Pentecost is celebrated as the founding of the Church, when the Spirit descended upon the male and female disciples in the upper room. It occurs after Jesus ascends into the clouds and his disciples are no longer to see him. Traditionally, it is assumed the ascended risen Christ is in heaven. He sends the Spirit as his replacement for his disciples and what becomes the church. The ascended risen Christ is missing, but the church claims that it has his Spirit. Does it? In what way?

In the last few years, I have understood what the ascended or risen body of Christ means to Pentecost and all definitions of what church is. Churches have understood that the Spirit belongs to them; they think they control and own the Spirit. Jesus and the Spirit are reduced to presence controlled by ritual, sacrament and prayer, and actions within the church. But what if the Ascension, the disappearance of the risen body of Christ in the clouds, activates the commission of Pentecost. Churches think that they have locked up the Spirit of Christ as exclusively their own.

The ascended risen body of Christ is a “missing body” for churches. The ascended body of Christ is a way of speaking theologically that the ascended Christ is “everywhere”, even outside the institutional churches and even outside of Christianity. Creator, Christ, and the Spirit are not the exclusive property of any church. Divine presence constitutes the church. In early Christianity, thoughtful writers argued that the incarnational risen Christ and the Holy Spirit are the two hands of God active in the world, not just in the churches. The world and church are not one sphere.

Churches have restricted the Spirit and the ascended body of Christ within itself. They stand under a grand illusion that they actually control the incarnational presence of Christ rather than understand what the true disappearance of the risen Christ and his disappearance in the clouds means. In John 3:8, Jesus says, “the wind the Spirit) blows where she pleases.” There is a wildness to the Holy Spirit. She infuses Jesus at his baptism in the wilderness, and that Spirit actuates a “wild Christ” who brings a message of God’s compassion and presence in our midst. I have understood the Spirit as mischief maker, undomesticated and causing mischief. “By mischief, I mean what the late John Lewis described as “good trouble.”

Yale theologian Linn Marie Tonstad writes, “Ascension means the body of Jesus is, in a sense, lost to the church—the church does not have it, so the church cannot control who gets to be or who gets to eat Christ’s body.” (Queer Theology) In other words, the church should not exclude outsiders.
Churches often define the body of Christ, the church as the presence of the risen Christ through the Spirit, in word and sacrament, prayer and ritual, and compassionate action and love. Yes, of course, and even more. God, Christ, and Spirit are bigger than churches, bigger than the Bible, and bigger than Christianity. Hear me correctly, I am not saying God neither present in Christianity nor the church, but God is simply bigger and wider.

An ecological biologist, Chris Ubl, offers a description of inclusivity:

Inclusivity is grounded in relationship whereas exclusivity stems from separation. A consciousness rooted in inclusivity generates trust, one moored in exclusivity foments fear—especially, the fear of the other. When our goal is exclusivity, we silence those with whom we disagree, but when inclusivity becomes our goal, we create a world that works for all. (Developing)

Jesus practiced radical inclusive love and compassionate care to end suffering and exclusion. This practice was expressed at his open table. He did not exclude all sorts of suspect and wounded people and outcasts but welcomed them into a table fellowship of a disciples of equals, male and female. Quite radical, a table fellowship without hierarchy, a discipleship of equals, the greatest serving the rest, and open to all, celebrating God’s gracious hospitality and loving acceptance. The open table was radical then and can be again. It has been significant practice for me and my journey in discerning the presence of God. Ultimately, divine presence constitutes church.

Many churches, however, place all sorts of fences and exclusions around the table. They arrogantly control access to the presence of the incarnate Christ. They decide: Who are worthily admitted and who may be excluded to that presence. They fence out and exclude all those unlike themselves—the others. They place so many conditions and strings attached for admission.
The missing body of the ascended Christ in the clouds symbolizes that the churches have made little or no effort to understand their mission first not to exclude people from God’s presence in word and sacrament and secondly to search for the missing body of the risen Christ elsewhere, outside of themselves and even different folks.

The search for the missing body of the ascended Christ has been a lifetime mission for me to look for and discover divine presence outside of its walls. It is a church without walls, a church wherever divine presence is found. As I discovered that presence is found in unexpected places and unimagined or even within “indecent” individuals and locations. You would be surprised where God’s presence may be residing and needs discovery.

There are two significant features of Jesus’ ministry that have equipped my search: 1) his compassionate action; 2) and his open table practice. They are interrelated and co-exist together.

Compassion is not just an emotional response to someone suffering; it includes a sense of identification with the suffering and attempts to alleviate suffering. Compassion is the recognition that the person suffering and in need could be me and what described as “the least of my family.” (Mt. 23:40) Compassion shatters barriers between people. We are open to outsiders. Diarmuid O’Murchu, in his book Inclusivity, writes,

Gospel based compassion tolerates no outsiders. It is embraces and seeks to bring in all who are marginalized, oppressed, and excluded into empowering fellowship. It evokes a double response requiring a reawakened heart that knows it cannot withhold the just action that liberates and empowers. The transformation of the heart which might also be described as the contemplative gaze, asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. (O’Murchu, Inclusivity)

In Luke 6:36, Jesus instructs, “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.” Gospel compassion allows us to see ourselves in those who are suffering and humbly reach out help and discover Christ’s presence.
Jesus practiced an open table of hospitality where all—in particularly, outcasts, tax collectors, prostitutes, the throw-away people– were welcome. Jesus practiced an inclusive vision of God’s compassionate and hospitable welcome. Let me use spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen definition: “Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our fears and open our home to the stranger with the understanding that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler” (Wounded Healer) His definition originate in Jesus’ ministry of hospitality: Hospes venit, Christus venit. “A guest comes, Christ comes.” The UCC welcome states, “no matter who you and where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” This encapsulates the Jesus’ open table of grace. God’s hospitality has no exclusions. As he commands his disciples in sending them in proclaiming the good news: “Freely received, freely give.” (Mt. 10:8) We do not hoard grace; we give away. Indigenous peoples receive gifts, but a gift is not a gift until it is shared or given away. We named this disparagingly “Indian giver” and I name it not hoarding grace and freely giving it away.

I grew up Catholic, and we were taught: “There was no salvation outside of the Catholic Church.” The Catholic church had the real presence of Jesus at the table, the real Jesus. Few others did. That meant Protestants and non-Christians were not saved, but damned. Grace, salvation, and the open table of Christ cannot be hoarded and restrict. They are free given to us to freely share and give way. In my journey through life, with joys and suffering, I have found that broke down many of my barriers and prejudices of growing up in a small town in Connecticut. The Spirit has an uncanny ability when I would settle with new boundaries of pulling the rung from under me and expanding me even further.
In seminary, my boundaries expanded dramatically, working in India with Mother Teresa and her House of the dying Destitute in Calcutta, making a Zen Buddhist retreat with Joshu Sasaki Roshi at a Trappist monastery, and even in a graduate seminar for doctoral studies.

It is the outsiders who challenge us to live Jesus’s inclusive vision of a compassionate and hospitable community, to search outside and find the presence of the Spirit and the risen body of Christ. The open table reflects God’s hospitality, where there are no exclusions. There are no outsiders to Jesus and to God. For Jesus, freely sharing food signifies the abundant hospitality and inclusive love of God. With Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf coast, there were many American organizations and faith communities that gave to those folks in need of the basics. The PEW Foundation studied giving among Christians for Katrina, and they discovered a reluctance among Evangelical Christians to give to anyone unlike themselves. This is not the compassionate action in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. I pastored a predominantly LGBTQ church and with several LGBTQ+ churches collected all sorts of relief goods for a black church not open and affirming of LGBTQ” folks. We collected and delivered a huge truck of goods to the church without any strings attached. “Freely received, freely given.” Mt. 10:8) No string attached to people different from ourselves.

My journey has led me to see and experience the wider God in various natural places and locations. As a child, I loved nature and its beauty, especially, trees changing color in the autumn. Mindful connecting with the natural world, the beauty and populated with biodiverse life. I intuited with my senses and my mind that God lives in places. The Bible claims that creation speaks. The language of creation, if we listen with our senses and awareness, elicits wonder, invites attentiveness to a divine presence. The whole universe, in particular the Earth, expresses a language of presence and communion, more complex and mysterious than any written religious text.

The open table I practiced, along with the meditation practices I learned from the Jesuits in finding God’s presence everywhere and the Buddhist meditative practice of paying attention to your senses prepared me to discover the epiphany of divine presence. I found the sense of communion with God in the eucharist was also present in wider manifestation. I experience what one translation of Psalm 33:5, “Earth is filled with the compassion of Lord.” The Christ, the incarnation of God’s compassion, was found in abundance. I discerned the presence of God’s compassion experienced at the open table. Compassion is another word for grace, and that grace surrounds us. We interbreather that grace with other life, we are intimately interconnected to a web of all life