on the Seventh Sunday of Easter...
Ascension Sunday
Sunday, May 4, 2008
From the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 24:
44 Then he said to them, ‘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.’ 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And 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.’50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
From the Book of Acts, Chapter 1:
In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning 2until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This’, he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; 5for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’6 So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ 7He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8But 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.’ 9When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’
"Above and Beyond ” A
Communion MeditationPreached by at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton United Church of Christ “When he had said this, as they were watching, On the Christian calendar, today is called Ascension Sunday, which commemorates the Resurrected Christ’s ascendance into heaven. The Feast of the Ascension, which is celebrated by some Christian traditions, actually occurred this past Thursday, May 1, and it always falls 40 days after the Resurrection. The number of days is significant because in the Bible, forty represents a time of completeness. After 40 days and 40 nights of rain, God sends a rainbow across the sky to seal God’s covenant with Noah. After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the ancient Hebrews arrive at the Promised Land.1 God appears to Moses after he has spent 40 days on Mt. Sinai.2 After 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus begins his Galilean ministry.3 In our Gospel lessons during these past 40 days since Easter, the Risen Christ has appeared again and again to his disciples, confirming the reality of his resurrection. He has also spent this time talking to his disciples about the kingdom of God, training and preparing them to go out into the world to carry on his work. And now in this morning’s Scripture lessons, he appears to them for the last time. Listen again to the phrases Luke the Evangelist uses in his Gospel and in Acts: “carried up,” “taken up,” “lifted up,” “gazing up,” “looking up.” It seems clear from these English translations of the original Greek that Jesus goes up, and that is consistent with the traditional understanding of heaven’s location. Heaven is up there somewhere, far away from our earthly existence down here. As I was growing up, I didn’t give much thought to heaven or what happens when a person dies. I had only vague ideas about life after this life; mortality is not a subject we like to dwell on at any age, especially when we’re young. But when I was 27, my understanding of heaven crystallized in one epiphanous moment, when I viewed the earthly body of my husband Darcy lying in his casket. As I looked at the earthen vessel in which his beautiful, loving, and generous spirit had dwelled here on earth, I knew immediately that Darcy – the part of him that made him him – was now with God. It was comforting to know – really know in my heart – that Darcy was in heaven. But I’ve got to tell you, I was still heartbroken and bereft without him. Perhaps you have had similar experiences; even though we know our loved ones are in heaven, we feel so cut off and disconnected from them; they feel so inaccessible to us, and the finality of knowing they will never again be present to us in this life is sometimes more than we can bear. That is how the disciples felt when Jesus died on the cross. After his crucifixion, the disciples were heartbroken, bewildered, and lost without their beloved leader and teacher. In death, Jesus seemed so cut off, so disconnected, so inaccessible to them. And then the Risen Christ began to appear to them – he was present again to them in a different way, but somehow the same, too. And listen to how Jesus’ disciples react this morning when Jesus leaves them again and ascends into heaven. The Gospel of Luke tells us that they return to Jerusalem “with great joy” and they are “continually in the temple blessing God.” It is a very different reaction the disciples have this time Jesus leaves, because Jesus’ ascension enables him to be present to them always. In Acts, Luke tells us that a “cloud” takes Jesus out of their sight. Throughout the scriptures, a cloud is used as a metaphor for the holy presence of God. The Lord goes ahead of the children of Israel in a pillar of cloud to guide them out of Egyptian bondage.4 A cloud rests over the mountain as Moses receives the Ten Commandments.5 At Jesus’ transfiguration, he and the three disciples with him are enveloped in a cloud, from which God speaks.6 And this morning, the cloud that Jesus is gathered into represents the eternal presence of God. Jesus moves into a dimension of time and space that is different from our earth-bound experience; the Jesus of history becomes the Christ of faith, and his presence becomes universal and for all time. At his ascension, Jesus becomes – like God – available to every person in every time and place. Matthew’s Gospel, which has no ascension story, expresses the same truth in a different way; Jesus says to his disciples – and also to us – “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of age.”7 And he has also promised that wherever two or three are gathered in His name, there he will be in our midst.8 To describe the ascension in a way that is perhaps easier for us to grasp, some theologians say that Jesus does not so much go up, or above, but rather beyond – beyond time and spatial limitations. Or to put it another way, Jesus doesn’t so much go into outer space, but rather into inward space, to the place from which all being comes. Jesus returns to the divine Source, the life and love that beats at the heart of the universe, God our Creator. As a result, Jesus is no longer confined to the past but belongs to every past, present, and future believer’s present. When Jesus ascends, his disciples keenly sense that his departure is different this time because he is still present to them. They feel power flowing from God through Jesus to them, infusing their hearts and transforming their lives with courage, wisdom, and healing powers. The book of Acts tells us that two men with white robes – angels – ask the disciples why they are still looking up toward heaven. In other words, if you want to see Jesus, don’t look for him up there; “look around instead,” look “at each other, at the world, at the ordinary people in their ordinary lives, because that is where they [a]re most likely to find him – not the way they used to know him, not in his own body, but in their bodies, the risen, ascended Lord who [i]s no longer anywhere on earth so that he [can] be everywhere instead.”9 And infused with Christ’s spirit and divine power, those eleven disciples become the Church; followers like Peter become leaders; converts like Paul become missionaries; listeners become preachers; those who have been healed become healers of others. We sit here this Sunday, May 4, in the 2008th year of our Lord, as Christ’s church because of the strong, abiding presence of Christ which worked in and through those disciples and the countless others who followed after them, down through the generations and across the centuries. And because of Christ’s universal and timeless presence, in our communion liturgy, we can say with conviction and confidence that God is not only as “distant as the farthest star,” but also as “close to us as breathing.”10 In both Luke and Acts this morning, Jesus tells his disciples that they are to be “witnesses” to Christ’s ministry and love and healing grace throughout the world, to the ends of the earth. That commission to his disciples in the first century extends to us, his disciples here in the 21st century. There is a story told about Italian composer Giacomo Puccini.11 In 1922, when he was only 64, Puccini was diagnosed with cancer. Though very ill, he continued to work on the opera Turandot, which many people consider to be his best. Some tried to convince him not to waste his limited energy on a piece he could not possibly finish, but he pressed on. When death was near, he said to his students: “If I do not finish Turandot, I want you to finish it for me.” Puccini did not finish the opera, but after his death his students gathered together all of the scores and his notes, studied them with great care, and – carrying out his dying wish – finished their teacher’s opera. The opening performance took place in 1926 and was conducted by one of Puccini's students. When he reached the place where Puccini had stopped composing, the conductor put down his baton, turned to the audience and said, “Thus far, the master wrote, and then he died.” No one moved and no one made a sound for several minutes. Then the conductor picked up his baton again and said, “But his disciples have finished his work.” Like the cloud of witnesses that has gone before us, we too are empowered by the transforming eternal and universal presence of Christ. As disciples of our Master, may we too pick up the baton and as his body and as his church, carry on his glorious work. Amen. 1Deuteronomy 8:2,4 |
The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.