Ascension Day

[This sermon was not preached because there were two small children present so rather than have them suffer through more talking, we did a conversational reflection as we do at the family service on Sundays but here is what would have been said.]

The story of the Ascension forms a bridge from Luke into Acts, from the time of Jesus into the time of the church. Luke is the only gospel writer to distinguish Jesus’ ascension from his resurrection as a separate event.

Luke tells the story twice, at the end of the gospel and then again at the beginning of the Book of Acts. One interesting aspect of the two versions of the Ascension narrative is the chronological conflict between them. In Luke 24 Jesus ascends late on Easter day itself, whereas in Acts 1 his ascension is delayed until ‘forty days’, perhaps as way to remind us of Jesus’ forty-day stay in the wilderness that takes place early on in Luke’s gospel.

Luke is clear in his narration of the Ascension that it not be used as a timetable for speculations for Jesus’ return. In response to questions about chronology, such as the question posed by the disciples today, Jesus answers: It is not for you to know the times or the seasons. Jesus specifically asks the disciples not to try to calculate the date of his return.

Luke also uses this story to mark an end to Jesus’ resurrection stories. (The lectionary has moved us over the past three weeks further and further away from those stories to a more intentional focus on the Holy Spirit, a focus that will culminate on Pentecost Sunday.) No one can hitherto claim to see the risen Jesus in the same way that Mary Magdalene and the disciples saw him. The forty days of Easter appearances are over. Paul, in First Corinthians 15 lists those eyewitnesses as though to say: These people really saw Jesus—no one else can claim that. (Of course Paul leaves women out of his list, and says he is the last person to see Jesus; Luke would disagree with him.)

What matters here is that now the way the church will ‘see’ Jesus is through the Holy Spirit, that motivating, generative, life-giving power that infuses the church, its scriptures, and people.
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And so, the Ascension is not about Jesus’ absence as some would have it, leaving us looking up in the sky, waiting to see him up there, but about Jesus’ presence in the here and now.

Brazilian theologian Vitor Westhelle says simply that earth is the place to look for Jesus’ presence. Likewise, rather than stand gazing heavenward in a state of suspended animation, we are to be Christ’s disciples and witnesses in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria and all the ends of the earth.

For Luke, you and I live at the end of the earth, in a place unimagined back then. But the exhortation to make Christ known to others and find Christ in one another still stands all these centuries later. But, o, that seems so large, so hard to do! Where do we begin?

We begin where we are. It is as simple as that. Gandhi said, ‘If you don’t find God in the very next person you meet it is a waste of time looking for God further.’ If we make one step toward God in one another, God will make ten steps toward us.

I remember my spiritual companion back in Princeton telling me that even on the days she was the most weary, she always tried to remember that the next person coming in her office might be Christ. I don’t know how she did it some days but the Holy Spirit sometimes helps us do those things we think we never could do otherwise.

If we are open to the presence of the Holy Spirit, then others might come to see Christ’s love and presence in us. Surely you’ve had what are called ‘airplane conversations’ — those conversations with an utter stranger who reveals things to you that you think no one else has heard beyond their therapist. Sometimes the conversations are off-the-wall, but sometimes the holy pops into them. They don’t always happen on airplanes, they can occur whenever and wherever the heart is open to seeing Christ in the other. I would like to think, at the risk of being presumptuous, that the Holy Spirit is present in that sort of encounter. I know enough that when the Holy Spirit is present, I am touched for a long time.

On this Feast of the Ascension, let us remember that Christ has not left us behind or abandoned us. Christ is still in the midst of us — in one another, in the person next to us. Pray that we can see them and Christ — together, at the same time, here.