Practicing Resurrection: Ascension Sunday
May 12, 2024 – Ascension Sunday
Welcome to the seventh Sunday of Eastertide, also known as Ascension Sunday, the Sunday when we celebrate Jesus’ ascension into heaven after his resurrection. This is the logical end to the last Sunday of the Easter season, which began, of course, with Christ rising from the dead and now ends with Christ rising into heaven. More on that later.
It is good to be together in this place, in this space – cyber, as well as that space we occupy at the corner of Old Plank and Bethel roads. [If this is your first time with us…] For 169 years we have been worshiping as Bethel Church, and, at least for the lifetime of those gathered today, we have welcomed all those who have come through our doors. That means you. That means us. And we have welcomed God’s presence among us. We are here together, and it is a good place to be.
Welcome to all of the mothers among us today and to all of you who have nurtured someone like a mother would. Welcome to all of us who have experience the love of our mother or the love of the one who provided the nurturing love of a mother. Welcome to all of us who have never experienced a mother’s love. You are loved in this community. God, our mother, also welcomes us into this space.
May the peace of the Mothering God be with you. Let us pass the peace to one another. As we do let’s smile into one another’s eyes and say “You are welcome here. God loves you.”
Poem of the Day – “Ascension” by Kathleen Norris
Why do you stand looking up at the skies? --Acts 1:11
It wasn’t just wind, chasing
thin gunmetal clouds
across the loud sky;
it wasn’t the feeling that one might ascend
on that excited air,
rising like a trumpet note.
And it wasn’t just my sister’s water breaking,
her crying out,
the downward draw of blood and bone…
It was all of that,
the mud and new grass
pushing up through melting snow,
the lilac in bud
by my front door, bent low
by last week’s ice storm.
Now the new mother, that leaky vessel,
begins to nurse her child,
beginning the long good-bye.
Scripture of the Day – Acts 1:1-11 (NLT)
1 In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. 3 During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.
4 Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. 5 John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
6 So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”
7 He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
9 After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. 10 As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them.11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!”
[moment of silence]
Listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking to the Church. Thanks be to God.
Message
The Gospel of Luke ends and the book of Acts begins with the same story. Not a big surprise, since both were attributed to the same author. They were also both written to the same audience – Theophilus – who was a person, possibly, or perhaps was Luke’s clever way of addressing all lovers of God, which is what Theophilus means – God lover.
At the end of Luke, Jesus reminds his followers of everything he taught them and that they are witnesses of all of these things. Then he blesses them and even as he is blessing them, he is taken up into heaven.
At the beginning of Acts, Luke reminds Theophilus of this ending, then reiterates that Jesus instructed the disciples not to leave Jerusalem until they received the power of the Holy Spirit. In this version Jesus is taken up into a cloud and the disciples are all looking up with their mouths hanging open. Ok, I made that part up about the mouths, but can’t you just see it? The disciples are still gaping up at where just a few seconds ago, they saw Jesus swallowed up in a cloud, when two luminous figures are suddenly there asking them what they’re lookin’ at.
These were probably the same two shiny fellows who asked the women at the empty tomb why they were looking in a tomb for someone who was still alive.
In fact, a case could be made that these two men all in white and Elijah and Moses, who were there with Jesus when he was transfigured on the mountain, are the very same. It kind of makes sense. Elijah had been taken up in a whirlwind and Moses had ascended into the cloud which covered Mount Sinai, so here they are again when Jesus ascends in a cloud. Perhaps they were also the two at the tomb!
There’s another Elijah-Moses parallel as well to this story of Jesus’ ascension. Just as Elijah had to leave in order for Elisha to take up his prophetic leadership, and Moses had to disappear in order for Joshua to take up the mantle of leading the Hebrew people into the promised land, Jesus had to depart from earth in order for the church to be born. As one commentator put it, “As the body of Christ (the Galilean) recedes into a cloud, the Body of Christ (the Church) prepares to be born [a few days later] at Pentecost.” [from saltproject.org May 5, 2024, blogpost, “Take the Baton: Salt’s Commentary for Ascension Sunday”]
Without Jesus’ leaving, how likely would it have been that the Gospel would have spread from Jerusalem to Judea to the ends of the earth? Wouldn’t the disciples always have been looking to him for their next move? Would they have kept on expecting him to take on the Romans? To overthrow the existing order to become the Messiah the Hebrew people had been expecting from all the prophesies?
Jesus was still having to explain things to them right up until he ascended into heaven apparently. The disciples were still expecting him to restore the kingdom to Israel. But he says that isn’t for them to know. Instead, they are to go back to Jerusalem and wait.
It seems to me that what Jesus was telling them was to give it time, to let everything from the past three years and the more recent events of his death and resurrection to sink in. Then they would be ready to give witness to everything they had seen and heard and would spread the word from Jerusalem to Judea to, well, everywhere. He sent them back to look forward.
And then he leaves. He disappears into a cloud, and they are left standing there not quite comprehending what has just happened. The men in white tell them to quit gazing and get going. And, according to the account at the end of Luke’s Gospel, they do.
50 Then Jesus led them to Bethany, and lifting his hands to heaven, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up to heaven. 52 So they worshiped him and then returned to Jerusalem filled with great joy. 53 And they spent all of their time in the Temple, praising God. [Luke 24:50-53 NLT]
Just when they were getting used to Jesus being with them again, he left – again. And now they wait. It’s a liminal time – an in-between time, an it’s-coming-but-not-yet time. They are on the threshold of a new reality. They don’t really know what it will be, but they believe the promise Jesus has made to them that the power of his spirit will be on them soon.
And while the disciples are not fully living into the commission that Jesus has given them, they are not sitting idle either. They are praising God, spending time every day at the Temple. We have this picture in our heads of how they are gathered in that same upper room where they had the last supper, just sitting there waiting for the
Spirit to arrive. And yes, they gathered there, according to Acts, after they returned to Jerusalem. It was there that they picked someone to replace Judas. But they didn’t simply wait in that room afterwards. For the ten days after Jesus ascended into the cloud until the Spirit came, they were worshiping God together, more than likely recounting to one another and to anyone who would listen everything that had been happening. They were talking about what might be next, what Jesus might have meant about the power of his spirit that would be coming soon. They were waiting to be empowered to spread the Word to the ends of the earth.
We’ve all experienced a liminal time in our lives. Perhaps it was after the loss of a loved one whose care had been our responsibility. Perhaps it was after a devastating divorce. Perhaps it was the loss of a job or a change to a new job for which you were waiting. Perhaps it was the time between graduating and your first job in your chosen career or the next degree program into which you’ve been accepted. Perhaps it was when we were sheltering at home during the pandemic. Perhaps it was the time between finding out you were pregnant and the birth of the expected new life.
Those liminal times can be debilitating but they can also be full of hope. What pulls us during those times is the vision of a new reality. What grounds us during those times is a clear understanding of who we are and whose we are in Christ. It was true for those first disciples, and it is true for us.
Our church is in one of those liminal times. We looked last week at our financial situation and realized unless something changes, our days are numbered. We are not the only community of faith in this situation. There is some solace in that. However, we also are fortunate enough to have a way to give us a little space to figure out what’s next as a community. We are having a piece of our campus appraised and will decide the first Sunday of June whether or not we will seek a buyer for that land.
We know who we are. We took a good amount of time to figure that out or to confirm it through the ReShape process. We know what we value. We are Christ-centered, grounded in scripture, inclusive. We believe in making disciples, in allowing freedom for each of us to come to belief in our own way, and that we are part of a bigger body of faith than just ourselves. Our mission is to be the love.
We are grounded in this identity. What we need is a vision for a new reality. Therein lies our hope.
Several weeks ago I talked about this statement:
The degree to which we believe the world has irrevocably changed, never returning to what it was, directly influences the degree to which we will participate in our church’s adaptive transformation. [from Mark Tidsworth, Shift 2.0 webinar]
The disciples watched Jesus die. They experienced the risen Christ. They saw him ascend into heaven. Their world had irrevocably changed. There was no returning to what was. They didn’t want to go back. Would they have wanted Jesus to stay? Of course. Which was why he had to leave. Jesus knew the disciples needed to move forward. Their participation in carrying out the mission he had given them was absolutely necessary for the reign of God to become a reality. They would receive the Holy Spirit and be transformed into what would become the Church.
It's happening again. The world has irrevocably changed. We could say it was because of the global pandemic, but, honestly, the pandemic simply sped things along. Phyllis Tickle wrote a book about how every 500 years the Church has a rummage sale and there is a huge shift in the understanding of Church and what it means to be Church. The last time it happened was called the Great Reformation. The catalyst was Martin Luther nailing 99 theses to the door of the Wittenburg Church calling for the Catholic Church to be reformed. He didn’t intend to start a movement, but those who participated in that adaptive transformation came to be known as the Protestant Church.
What is happening now is another call for reformation. Tickle and others are calling this the Great Emergence. Something new is emerging. We can try going back. We can dig in our heels and say we just need to do what we used to do and everything will turn out all right. And it might work for a little while if we sell our land. That’s our safety net. We will survive a few more years.
But what if we pick up our feet and let the wind of the Spirit take us where she will? Not to spoil next week’s story, but the disciples are about to encounter the wind of the Spirit, and …watch out! That little Jesus movement is about explode! What might happen if we let the Spirit have her way with us?
Sound a little scandalous? Sound a little scary? Sound like fun? God is getting us ready for something new, something audacious, something Spirit-filled. Are you ready?
Pray with me.
Spirit of God, show us the way forward. Prepare us during this liminal time for what is next for Bethel Church. Help us have the courage to pick up our feet to let you take us where you will. Amen.
Invitation to Look Forward
The disciples didn’t hide away in the upper room while they waited for the Spirit to come. They didn’t stay up in Bethany looking up trying to see if Jesus was coming back yet. They went on their way rejoicing, praising God, spending time together in worship. All the while they were watching and waiting for the promised power of the Spirit. We don’t have to wait on the Spirit. She is already here empowering us to take the next step. Let’s see where she will lead us.
Benediction
“Friends, how good and pleasant it is to be together, in person or in spirit, encouraging and consoling, provoking and inspiring. But now the service is ended. Now the wider service begins. Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? Go in peace — into the world, for the love of the world!” [from saltproject.org May 5, 2024, blogpost, “Take the Baton: Salt’s Commentary for Ascension Sunday”]