Sermon 5/28/17
Acts 1:1-11
Finding
Easter: Looking Up
If
you read the May newsletter, you might know that today we’re going to talk a
bit more about what the difference is between a disciple and an apostle, and
that we’re also going to be celebrating this weird thing called Ascension
Sunday. Ascension Sunday isn’t exactly one of our highest holy days. It probably
isn’t anyone’s favorite day in the liturgical calendar. There aren’t a lot of
well-known Ascension hymns. We don’t have special Ascension decorations, and no
one exchanges Ascension-day presents. Many years, if I have been in the middle
of a sermon series on Ascension Sunday, I’ve not even bothered to focus on the
Ascension during worship. It’s easy to skip right past.
But
it’s an important part of our liturgical season. Right now, we’re still in the
midst of the feast of Easter, the great fifty days of Easter. Although many of
us could talk a lot about the last days of Jesus’ life - the Last Supper, the
foot washing, the trial and crucifixion, and I hope most of us could describe
the events of Easter day - Jesus’
resurrection, I don’t think we spend a lot of time thinking about the sort of
ambiguous time after Easter. Maybe we know about Pentecost - which we’ll
celebrate next Sunday - when God sends the gift of the Holy Spirit on the
disciples, that violent rushing wind that rests on them like tongues of fire
and sets them speaking in many languages. But I don’t think we give much thought
to the time Jesus spends with the disciples after the resurrection, and perhaps
even less to how that particular time draws to a close. The Ascension is the
celebration of the day Jesus leaves earth, after the resurrection, returning to
God’s realm, leaving the disciples behind to wait for the coming of the Holy
Spirit. This happens forty days after the resurrection, and in worship we
celebrate it on the closest Sunday to that count.
I think another
part of our holding the Ascension of Jesus at arm’s length in our hearts and
minds come from the fact that the scriptures depict Jesus literally rising up
into the air, into the clouds, to return to God. This makes sense for a first
century audience, for whom the realm of God would have been literally up. The
heavens were where God dwelt, in the sky, above the earth, hovering over all
creation. But most of us don’t tend to think of heaven as a physical place that
you could get to if you got in, say, a space shuttle. We know about the planet
and the universe and the stars, at least enough to know that God isn’t just floating
around on the other side of the clouds. So this image of Jesus ascending isn’t
particularly compelling, I think. Or at least, it might be more confusing than
compelling. Here it is, though, ready for us to study, interpret, and decide
how it impacts us - or not.
We find the
story of Jesus’ ascension both at the end of the gospel of Luke and at the
beginning of the book of Acts. Luke is the other of both of those works, and
Acts is a sequel of sorts to Luke – the story of what happens to the disciples
after Jesus is no longer physically with them. And even though the very same
author tells us more or less the very same story in both Luke and Acts, the
impact of the Ascension at the end of
Jesus’s years of preaching and teaching the disciples is different than the
Ascension as told at the beginning of
the years of the apostles being sent out in the power of the Holy Spirit to
build the church of Jesus. Disciples, apostles. As I said in my newsletter
article, disciple literally means “student.” We are students of Jesus Christ.
We try to learn from him, follow in his ways, be as much like him as we can. We
are definitely meant to be disciples! And we always have more we can learn, as
we seek to mold ourselves more and more into Christ-like ways of being in the
world. And yet, we are also called to be apostles, which means literally, “ones
who are sent.” We are sent-ones. We don’t become disciples just for our own
benefit, but so that we are equipped to serve those who are lost, on the
fringes, desperate, and unaware or unconvinced of God’s abiding love for them.
How will the good news be shared if we, disciples, never are “sent out”? If the
gospels, then, are about our journey as disciples, students of Jesus, the book
of Acts is about our call to be sent-ones, people sent out in the name and with
the mission of Jesus.
Acts opens
with the author addressing someone named Theophilus, saying, “In the first
book, [which we know is the Gospel of Luke] Theophilus, I wrote about all that
Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to
heaven.” We don’t know anything about Theophilus. The name means literally
Lover of God, and so Theophilus might be a person who was interested in
becoming a follower of Jesus, or really just a broad name addressing all who
claim to love God. The author recounts that forty days pass after the
resurrection, during which time Jesus continued to appear to disciples,
teaching about the kingdom of God, and directing them to stay in Jerusalem
until they received God’s promise of the Holy Spirit. On the fortieth day,
they’ve gathered together with Jesus, and they ask him: “Is this the time when
you will restore the kingdom of Israel?” Essentially, they are asking if Jesus
is going to rid Israel of Roman occupation, return it to its glory, and rule
over it as king. They have been asking him this throughout his entire ministry,
and throughout his entire ministry, Jesus has been teaching them that that is
exactly that kind of ruler and lord Jesus is not. The kingdom of God is not
this rule of power and might that will come in and conquer the occupying Romans
by violent force, and further, Jesus certainly
isn’t interested in talking about dates and times that things will happen. And
so I can only imagine that here, even now after the resurrection, even after
another forty days of teaching about the kingdom, how very exasperated Jesus
must be to have to tell them yet again that that is not what’s all about, or
what he’s ever been all about. Still, Jesus moves on quickly, and reminds them
one last time that the power they will be getting is the power of the Holy
Spirit. What the disciples will be, Jesus says, are his witnesses to the ends of the earth.
While Jesus is
saying this, we read, the disciples realize that he’s being lifted up, and
taken out of their sight. They stand, a bit frozen, staring into the sky,
gazing up towards heaven. But while they’re still looking up, two men in white robes
suddenly appear, standing with them. They say to the disciples, “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.” And that’s where this scene and our text for the day conclude.
There are some
parallels here between this account of the Ascension and Luke’s account of the
Resurrection. On Easter Sunday, Luke records that the women came to the tomb
and found it empty. But as they were wondering over the empty tomb, two men in
white appeared, even as the women were gazing at the emptiness, to ask: “Why
are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen.” At
Easter, the messengers of God help to direct the attention of the
Jesus-followers away from wherever they gotten stuck at, and instead to
redirect it to getting moving, getting the message out, getting the news
announced - Jesus is on the move, not stuck in a tomb of death! Jesus is on the
move, and the women have to get going to help tell the story. I think the same
thing is happening a bit here at the Ascension. The disciples are gazing up at
heaven, because the only thing they can focus on is that Jesus has left them.
Yes, he’s resurrected. Yes, he’s conquered death. But in that moment, when he’s
leaving earth, not going to be with them physically any longer, I can only
imagine that they are overwhelmed with anxiety and fear and loneliness. And so
they gaze up at the sky, hoping perhaps to catch one last glimpse. The
messengers of God appear to pull their gazes from where they are stuck, on the
sky, and pull them back into their present reality. Why are they gazing up at
heaven? Jesus’ work on earth - at least in that way - is done. Now the work of
the disciples is about to begin, and it’s time for them to get moving, get to
it.
A good group
of us have recently been participating in a study called animate Faith. During our first session, we talked about two fancy
church words – kataphatic, and apophatic – two ways of thinking about God.
Kataphatic means that we can find
meaningful ways of talking about God, like through the images of God we find
throughout the scripture – God as rock, God as a mother hen, God as a shepherd,
God as love. Apophatic means that we can’t
grasp the fullness of God with our words – God is beyond our description. We talked about finding a balance between
these ways of understanding. And as we talked about the apophatic tradition, we talked about whether or not we are people
who are comfortable with not knowing
things. I can tell you that I have always liked to know the answers. When I
got to seminary, and was suddenly confronted with reading and learning a lot
about faith and following Jesus that was totally new to me, for a while I was
overwhelmed to the point of inaction with all that I didn’t know. It was, frankly, a pretty new feeling for me – not knowing
– and I did not like it. Eventually,
though, I found not that I could simply study enough to be able to know
everything I wanted to about God and my task of discipleship, but rather that I
could grow in my faith even in the midst of
all that I didn’t know, that perhaps coming to terms with how much more God was than I could comprehend was
a sign of my maturing faith, rather than of my ignorance. God is so much bigger
than any box I can make to keep God in. And even still, we’re called to trust
in what we do know, and follow God,
even when we don’t know where God is leading, what will happen when we risk it
all, and let ourselves be sent out to do the work of Jesus in the world.
This is the
truly amazing message of the Ascension: Even with the disciples asking - let’s
face it - last minute stupid questions, Jesus has entrusted into their very
imperfect hands his whole work, the purpose of his whole life, his whole vision
for the realization of God’s reign on earth, everything that he hopes and
dreams for us to be: Jesus has handed it over and left it completely in the
hands of the disciples. Essentially, the Ascension represents Jesus saying that
he doesn’t have any tasks left that are only his to complete. Everything else
that needs doing - it is for those who are left to do it. And certainly, as the
messengers note, this can’t be done by gazing up into the sky, but instead, by
getting started.
We are the
ones who are here, who are left, who remain to carry out the work of Jesus.
He’s made us his body, his hands and feet in the world. To us, to you, to me,
Jesus has entrusted the carrying out of all of his hopes for the world. I
wonder if we always get the weight and significance of that - how much faith
Jesus puts in us, to believe that we
can carry out the work of God in the world. Are we doing it? Are we embodying
the good news of God’s love and grace in the world? Are we the hands and feet,
the body of Christ in the world? We are disciples, students, always. But
sometimes, the lesson we need to learn is that we can’t keep waiting until we know everything before we’re willing to
go where God wants to send us. If we waited until we felt ready, we’d still be
standing with the disciples, gazing up at the clouds, waiting for more
information. We’re called to be apostles, too, sent out, witnesses of the work
of Jesus to the ends of the earth. So why stand gazing up at heaven? After all,
the body of Christ is right here, in this very room in fact, ready to be sent
out. Amen.
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