the Baptist may have been the professor who caught us plagiarizing a paper and made us face the academic consequences for stealing someone else’s work.

We all know John. We have all had people in our lives who have cared enough to invite us to change, to be our better selves, to repent and begin again. Sometimes, we use the power at our disposal to silence them. We disconnect from the relationship. We tell them they are crazy. We deny we have a problem. We resort to threats and insults. Occasionally, we listen to them. Our lives take a new trajectory that isn’t easy, but it is right.

Herodias’s opportune moment came as her husband hosted a banquet to curry favor with his nobles, military commanders, and leading men of Galilee. The table was decked with delicacies. The wine flowed in abundance. The disturbing passion of the evening reached its crescendo as the daughter danced for her father’s pleasure. As Herod promised half his kingdom in reward for his daughter’s performance, Herodias knew she would get exactly what she wanted: John the Baptist’s head on a platter. When the tragic request is made to kill John, there is a graced moment, the king could have challenged his wife and risen to his better nature. He could have acknowledged his wrong and saved John’s life. But the moment passed and John’s fate was sealed in gory fashion.

When the Flemish artist Peter Paul Reubens painted “Herod’s Feast” in the 1600s, he did so with bold color and sensuous detail. Reubens portrayed Herod’s daughter in a scarlet silken dress, bosom bulging, coquettishly lifting the cover on a silver platter bearing the bloodied head of John. A smirking Heodias, at the king’s side, plies a fork with her pinky finger lifted in elegant fashion, ready to poke John’s lifeless head or perhaps serve him up to her husband. Herod looks on, eyes bulging in horror, hands clenching the table cloth in guilt and remorse, barely holding it together. All around them, the party continues, guests feasting and drinking and gossiping, as if the death of the whistleblower were a foregone conclusion.

It’s a terrible story. It’s hard to hear that Herod would sooner take an innocent man’s life than admit his sin and make a change. We are appalled to think that a mother would manipulate her husband and her daughter to bring about a murder. John’s death anticipates the cross and the death of the innocent Jesus at the hands of a weak Pontius Pilate and an angry mob. When this passage pops up in the lectionary cycle, preachers are tempted to give it a pass. But it is a story worth attending to. John’s end questions our moral character. Will we stand up for truth, or will we fail to blow the whistle and live in guilty silence? John’s demise also ultimately confronts us with our own whistleblowers. We have all walked in Herod’s sandals. We have not always risen to our better natures when forced to listen to the message that we do not want to hear. We read of Herod’s Feast and John’s death, and we know our aversion to the hard truths and our reluctance to change, even when it is the right and holy thing to do.

Our John the Baptist blows the whistle. There is a graced moment – the potential for change and growth. Will we become our better selves, or will the prophet lose their head?

Questions to ponder (leave a comment) . . .

When have you been a whistleblower?

Who has been your personal John the Baptist?

How have hard truths prompted you to change?

Peter Paul Reubens, “The Feast of Herod,” accessed online at https://www.peterpaulrubens.net/the-feast-of-herod.jsp

Resources:
Black, Matthew. “The US passed the first whistleblower law in 1777” in History 101, Feb. 14, 2020. Accessed online at https://www.history101.com/the-us-passed-the-first-whistle-blower-law-in-history-in-1777/.
Mullins, Lisa. “50 Years Ago, Daniel Ellsberg — Who Leaked The Pentagon Papers — Surrendered At Boston Federal Court” in WBUR News, June 28, 2021. Accessed online at https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/06/28/on-this-day-daniel-ellsberg-pentagon-papers-surrender-boston-federal-court
Mollenkamp, Carrick and Brett Wolf. “Special Report: HSBC’s money-laundering crackdown riddled with lapses” in Reuters, July 30, 2012. Accessed online at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-compliance-delaware-idUSBRE86C18H20120714
Hall, Douglas John. “Theological Perspective on Mark 6:14-29” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.
Yust, Karen Marie. “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 6:14-29” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.
Bryant, Robert A. “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 6:14-29” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.