Ascension

        A fellow pastor was complaining about the festival of the Ascension getting short shrift compared to the other major Church Festivals… 

-There are no Ascension Presents,
-we don’t get Ascension Ashes on our foreheads,
-there is no Ascension Bunny,
-we don’t even ask you to wear a particular color like we do on Pentecost…

         I get why… at first blush Ascension is weird.
Yes, we confess every week, “he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” 
But we often make the same mistake Khrushchev (head of the Soviet Union) made, when he announced, ‘we flew into space, but didn’t see any god there.’
         If Ascension is the celebration of Jesus stuck in the sky, then, yeah, this is all rather odd celebration…
in fact, some of you might feel like you have to cross your fingers when you recite that section in the creeds.

         But friends, Heaven is not up! At least not at the time when Luke is writing Acts.

         Heaven is wherewe find the Human One from the Book of Daniel, the one whose good news saves us from the inhuman monsters that surround us and are inside of us.

         Heaven is wherethose in authority are found, those who we call Queens, Kings, and Emperors, those worthy to lead us.

         Heaven… well if Earth is the words, then heaven is the music—they are joined together and interlocking realities, descriptors of the totality of God’s good creation.

         To put it another way, when we celebrate Ascension we are celebrating Christ in three ways. 

-We are celebrating Christ’s completion of the Gospel. 

-We are celebrating Christ bringing about the Reign of God. 

-We are celebrating Christ’s calling of the Church.

Let us pray:

Ascension is the celebration of
-the completion of the Gospel,
-the Reign of God,
-and the Call of the Church!

Ascension celebrates the completion of the Gospel.

         Acts is, of course, the sequel to Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus completed what he set out to do:

preach good news to the poor,
bring deliverance to the captives,
restore sight to the blind and release to the oppressed,
to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

         He does this by centering his ministry on outsiders—especially Women, Samaritans, and the Lost.

         He does this by transforming ideas about wealth and poverty into deeds of kindness.

         He does this by calling those who follow him to a life of repentance and persistent prayer.

         He does this by words and deeds that challenge the monstrous social, political, and religious status quo.

         He does this by dying and rising!

Yes, the Son of Man, the Human One, has done his work.

Ascension is celebrating the completion of the Gospel.

Ascension celebrates the Reign of God!

         Jesus has spent forty days talking to the Disciples about the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God
—likely reminding them of his many parables about the subject.

         He’s told them that God Reigns: 

when we forgive each other,
when we seek to redeem the fallen instead of destroying them,
when we throw off hypocrisy and cloth ourselves with humility. When those who can not repay kindness or mercy,receive kindness and mercy! 

When possessions do not possess us, when we do good instead of storing up goods, when greed gives way to generosity.

         

         When you squish together all Jesus’ descriptions of the Kingdom of God—that’s what you get…

         And after 40 days of that Kingdom talk… the Disciples respond, “When will you restore the Kingdom of Israel.”

         That’s not what this is about! We’re talking about the Reign of God, not the Kingdom of Israel
… you’re call is to be a witness! To tell people about the Son of God, our Lord!
Tell people about the Kingdom of God, when God Reigns.
There is a reason Jesus speaks in parables, because the Kingdom comes through hearing and being transformed by the Word of God.

It isn’t about restoring a Kingdom, it is about telling folk about Jesus!

         King Jesus has a holy and humble authority and is to be announced!

Ascension celebrates the Reign of God!

Ascension Celebrates the Call of the Church

         We, the Church, are given a commission, are called to witness to Jesus!

         Just as the prophet Elijah passes on his power to his disciple Elisha and then ascends in a fiery chariot, so to Jesus, he promises the Holy Spirit is coming and ascends to heaven.
He is leaving the disciples, and us, with a charge
—be his witness in Jerusalem, and Judea & Samaria, and to the ends of the earth!

         That’s what makes the disciples’ next action so funny,

they just gape up at the sky and it requires the same angels who witnessed to Jesus’ resurrection
—who told them Jesus rose from the dead back in Luke’s Gospel
—to return the disciple’s imagination to earth…
to remind them that they too are called to witness to that same resurrection!

         We are called to be little Christs in the world—collectively committed to the same acts of liberation and healing that he was.

         Called to point to Jesus, tell people his story and how his story has intersected with our story!

         Called to be ambassadors of the Kingdom of God—helping people see those amazing moments in their own life when God is clearly reigning!

         Don’t look up at the sky, look around you!

         As Luther wrote, “God doesn’t need our good works, our neighbor does.”

         “God’s work, our hands.”

         In Christ all of creation—heaven and earth—are being reconciled to God, and we the Church, by all means at our disposal, are bearers of that message.

         Ascension Celebrates the Call of the Church.

Ascension celebrates the completion of the Gospel, the Reign of God, and the Call of the Church! A+A