May 13th,
2018 “Ascension of the Lord” Rev. Heather Jepsen
Luke 24:44-53 and Acts 1:1-11
The Ascension of the Lord is one of
those church holidays that we skip more often than not, probably because it
always happens on a weekday and most of us aren’t here on weekdays. The Ascension of the Lord is celebrated 10
days before Pentecost which means it happened last Thursday. Another reason we often skip telling the
Ascension story is that it is such a strange story to tell.
In our church year we celebrate quite a
few happy holidays. My personal favorite
is Christmas when we celebrate the coming of our Lord as one of us in the form
of the baby Jesus. And we all love to
celebrate Easter and the coming of our Lord afresh in our lives as the one who
has conquered death on our behalf. And
most of us even love to celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit,
because that is the Sunday when we sing a little louder and clap a little
more. By the way – don’t forget to wear
red next Sunday for our celebration. But
the truth is, no one wants to celebrate the ascension because it is not about
the coming of anything good; in fact, the ascension is all about saying
goodbye.
Of the gospel writers, only Luke tells
the story of Jesus being carried bodily up into heaven after his
resurrection. Though he is the only one
to tell this story, Luke gives a spare account of what happens. Jesus gives a final word to his disciples,
lifts up his hands in blessing, and then is carried up into the heavens. Even though we don’t consider the ascension
often, I think we all have a collective picture of this in our heads. Almost every church that has stained glass
windows has a window of the ascension; we don’t of course, but many churches
do. I am sure most of us here can
imagine Jesus, his body hovering just feet above the disciples’ heads, his
hands outstretched toward them in a blessing as he is raised up in a sunbeam
and transported into the clouds like he’s riding some sort of holy escalator.
The only other place we read about the
ascension is in Luke’s other book, Acts.
In Acts, Jesus teaches the disciples that the Holy Spirit is about to
come upon them, foreshadowing the day of Pentecost. Then as they watch he is lifted up into the
clouds. The disciples sit there staring
at the sky with their mouths hanging open until they notice two angels with
them. The angels say, “Men of Galilee,
why do you stand looking up into heaven?” as if staring into the sky is not the
proper response to having just seen someone float up into the clouds.
It’s hard to imagine what this moment
was like for the disciples. Here was
Jesus, saying goodbye to them all. Of
course for us, living without the physical presence of Jesus is pretty
normal. We would be much more shocked
and surprised if Jesus was suddenly physically present with us than we ever are
at his absence. It has been almost 2000
years since that day the disciples stared up into the blinding sun and by now
we are pretty used to the fact that Jesus has physically left the earth.
Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor points
out that the ascension is so hard for us because it is such an abstract
idea. She writes,
“Almost everything else that happened to Jesus makes
sense in terms of my own life. He was
born to a human mother; so was I. He ate
and drank and slept at night; so do I.
He loved people and got angry with people and forgave people; so have
I. He wept; me too. He died; I will die too. He rose from the dead; I even know something
about that. I have had some Easter
mornings of my own – joy found in the midst of sorrow, life in the midst of
death. But ascending into heaven to be
seated at the right hand of God? That is
where Jesus and I part company. That is
where he leaves me in the dust. My only
experience of the ascension is from the ground, my neck cranked back as far as
it will go, my mouth wide open, my face shielded from the sun by the cloud that
is bearing my Lord away.”
As
a church holiday and as a story of our faith, the ascension is so easily
ignored by us simply because we have nowhere to file it away within our own
experiences.
Now in his gospel, Luke says that after
the ascension, the disciples returned to Jerusalem with much joy and that they
were continually in the temple worshipping God.
Now I imagine this was true to some extent but after a point I am sure
they lost a bit of their enthusiasm.
Having never really known a long term absence of Christ, they would
constantly be wondering when he was coming back. As days turned into weeks, then months and
then years they must have wondered just where Jesus went. How many of them died carrying a deep
disappointment that the Lord had not returned within their own lifetime? Goodbyes are never easy.
If we look at the role of the disciples that
day, we see bits and pieces of our own lives; for we all know what it is to say
goodbye, and we all know what it is to feel an absence in our lives. To feel an absence there must first have been
a presence. Absence is that silent house
after the kids have gone off to college; we see it in the too quiet, too clean
bedroom, and in the overstocked fridge.
Absence is reaching our arm across the bed at night to find our
beloved’s spot empty and cold. Absence
is the first time out at a favorite lunch spot, missing our recently departed
friend and knowing exactly what she would have ordered if she was there. Absence is that lonely return home to an
empty yard and a discarded chew toy after the loss of a beloved pet. We all know absence.
And like the disciples, we all know the
absence of God in our lives. We feel
that sense of longing, that sense of reaching out for more. It is almost as if we feel that we were once
connected with God but we no longer are.
There is a void in our lives, and a constant desire to get closer to
God. Through prayer, study, and
attending church we are trying to get ourselves right with God, to get back to
that place where there was no space of absence between us, only a sense of
presence.
I think the message the angels had for
the disciples that day is also a message for us. “Why do you stand looking up toward
heaven?” Why do you spend all your time
staring into space looking for God? Why
do you search for something which is gone and will never be the same
again? Instead, look down and look
around you. For God is here among us, we
can find God in each other and we can find God here in the church. We can know God in a new way. We don’t need to spend our time looking up,
for God is everywhere around us.
The ascension teaches us is that we
should stop looking for God in the clouds and look for God instead here amongst
each other. Last Sunday the choir sang
that “We are not alone, for God is with us.”
God is with us, in the hearts, hands, and hugs of our neighbors. If we want to reconnect with God, to lessen
our sense of absence, then we need to reconnect with each other. We need to reach out to each other in love,
for we all have a piece of God within us and it is together that we can do
God’s work in the world. Like waking
from a dream of separateness and self-isolation, we can come to realize that we
are not alone in this world. Rather we
are connected to each other and connected to God; and that this connection is
the kingdom of heaven.
As we gather at the table, we celebrate
the kingdom with joy. The table is a
place where we gather with believers of every time and place. Yes, Jesus ascended into heaven and left the
disciples behind staring at the sun. But
he also gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit that binds us together here at the
table and out in the world. This is the
feast of celebration, the table that is now and the table that will be when
people gather from the far corners of the earth to be together in celebration
of the risen and ascended Lord. The
kingdom of heaven is here at the table and this table looks forward to the
kingdom of heaven fulfilled.
Next Sunday we will celebrate
Pentecost, the arrival of the Holy Spirit and the fire that gave birth to the
early church. But today I think we
should hang out in the in-between time with the disciples. We should ponder the lifting up of Christ
into the clouds, and consider what it was like for the disciples to stare into
the sun that day. We should sit with
them as they first experience the absence of their Lord. And we should listen to the voices of the
angels who tell us we should not look for our God in the sky, but rather we
should look for God here, in our hearts together, at worship and at the
table. Amen.
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