Sermon for May 16, 2021 – Ascension Sunday (7th Sunday of Easter)
“A 21st century image of the Ascension of Jesus Christ and its meaning in our lives.”
Let us pray. Holy, risen, and ascended Lord, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place and within each one of us, in the many locations we have gathered this day. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
So if you’re really sharp with the Christian Church calendar, you may have noticed that this past Thursday was Ascension Day – 40 days after the Feast of Easter. And if you happened to be Facebook friends with a lot of clergy, you may have noticed several ordination anniversary announcements. Ordinations on Ascension Day are very common in this country. It’s partly for practical reasons – postulants have finished their education courses at university and they’re ready to be ordained. But it’s also good theologically, because Ascension Day affirms the ongoing and eternal lordship of Jesus Christ.
So I want you to think for a minute, for yourself - what’s the image that comes to mind for you when you think about Jesus’s ascension – what kind of picture that forms in your mind? We do have one example – the picture on the front of today’s bulletin. We have the disciples looking up, as expected; we have the two angels (I have a kind of funny sense of humour) looking up as if they’re saying, “There He goes.”; and Jesus looking as though He’s saying, “Here I come, Father.” Now it’s interesting in this line-drawing because there is a female figure, front and centre. It’s probably Jesus’ mother, Mary. She is not looking up, and is probably not happy about losing her Son – she has a very sombre expression on her face.
At any rate, probably most of us have an image of Jesus going “up.” But I don’t think it is all that helpful an image in our 21st century understanding of the universe – because I think it tends to reinforce a kind of ‘split’ in our minds between two worlds – the biblical world where this kind of thing happens, and the real world that we live in for the other 23 hours on a Sunday and every day for the rest of the week. And that creates huge problems in real life. For that split tends to assume that God is generally not present in our real world except for extreme circumstances. We keep God in the biblical world.
Now, if we look at the biblical accounts of the Ascension, there are two of them this morning, interesting things emerge. In the First Reading, this is the description of the Ascension from the Acts of the Apostles, and this, I think, is what the bulletin cover is based on. Jesus goes “up.” He disappears behind a cloud; two angels appear, and all of this occurs 40 days after the Resurrection.
Now, the Gospel Reading from Luke is a different description of the same thing. If we were to read all of that 24th chapter of Luke in one sitting, we would realize that the Ascension there happens late into the night on Easter Day. That same afternoon, (Easter afternoon) we have the story of the two disciples, whom the risen Christ meets on the road to Emmaus, and whom they realize is the Risen Christ when He breaks bread with them at supper. They rush back to Jerusalem. They tell the other disciples what’s happened, and then, suddenly, Jesus appears there – and shows himself. And just to kind of prove that He’s not a ghost or an apparition of some kind, He eats a piece of fish in front of them. And then He tells them what to expect. The power of the Holy Spirit from God will come upon them and they will be witnesses to everything Jesus proclaimed – proclaiming it to the whole world. Then, they all go out. They walk a couple miles to Bethany. Then Jesus blesses them, and the text says, “He withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”
Now it seems to be the same event, clearly, but definitely with some differences. So which account is correct? Which author has described it more accurately? Well, let me really challenge you. Both accounts were written by the same author. His name is Luke. The first account from Luke’s Gospel is told from the perspective of Jesus’ life. It’s finishing that story for us. The second account, from the Acts of the Apostles, is told from the perspective of the apostles and the very early church. So this first eleven verses from Chapter 1 is almost like a recap of what happened at the end of “Season 1” of a TV series, and now it continues with Season 2. And in fact, in the Gospel story we read the line “He withdrew from them”, and then it continues with this phrase, “and was carried up into heaven.” But that second phrase doesn’t even occur in some of the ancient manuscripts.
The point of all of this is to help us develop a more helpful image for our day of what happened in the Ascension. You see, in the 1st century world there was a tri-partite view of the universe. We have the flat earth in the middle; below was Sheol, the place of the dead; and immediately above the earth was a dome that contained the sun, the moon, and the stars. And above that dome was heaven where God and the angelic beings dwelt.
Clearly, Jesus’ resurrected body was capable of being material – he touched things, he was able to be touched, he ate things; but he could also disappear and reappear in an instant. So I think it’s probably more helpful to think along the lines of what we may see as a kind of science-fiction fantasy these days, where bodies from another dimension could suddenly materialize and also disappear from our visible 3-D world.
The reason that this is important is that the risen Christ is quoted at the end of Matthew’s Gospel as saying “I am with you always – to the end of the age.” So even though we don’t normally ‘see’ Jesus’ presence, He is still here! And we’re able to experience his presence through the Holy Spirit, whose coming we celebrate next Sunday on the Feast of Pentecost.
So I think it’s better to think of the risen Christ as being ‘transformed’ rather than ‘gone’ – just as we would think of God filling the universe – not sitting somewhere else outside of that universe in a physical heaven. So hopefully this new image helps us situate Jesus’ Ascension in the real world – our world – with all of its joys, tragedies, successes, failures, potential and beauty. Regardless of how you picture it, Jesus’ Ascension means one central truth – Lordship. The incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended Christ is Lord of the universe. We can’t understand now, or see the whole picture, but we do know ultimately whose will, will prevail. It will be God’s Kingdom – and no one else’s!
While there is not time in today’s sermon to explore in detail what that means for us, today’s reading from Ephesians hits the three main points. The author writes, “With the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.” Regardless of what fears, impossible situations, threats, or challenges may face us, God has called you to eternal life in Christ and nothing can thwart or rob you of that!
Secondly, the author of Ephesians says, “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” You and I have been given a life of purpose, beauty, love and meaning that will develop in this life and continue in the next life.
And thirdly, the author writes, “the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” Your life (and mine) is not a test to be passed or failed. It is not a journey we’re on to see if we’re “made of the right stuff”, like a “survivor” reality TV show. It is a life in which we grow into the unique, God-given persons that God’s love created us to be – to our joy and to God’s glory. And we know this because the human being, Jesus, has lived our lives, overcome the obstacles, prepared our path and is, and continues to be, present as the ascended Lord, to ensure that we can walk into the Kingdom of God.
We are the ones whose “eyes of our hearts” have been enlightened to know this loving truth. We are the ones empowered to witness to this glorious gift. Thanks be to God!
Amen.
