Sermon originally delivered on Ascension Sunday, May 13, 2018. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned lectionary texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before reading the sermon. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 1.1-11; Psalm 93; Ephesians 1.15-23; Luke 24.44-53.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Today we celebrate our Lord’s ascension into heaven. But what’s that all about? Is St. Luke trying to tell us that Jesus was the first astronaut, zooming up into space? Not at all, and if we understand our Lord Jesus’  ascension in this literalist and linear way, we miss the point and are robbed of the vital power we need to live as Christians in a broken world. What does it mean for us to participate in God’s power play? This is what I want us to look at briefly this morning.

If we are ever to understand by the grace of God what it means to be God’s people in Jesus, i.e., people with power, we must first understand what St. Luke is telling us about the Ascension in our NT and gospel lessons. He is not trying to suggest that Jesus was the first astronaut who gives his disciples one last glimpse of him by allowing them to see the soles of his feet. No, for St. Luke and the rest of the NT writers, Jesus’ ascension into heaven (God’s space) meant that Jesus was going to assume his rightful place as ruler of the cosmos. When St. Paul tells us in our epistle lesson that God seated our ascended Lord at his right hand, he is telling us that Jesus is now Lord over both the visible and invisible powers, i.e., over all creation. Jesus is Lord precisely because on the cross, God defeated the forces of Evil and transferred us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of our sins, thanks be to God. This is the wisdom and power of God: the suffering and self-giving love that rescued us from utter destruction and our slavery to the dark powers that hate us and want to see us destroyed. But none of us would ever have known the power of crucified love had it not been for God raising Jesus from the dead that first Easter Sunday. As we have seen during this Eastertide, the cross needs the resurrection and the resurrection needs the cross. Without the resurrection, the cross would have meant that Jesus was just another failed Messiah wannabe. Without the cross, the resurrection would have been nothing more than a spectacular act of power on God’s part because we would remain in our sins and unreconciled with God so that death would be our destiny, not eternal life

Based on God’s power in and through Jesus’ death and resurrection, St. Luke and St. Paul both remind us that now Jesus has returned to God’s space (heaven) to assume his rightful role as Lord of all creation and to rule until all God’s enemies have been defeated, death being the last and greatest of these enemies (cf. 1 Corinthians 15.26, 51-55). Can any of us think of a greater power than being able to destroy the power of death forever when the dead are finally raised to life? And who among us has the power to be reconciled to God given the desperately sick hearts with which we are all burdened (Jeremiah 17.9)? The answer, of course, is that none of us has this power, only God does. 

So in Jesus’ death and resurrection we see the penultimate chapter in the story of God’s plan to rescue his good creation and its creatures gone bad, corrupted by human sin and rebellion and the evil it unleashed in the world. Now that the forces of evil had been defeated on the cross and Jesus validated as the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Son returned to the Father to assume his rightful role as Lord of all and to build on the work he had accomplished in his death and resurrection. In other words, Jesus’ ascension signaled to his followers and the world that God is in control of things in a new and definitive way. For those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts and minds to believe, God is again demonstrating his power to save and reminding us that the good guys are in charge, not the bad ones.

But the Ascension also meant that Jesus would no longer be available to his followers in the way he had been during his mortal life. He had to return to heaven to continue the work he started on his Father’s behalf. So why does St. Luke report that after Jesus’ Ascension his disciples were filled with joy? If we knew our loved one was going to be absent from us for a period of time, wouldn’t we be filled with sadness and anxiety? So why weren’t the disciples? The answer, of course, is that Jesus promised them the power of his Presence with them in the coming of the Holy Spirit. While Jesus would be strangely absent from his followers, he would also be strangely present because he was going to send the Holy Spirit to mediate his presence with us. Father Bowser will presumably take up this theme next week. Or not. 

And now we are getting ready to understand what it means for us as Jesus’ followers to be part of God’s power play and what that might look like. Being part of God’s power play means we are people who have been forgiven our sins and equipped with the power to reorient our lives away from ourselves, which would mean death, to God, which means life. Don’t misunderstand. This process is not automatic or neat and clean. We are a profoundly broken people, but God’s healing power and love for us is far greater. To be part of God’s power play means we have the power and person of Jesus always available to us, even in our darkest moments of anxiety and fear, healing us, loving us, and equipping us to lead the cross-shaped lives he calls us to lead. He gives us this power because he calls us to continue his kingdom work by announcing repentance and the forgiveness of sins and bringing Christ’s love and presence to his sin-sick world. We are tempted to shake our heads about all this, of course. If Jesus is Lord, he is doing a really lousy job of it. Look at the mess this world is in! But this misses the point of the Ascension. The first Christians knew the world was in bad shape. St. Paul, after all, wrote about the dark powers being defeated while he was in prison! He certainly knew the reality of evil, but because he knew the risen Christ present to him both on the road to Damascus and in the power of the Spirit, he also knew that evil had been ultimately defeated. 

What the Ascension means for us in terms of power is that we are given the tremendous privilege of being real human beings again and doing the work that God always intended and called us to do. We are to rule the world by reflecting God’s love and goodness into it. That God did not put the world to rights with the wave of God’s hand is a testimony to the worth God assigns us as his image-bearers. In and through Christ, God did what was impossible for us to do: rescue us from ourselves and our slavery to Sin and Evil. Now God calls us to continue the work of bringing in God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. That’s a mighty tall order and it is impossible for us to do this on our own. We simply don’t have the power to get the job done. 

But we are not called to bring in the Kingdom on our own nor are we given the task of bringing in the Kingdom in full so that all the darkness in our lives and God’s world are totally vanquished. Only God can do that when Jesus returns to consummate his saving work started in his earthly ministry. No, the kind of power we wield is the kind of power Jesus wielded and if we get this right, it will help us better understand how the power of God works and why quest-ions about the ability of Jesus to rule as Lord of all creation miss the point of the Ascension. The kingdom will come on earth as in heaven as the Church—you, me, and all other Christians—engage the world as Christ did. It means we go out as vulnerable, suffering, praying, praising, misunderstood, misjudged, and even hated people. But we are people of power, God’s power, and that means we go out into the world as forgiven and beloved people, and therefore as people with real hope. Consequently we are always celebrating despite our setbacks and failures because we know how the story ends. As God’s people, then, we are given power to forgive where no forgiveness is warranted. We are given power to bless when cursed. We are given power to love instead of hate and to offer the same crucified love to others that Christ offered to us. We are given power to have a tender and compassionate heart, especially to those who least deserve it. We are given power to be patient and kind and gentle, even when we know this makes us vulnerable to exploitation. We are given power to resist temptation and to refuse to make and worship our own idols like the world does. It means we have power to heal all kinds of disorders and to celebrate even when confronted by death because we know we bear in us both the scars and the life of our crucified, risen, and ascended Savior. And when by God’s grace we know that we share both in Christ’s death and risen life because we are forgiven and redeemed, we have power over anxiety that the world simply cannot possess or understand because the world neither recognizes or acknowledges this kind of power.

None of this is easy or straightforward. We don’t get to waltz through life without hassles, heartaches, and defeats. It just doesn’t work that way. Therefore we have to read and study the Scriptures, and learn how to pray, worship, and engage in real fellowship with each other, all the while trusting God’s grace to produce in us the needed faith and knowledge about these things we cannot understand on our own. And when we finally start to grapple with the realization we are people who possess God’s power to love, forgive, bless, and redeem, it can make all the difference in the world for us. We should therefore never be timid about sharing with all and sundry the Good News of which the Ascension is a part, precisely because we know God’s power to heal and restore in our own lives, however imperfectly that might look. After all, God is a God who calls into existence things that do not exist and raises the dead to life. So nothing in our life is too hard for God, even if it is too hard for us when we rely on our own power. The Ascension reminds us of this reality. Despite our doubts and fears, despite the messiness of our lives and the world in which we live, we are reminded of the dignity and nobility of being human in the eyes of God and God’s promise to rescue us and all creation from all that is evil and opposed to God’s good will and purposes for us. Because we are people of power who enjoy Christ’s love and Presence with us in the power of the Spirit, we can learn to find real joy in the people and events and opportunities that the Spirit puts in our path. Because Jesus is Lord we know that nothing in our lives is ever coincidental or serendipitous. We are all connected and therefore have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate the love and power of God. And because Jesus is Lord and we are not, we never have to despair when our best efforts and intentions apparently do not bear any results: We pray and our prayers are not answered in the manner we hoped. We offer forgiveness but it is not reciprocated. We are bedeviled by besetting sins. We offer Truth and receive shame and derision in return. Without the power of the Lord Jesus who is with us in the presence of the Spirit, we would surely be overcome with despair. But we are crucified and resurrected people who share the King’s power, and who enjoy his real Presence in the power of the Spirit given to us. And because we have this power, we are not overcome because we know even the gates of hell cannot overcome the Risen and Ascended Lord of all creation, thanks be to God! Alleluia! Christos Anesti! Christ is risen and ascended! The Lord is risen and ascended indeed! Alleluia! To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. 

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Sermon originally preached on Ascension Sunday, Easter 7B, May 17, 2015. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon. In this sermon, I touch on why it is critical for Christians today and always to believe in and understand what the Ascension is all about in our increasingly complex and unhinged world. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 1.15-26; Psalm 1.1-6; 1 John 5.9-13; John 17.6-19.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Today is Ascension Sunday, the Sunday after Ascension Day when we celebrate our Lord’s return to heaven or God’s dimension. Hear Saint Luke describe it now in his gospel account:

Jesus said to his disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God. —Saint Luke 24.44-51

So what is the Ascension all about? Why would the eleven surviving apostles return to Jerusalem rejoicing and praising God in the Temple every day? After all, this event signaled to them that Jesus’ appearances were going to stop permanently. Why wouldn’t they be sad over this? And why should we who live almost two thousand years later care if Jesus ascended into heaven? It is these questions that I want us to look at this morning.

In our gospel lesson, we see Jesus expressing concern for his disciples’ future and welfare. This passage is part of his so-called high priestly prayer in which Jesus acknowledged that his disciples would need his continuing help once he left them. They had work to do, just like we as Jesus’ disciples today have work to do, and given that the world was fundamentally opposed to the gospel message Jesus commanded them and us to proclaim, Jesus knew this work could be dangerous. Like the Good Shepherd that Jesus proclaimed himself to be (St. John 10.1-18), or like a good parent who watches over his children as they grow up, Jesus knew they were going to need his help and protection, even in his absence, if they were to get the job done. 

Jesus also knew that his impending death would be devastating to his disciples. Just like we feel lost when we lose a loved one to death, so Jesus understood that his disciples would likewise feel lost and despondent, something to which all the gospel accounts bear witness. Of course, Jesus’ resurrection would turn their sorrow into joy, just as it has the power to turn our sorrow into joy, but what about afterwards? What would happen after Jesus’ resurrection appearances stopped?

If we think this through carefully, we realize how high the stakes were (and are). Without the right care and support, without the Lord really being present to his disciples, like us, they were in danger of losing all hope and faith. Sure, Jesus’ resurrection had convinced them he had not only survived death but was now alive and forever. But Jesus also made it clear to them that his resurrection appearances were temporary. That is why he spent so much time teaching them about himself after he appeared to them and that is why he prayed his prayer for them and us on the night before he was crucified. He wanted his disciples, both then and now, to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was alive and that he would be with them always (cf. St. Matthew 28.20b), but in a fundamentally different way. And so Jesus prayed that his followers would not be taken out of the world, but rather that God would protect us from the evil one. When Jesus talks about the world in this context, he is not talking about the created order. After all, he had come to rescue the created order (including us) from the ravages of Evil, Sin, and Death. Instead, the world Jesus was referring to is the realm of the dark powers and principalities who have usurped God’s rightful rule over his created order and who remain violently opposed to Jesus’ rule and the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. If the disciples were convinced that Jesus was good to his prayer, if they were convinced that he would be with them even after his resurrection appearances stopped, they would have the needed power to do their work and their joy would be complete as they did so on his behalf.

Why? Because as St. John reminds us in our epistle lesson, Jesus is the key to having eternal life as well as to the creation being reclaimed and restored. This is what makes our work as Christians so vitally important. Contrary to the popular belief today that all religions are basically alike and that there are many paths to God, our epistle lesson, along with the rest of the New Testament, is adamant that eternal life and access to God the Father is available to us only in and through Jesus. We don’t have just the testimony of the Apostles that this is true. We have the testimony of God himself. As Jesus said at the beginning of his high priestly prayer: 

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (St. John 17.1-3).

Again, if we think about it, this should make sense to us. When human sin entered the world it brought about God’s curse and death (Genesis 3.1-19). And as the history of the OT makes clear, sinful mortals (you and me) cannot come into the presence of the holy and perfect God and expect to live (see, e.g., Exodus 19.21, 33.20). That is why God gave Moses the sacrificial system that would allow God to dwell with his sinful people Israel as God led them out of Egypt to the promised land. You can read more about this in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. 

And of course Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (St. John 1.29) by his blood shed for us on the cross. Whereas the OT sacrifices were temporary and had to be repeated because those who offered them were sinful just like the people on whose behalf they were offered, Jesus was sinless and so his sacrifice was perfect and once for all (Hebrews 9.12-15, 10.10-14). Jesus’ death on our behalf thus made it possible for us to enter into God’s presence and live. This is why Jesus is the only way to the Father. And as we have seen, when God raised Jesus from the dead, God ushered in the birth of his promised new world, the new heavens and earth, giving us a foretaste of the day when we too will be raised from the dead and given the privilege to live in God’s direct presence when heaven and earth are fused together in a new creation, all because of Jesus’ blood shed for us on the cross. This is the Good News of Easter that we have been celebrating these past seven weeks, and this is why only in Jesus do we have eternal life. We can stake our very lives and future on it because we have God’s word that it is true. This is why Jesus needed to open his disciples’ minds to the Scriptures. If they were going to proclaim the gospel, they had to understand that the whole OT had been pointing to the reality of his saving death and resurrection. Without that knowledge there could be no real gospel, no real hope, no real joy, because as we all know, we live in a world that is simultaneously beautiful and ugly, marred by human sin and the power of evil. 

All this, of course, applies to us who live as Jesus’ disciples two thousand years later. If we claim to love God at all, we must love all God’s human creatures and want them to share in the gift of eternal life that is ours by God’s love and grace in and through Jesus. This gift should never puff us up and make us want to think we are somehow more deserving or morally better than those who do not know or believe in Jesus. That is pride, the very antithesis of love, and if that is our reaction we must repent of this wickedness and ask God to both forgive and humble us, even as we ask him to set our hearts on fire for others so that we dare love them enough to proclaim the gospel to them, risking scorn and opposition or worse. And like the first disciples, if we are not convinced that Jesus is alive and available to us, if we are not convinced Jesus has the power to finish the job he started with his death and resurrection, we will have no hope, no joy, and no power.

All this brings us back to the Ascension. The Ascension promises us that the fully human Jesus is in the very presence of God the Father in heaven, foreshadowing the day when we too will get the privilege of living in God’s direct presence. Humanity has been exalted and restored and we dare have the audacious hope that where our Lord is, so will we be (cf. Philippians 1.23). But the Ascension is more than this because as the New Testament writers all proclaimed, when Jesus ascended into heaven or God’s space, he sat down at God’s right hand, New Testament code that proclaims God has made Jesus Lord over all creation to rule until the victory over evil that God won on the cross is consummated and all God’s enemies have been fully vanquished (Romans 8.34; Ephesians 1.20; Colossians 3.1; Hebrews 1.3, 8.1, 10.12, 12.2; 1 Peter 3.22). That, BTW, is what the punchline of the book of Revelation is all about.

This is a tall order for us to believe at times because we see so many things go desperately wrong in our world. Loved ones die, sickness interrupts and sometimes destroys our lives, wars are incessant, injustice seems to rule the day rather than justice, and suffering goes on, apparently unabated; more and more people are becoming increasingly unhinged, detached  from reality in their thinking, and this frightens us. We see this and wonder where God is in it all and what kind of Lord Jesus really is. When we get to this point—and all of us will—we must pay attention to our New Testament lesson where St. Luke tells us how the eleven chose Judas’ replacement. Think about it. Jesus’ disciples had come to believe that he really was God’s promised anointed one, the Messiah, who would rescue Israel and the world from all that bedevils it. They believed this based on the mighty acts of power Jesus demonstrated during his earthly ministry as well as his teaching. But then it all came crashing down. Not only was Jesus executed as a criminal by the hated Romans, the very people Jesus was supposed to vanquish, but now there were no longer twelve Apostles to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, a theme I do not have time to develop. Long story short: God’s will had apparently been thwarted. 

But the operative word is apparently. Based on their limited power of discernment and incomplete human knowledge, the disciples initially thought that they were wrong about Jesus and that Evil had won the day. Not so, says the story of Acts, because after Jesus’ resurrection appearances to the disciples and his instructions for them to stay in the city while they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples realized that things aren’t always as they appear to be. Yes, Judas had betrayed Jesus and had subsequently committed suicide. But not even his treachery nor the power of the corrupt religious establishment in Jerusalem nor the power of the Romans could sidetrack God’s plan to redeem and heal his world through Jesus his Messiah. God had used Jesus’ crucifixion to defeat the dark powers and atone for the sins of Israel and the world, thus laying the foundation for the coming of God’s promised new world. In fact, part of Jesus’ teaching about himself in the Scriptures was meant to show the disciples that this was precisely how God’s redemption and the defeat of evil was supposed to happen, unexpected and shocking as that was for his disciples (and remains for many of us today). 

This is why we are to take hope, even in Jesus’ apparent absence, because God knows the hearts of everyone and has the power to use even our brokenness to accomplish his will. What appears to be hopeless situations or the triumph of evil is not what it appears because Jesus is Lord and the dark powers are not. God knows how to use even the evil we commit, intentionally or otherwise, to bring about his kingdom on earth as in heaven. And astonishing as it may seem, God calls those of us who follow the risen and ascended Jesus, i.e., his Church, to be an integral part of proclaiming God’s love and rescue of the world in and through Jesus, both in word and by how we live our lives, lives that are patterned after our Lord Jesus. Even when we get it wrong or it looks like we have failed, even when it looks like the Christian faith is in full retreat and we are defeated, we must never lose heart or hope because God knows the hearts of all people and transcends even our mistakes and failures, as well as the evil of his enemies, to bring about the kingdom. Judas had betrayed his Lord, but God already knew who the disciples should pick as his replacement. Peter had denied his Lord on the night of his arrest and acted like a coward. But God knew Peter’s heart and so Jesus reinstated Peter and Peter did not disappoint. Likewise with us. Whatever it is in your life right now that brings you disappointment, grief, hurt, or sorrow, remember this lesson from Acts. And remember that Jesus is Lord.

But why did Jesus have to ascend to the Father to do all this? Why couldn’t he just remain with us in his resurrected state? After all, that would be much more comforting to us. The Bible does not give us the answer to these questions but there are a couple of reasonable explanations. First, if Jesus remained in this world in his resurrected body, he could not be with all of his people everywhere at the same time in the way he can be with us in the power of the Spirit whom he promised to send. Just like we ascend into heaven each week in sacramental time and space to be with Jesus at the Eucharist, so Jesus must be with all his people as we live out our lives, and he can only do that in the power of the Spirit as long as heaven and earth remain essentially separate dimensions. To be sure, Jesus remains powerfully present with us in the Eucharist, but the fact is we cannot partake of the eucharist 24/7. For Jesus to be with his entire body always to the end of the age, he must be present with us in the power of the Spirit.

Second, Jesus had to ascend into heaven so that we could learn to grow up. As we have seen, Jesus calls us to be his kingdom workers and if we are to do that to the best of our ability, we must learn to grow up in Christ (cf. Ephesians 4.9-16). Any good parent knows that the job of raising children is to make them independent, and as parents we cannot help our kids learn to be independent and make good decisions if we hover over them all the time and make their decisions for them. We have to teach them when they are young and then gradually give them the freedom to make their own choices, even when we disagree with what they choose. Otherwise, our kids will never learn to grow up and we will never know if they truly have learned the core values we taught them while they were young. Is this messy? You bet it is. But love must allow the beloved the freedom necessary to make their own choices and to love freely in return. To do otherwise takes away the very basis that makes love possible in the first place.

Just so with God and us as Christians. God in his wisdom wants us to grow up so that we can learn to truly love him. God wants us to grow up so that we can use our minds to learn how to search the Scriptures diligently and become mature Christians so that God can use us  even more effectively as his faithful kingdom workers. Is this messy and hard? Yes it is. Will we make mistakes? Yes we will. But nothing worthwhile in this life ever comes easy, our faith and Christian maturity included. But because God knows our hearts and we know that God loves us and wants the best for us because of what he has done for us in and through Jesus, we can have the confidence that despite the messiness in learning to grow up as Christians, we can proclaim the Good News of his Son Jesus Christ in word and deed to a world that desperately needs to hear it, all the while trusting that God’s will be done, sometimes in spite of us. 

To be sure, there will be uncertainty and ambiguity as we live out our lives for Christ. But uncertainty and ambiguity should never translate into powerlessness and joylessness. To the contrary. We have the power of our Lord Jesus available to us at all times in and through the presence of the Holy Spirit. That is why we are never abandoned. So let us never lose heart or hope or wring our hands in despair as Christians because we know that Jesus is our risen and ascended Lord who has defeated the dark powers, even the power of death, and who now rules over the cosmos. And during those times when Jesus’ Lordship is not obvious to us, let us remember that it is obvious to God the Father who knows our hearts and who by his love has retaken his world in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Son. We have God’s very testimony that this is true, which means that we really do have Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen and ascended! The Lord is risen and ascended indeed! Alleluia! 

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.