In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.
Ascension
Day is an oft-forgotten day in the Church. I think it’s because the Ascension
is a rather difficult event to grasp. For one, it’s essentially a day on which
we celebrate being left behind. If your family and friends were waiting at the
airport to board the plane on a fantastic vacation, and they boarded the plane
while you were in the bathroom and left you behind, I don’t suppose that you’d
want to celebrate the occasion. And, in a sense, that’s what Ascension Day is
about – Jesus ascending to some sort of paradise where there is no pain or
suffering, and we’d very much like accompany him there, but we’ve been left
behind.
The
Ascension is also a rather abstract sort of idea – what does it mean to ascend?
We can relate to pretty much everything else that happens in Jesus’ life: he is
born, eats, teaches, prays, and dies – all things that are part of our
humanity. Though none of us have experienced the Resurrection, we can ponder
what it might be like to wake up from a really long sleep and be restored to
the life we now know, even if it’s not an exact parallel. But what would it
Ascension look like? We don’t know, it seems unrelatable.
And then there is the
problem of cosmology. Perhaps our ancestors thought that God was up there, but
we’ve been up there. We’ve sent astronauts up there, and we have telescopes
that peer into the night sky, and we’ve yet to see Jesus flying around up
there. What the Ascension depicts is physically impossible, and we’ve been trained
to dismiss things that are impossible, reducing them to fables. And so for
these many reasons, we tend to overlook the Ascension as part of the Good News
of the Gospel.
But, there is something
valuable in recognizing and celebrating the Feast of the Ascension. To be
honest, I don’t think it had ever dawned upon me before this past week that
there are actually two accounts of the Ascension in the Bible – in my mind, I
had combined these two versions from Luke and Acts into a single narrative.
You’ll recall that Luke and Acts are actually two volumes of the same work,
both written by the same “person.” If Luke were to look at our Bibles today,
he’d probably complain that John got put in the middle of his writing. As
volume one, the Gospel according to Luke, ends, we read about the Ascension;
and as volume two, the Acts of the Apostles, begins, we read about the
Ascension. The Ascension is both a beginning and an ending.
As the story of Jesus’
earthly manifestation is coming to a close, there is a question that we all
wonder about from time to time: “is this the time you will restore the
Kingdom?” In other words, “God, if you’re in charge, isn’t it about time for
poverty to be done, for cancer to be cured, for greed to be a thing of the
past?” Jesus’ response is “… 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.” In essence, Jesus says “restoring the
Kingdom is your work now; you are to witness to that Kingdom.” Perhaps this is
another reason why we tend to ignore Ascension Day: we’d rather think that the
hard work of the Kingdom is God’s work, not ours. It’s why so many Christians
focus on the idea of “a Second Coming.” We want Jesus come back and do the hard
work that we’re not wanting to do.
The word that Jesus uses
for “witness” is martus, which you’ll
recognize as the root of the word “martyr.” Being a witness is serious, and
challenging, business. And so the disciples, ourselves included, ask “So,
Jesus, when are you going to take care of this for us?” The disciples were
anticipating the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel – a return to a time when
there was a king on the throne, when there was a robust army to keep everyone
safe, when prosperity was known by all in the kingdom. But God doesn’t seem to
be interested in returning to the past, but rather in moving forward into the
future. As the event is recorded in Luke, Jesus notes that part of the message
that is to be spread is the “repentance and forgiveness of sins.” If we go back
in Luke, to Jesus’ inaugural speech, he quotes Isaiah, saying “God has sent me
to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.” And
that word for “release” is the same as the one for “forgive.” In Luke, Jesus is
the great liberator who sets us free from the bonds of all that holds us back
from God’s love, mercy, and grace.
This is what the
disciples are to be witnesses and martyrs to – the liberation from all that
gets in the ways of God’s saving love. God, it seems, isn’t really interested
in reestablishing a powerful nation-state with a king, but rather, God seems to
be interested in gathering a people together in this liberation. Jesus tells
the disciples to wait for power to be given to them through the Holy Spirit.
Not to get too far ahead of the story, but when we celebrate Pentecost, we’ll
hear how the people are able to understand foreign languages. The gift of the
Spirit will be the culmination of God’s formation, not of Israel, but of a
people. Whereas language had been a barrier to the people coming together to
praise God, the promised Holy Spirit enables for a people, not a form of
government, to be established.
This is what the
Ascension enables, and why we celebrate the day we are left behind. We read in
Scripture and often say that “God is love.” And for this love to be genuine, it
must be something that we fully experience. If Jesus hadn’t ascended and was
sitting on a throne in Jerusalem, what would be required wouldn’t be love, but
blind obedience. What would be needed isn’t faith, but certainty. What would be
needed isn’t care for each other, but reliance on someone else to take care of
our problems. Jesus has to ascend so that we can grow up in the faith. We all
know that eventually, children have to move out of their parents’ house in
order to become their true selves, and the same is true for us in our faith.
The Ascension enables the formation of the People of God – a people who are to
be witnesses of and to God’s Kingdom on earth as it is heaven.
For us to be the people
of God, Jesus had to ascend so that he would be free from the restraints of
geography and be more fully present through the Holy Spirit. For us to grow up
in love and faith, we don’t need a God who is like an earthly king, issuing
decrees or solving our problems. Instead, we need the freedom and the charge to
do that work of love ourselves. This is why the two men in Acts, whom we
presume to be angels, say “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward
heaven?” In other words, “If you want to see Jesus, don’t stare up at the sky,
look at each other, because that is where you will now find him. So get to
work.” Ascension is about the transition from knowledge to mission, from
learning about Jesus to following in his footsteps of ministry. And so as the
author of Luke and Acts transitions from the story about Jesus life, death, and
Resurrection and into the story of Jesus’ new life amidst the people of God, we
have this story of the Ascension to function as the bridge between the two.
And so tonight, we
celebrate that we have been left behind, but we are not alone. The love that we
have known in Jesus is present among every person whom we encounter. It is our task
to be stewards of this love, ensuring that God’s salvation may reach to the
ends of the earth. May we have the faith and the grace to be witnesses to
Jesus’ life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension. Amen.
