Andy James

Death and Life

June 14, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
preached on June 14, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As a pastor, I have a bit of a strange relationship with death. I am occasionally given the privilege of being present with someone as they die, and I do my best to approach this holy moment in the same way as I do for any other event of life even amidst the understandable difficulty for me and others. A little more frequently, I am asked to preside at funerals or memorial services, where death is the unfortunate occasion that brings us together even as we often find a unique bond of life to link us to one another and to God. And then there are the times when I walk with you all or other friends through days of grief, sorting out how the death of family, friends, colleagues, or even others beyond those circles changes our lives. In thinking about all these moments, I see the incredible transformation that death brings—even as I know that it is yet another moment of life and living.

So when Paul starts talking about death in our reading from 2 Corinthians this morning, I know exactly what he is talking about. For Paul, death—specifically, the death of Christ—changes everything even as it is yet another moment in the life of the world. In the wonder of this unjust death, we are convinced that all have died. In the light of this amazing love, we are shown that he died for all, regardless of belief or practice. And in the face of this transformative moment, we are shown how this death invites “those who live [to] live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”

Christ’s death shows us the depth and breadth of God’s love for us, and that love “urges us on,” Paul says, guiding us into new life in this world and the next. This love, Paul says, gives us a new point of view: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.” First, we received a new vision of Christ himself, for we once knew him as we know our human companions on the journey, but now we know that he is more than this, that in his death and resurrection he has overcome all the challenges of this world and entered into new life.

Since we know Christ in this new way, we also have to look at our human companions from a new perspective. Everything is different from this new vantage point. The assumptions we have made about others no longer apply, because we know that all are beloved children of God. The outside appearance and visible actions that have been the basis of all our judgments before now must be set aside so that we can focus on knowing one another in the way that God knows us. And the death that seems like it brought things to an end is actually the beginning of new life. One commentator summarizes this change beautifully:

Believers are not simply offered a new perspective they may or may not adopt as and when they see fit; rather, something so fundamental has changed in such a profound fashion that the old ways of looking, perceiving, understanding, and, more profoundly, evaluating, have to be let go and replaced with a new way of seeing and understanding. (J. Paul Sample, New Interpreter’s Bible)

He goes even one step further:

People have value because Christ has died for them. People, whoever they are, whether they have responded to Christ or not… are treasured by God.

In the same way that the death of Christ changes our view of death, when we look at one another from this new perspective, everything is different. We see those whom we once named as our enemies and approach them as friends. We replace our way of assessing one another based on the things of this world with assessments of one another as beloved children of God. And we stop looking at death as the end of something for one of us and approach it as the beginning of everything for all of us. Paul names this new perspective as the new creation:

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

The new creation stands at the center of everything that Paul proclaims. The new creation calls forth a different way of living and loving that takes into account the love of God demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The new creation makes it clear for us how faith is to be expressed through love of our fellow human beings and by extension all of the created order. The new creation shows us that redemption is expressed “as a kind of creation renewed, made over… a new thing that recaptures, not jettisons, the old.” (J. Paul Sample) And the new creation reminds us that death is not the end of the story for any of us, for one death began the process of transformation that invites us into this new life, and so death opens the possibility of something new.

This new creation begun in Christ opens us to, calls us to, even demands of us participation in, the transformation of the world. Because we have been reconciled to God in Christ, we are called to be reconciled to one another and the whole world. Because we have this new relationship with God, we need to have a new relationship with others as we appeal to them as ambassadors on God’s behalf. And because we have for our own sake been united with one “who knew no sin,” we “become the righteousness of God” as we demonstrate the new way of Christ to the world.

As participants in this new creation, we not only look at the world around us differently but also interact with it differently. We treat everyone with deeper reverence and love as we recognize the myriad ways that all are treasured by God. We live with our focus on others and especially those for whom God has particular concern: the poor, the oppressed, the victims of war and violence, the unloved and unloveable, and those like all of these. And we do our best to embody the wholeness that we long to know for ourselves and all the world.

As I journey through this life, facing the interesting challenges of life as a pastor, walking through death and life with people like all of you, seeking to offer the presence of God in Christ to all I meet, I am convinced over and over again that this idea of the new creation is what we need in our world. We do not need to turn back the clock to a day and age that are now past but rather need to hope and pray and work for God’s new way to be revealed in our midst, a way that is far better than anything we have known before.

In this new creation, we are shown that God has more in store for our world that what we know now. Through this new creation, we are called to live differently ourselves so that we can join in what God is doing all around us. And because of this new creation, we ourselves are made new as we recognize again and again that Christ has changed everything for everyone.

So may we live in this new creation even now as we wait for God to finish it in the days ahead, so that we might be God’s ambassadors of new life and reconciliation in our broken and fearful world, journeying in life and in death in the path that Christ opens for us, now and always. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Succession Planning

June 7, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 Samuel 8:4-20
preached on June 7, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I spent a good part of the day yesterday with about thirty clerks of session from all across the Presbytery of New York City. These good folks are the people who, like Lisa here among us, keep the official records of our congregations and assist in a lot of other very important tasks to support the ministry and mission that happen in the ninety-six Presbyterian churches across our city. As we went around the room introducing ourselves and sharing what we were looking forward to doing this summer, there was a recurring theme in even these brief two-minute introductions. At least half of the clerks in the room talked about how they were looking to start training someone to take over for them. In some sense, they were very concerned about succession planning—about figuring out who would pick up their responsibilities when they could no longer do them themselves, about making sure that the hard work that they had begun would continue, about laying the groundwork for a smooth transition to the next generation.

Our reading from 1 Samuel this morning begins with a very similar state of affairs, with the elders of Israel approaching the prophet and leader Samuel to ask him to put a new succession plan in place by appointing a king over them. The people had been led for several generations by judges like Samuel, leaders with the power to guide decisions and sort out disputes but whose authority did not extend to raising up an army, imposing taxes, or building a nation-state that looked like Israel’s imposing neighbors. While they had these substantial limitations, these judges still used their power to establish family dynasties based on bloodline more than righteousness. Like his predecessor Eli before him, Samuel’s sons didn’t quite take after their father, and instead of trying to find yet another family to take up the role of judge, the other leaders around him wanted to take a more traditional approach and appoint a king to succeed him.

Samuel was frustrated by all this, but when he took that frustration to God, God reminded him that this wasn’t about him:

They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

They were just repeating a longstanding pattern, after all—ever since leaving Egypt, the Israelites had found lots to complain about and rarely seemed to be happy with what God had given them, whether it was leadership, food, or guidance. So Samuel reluctantly did as God told him, warning the people about what their request for a king would bring to them: all the conflict and strife that would follow them, all that would be required of their families and property, all that would be taken away from them and placed in the service of the king. And most of all, he warned them that God would not listen when they inevitably complained about it!

But still they did not listen.

No! We are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.

Their complaints were all about succession planning—and being like everyone else.

If I have learned anything from reading and studying the Bible over the years, it is that God rarely if ever wants us to be like everyone else. Every time the Israelites cried out to God to be like everyone else, with military might, giant territories, and powerful leaders, God made it clear that God had other plans for them. After all, we know a good bit about the history of the empires of Egypt and Assyria and Babylon and Persia, but their cultural and religious legacy is tiny now compared to that of the tiny nation of Israel. Every time people came to Jesus as they did in our reading from Mark this morning asking him to honor his family and behave like the rest of the world, he responded with something like he did here:

Who are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers [sitting around me]! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

After all, the human ties that bind us are far more easily broken than the ties that bind us to God. And every time we think that we have figured out how to claim God’s grace and mercy only for ourselves, we are reminded of how God in Jesus Christ offered that grace and mercy in ways that reached beyond the wildest imaginations of those around him. After all, he dined with tax collectors and sinners, touched those who were deemed untouchable around him, and proclaimed a new and different kingdom of justice, peace, and love.

Rather than taking up the ways of the world, God instead insists that we are called to trust God to show us a new and different and better way, prioritizing justice for all over the privilege of a few, preferring mercy over retribution, living in love rather than stewing in hate, living in the radical possibilities of grace when we prefer the seeming simplicity of the law, insisting on reconciliation when we just want to stay apart, and seeking new life when we would rather be happy with the status quo. God calls us to seek these divine ways rather than the human way, to place our focus and trust and hope in God alone.

It is not easy to place all our hopes and prayers for succession planning—or anything else, for that matter!—on God alone. Whether we’re trying to figure out how we might organize ourselves for this or the next generation, how to relate to our families and friends, or how to respond to those in need in our lives and our world, we do not easily keep our focus on how God remains at the center of our lives and our world.

The difficulty of this is no surprise, really. Placing God at the center and trusting that God really is sovereign raises a lot of questions for us. In our nation where we have thoughtfully disconnected church and state, how do we relate our civic responsibilities with our faith commitments? In our church where we can so easily become focused on keeping the doors open and maintaining our connection to the past, how is God inviting us to recenter and refocus on living out God’s call to new life in our world? And in our lives where it can be difficult to see God guiding us in the day-to-day, how can we connect the challenges of our lives to the limited ways that we can see God in our midst?

Our Reformed tradition, in its great emphasis on the sovereignty of God, responds to these age-old questions with continual reaffirmations of the limitations of human power and authority and the new way that God is setting before us in the world. It points us back to all those scriptures that insist that God’s ways are very different from our own. It insists that we recognize the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, who showed “power in the form of a servant, wisdom in the folly of the cross, and goodness in receiving sinful men and women.” (Confession of 1967, 9.15) And it invites us to give up our confidence in any power we might claim for ourselves so that our hope and trust rest squarely in God alone.

Now let me be clear: placing our hope and trust in God does not excuse us from action in our world,
nor does it take away from the pain and hurt we may experience when things are difficult. It does not mean that we do not plan for the days ahead or can be excused from responsibility for the work we are called to do. Instead, placing our hope and trust in God gives us a grounding for our lives of mission and ministry in the world, a starting point for living out the hope that God will make things different and use us in that work. Our Confession of 1967 puts our task well:

The life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ has set the pattern for the church’s mission. His human life involves the church in the common life of all people. His service to men and women commits the church to work for every form of human well-being. His suffering makes the church sensitive to all human suffering so that it sees the face of Christ in the faces of persons in every kind of need. His crucifixion discloses to the church God’s judgment on the inhumanity that marks human relations, and the awful consequences of the church’s own complicity in injustice. In the power of the risen Christ and the hope of his coming, the church sees the promise of God’s renewal of human life in society and of God’s victory over all wrong. The church follows this pattern in the form of its life and in the method of its action. So to live and serve is to confess Christ as Lord. (9.32-.33)

So may we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord in our words and our actions, with confidence that God has a succession plan set out for us that invites us to join in God’s work of making all things new, so that we might proclaim the eternal reign of our God in all that we say and do, each and every day. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Mystery and Mission

May 31, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 6:1-8
preached on May 31, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

We’re coming out of quite a festive season. Between the great church holy days of Easter and Pentecost, the more minor celebration of the Ascension, the various joyous Sundays of the Easter season, and the cultural celebration of Mother’s Day, we have been quite a festive group of people lately! Today, though, we shift from a season of festivals into that great season of green, Ordinary Time, with one final festival: Trinity Sunday.

Even though it is certainly rightfully considered a festival of the church, Trinity Sunday is not quite the same as all these others. While all the other festivals of the church celebrate moments in the life of Jesus or the church, Trinity Sunday celebrates something far more abstract: a doctrine. And of course this is not just any doctrine—it is the most misunderstood and most easily dismissed doctrine of the church! Far too many Christians either shake their heads and ignore this doctrine because it seems too complicated or actively choose to think and even preach against it because they think that it is an outdated, unnecessary, and artificial set of rules placed on our understanding of God. But the doctrine of the Trinity that we celebrate today has stood the test of time. It continues to shape how we think of who God is and what God does even as we remember that our understanding of God is limited by our humanity. And this doctrine gives us a dose of much-needed humility in a world where we seem to think that we can know and understand everything, for just when we think that we have this all figured out, the paradox of one-in-three and three-in-one crops up all over again!

Yet the gift of this day is not just in giving us a bit of humility, taking us back to this easily-misunderstood doctrine of the early church, or even the wonderful hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy!” that is practically required to be sung on this day! Through the wisdom of the lectionary, Trinity Sunday also leads us to thoughtful texts that look at the mystery and mission of God that stand at the center of this great and complex doctrine. Our reading from the prophet Isaiah today opens us to this mystery and mission so very clearly.

Here the prophet tells us the story of his call to serve God and the people of Israel that began with a strange glimpse at the mystery of God and ended with a call to serve the mission of God. In the midst of transition and turmoil in the life of the nation, Isaiah had a vision of God “sitting on a throne, high and lofty.” On this throne, God was surrounded by servant angels, ascending and descending by the throne, covering their faces and bodies with their wings as they proclaimed the wonder and holiness of their master:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.

As these angels offered their songs of praise, the temple filled with smoke and shook with wonder and majesty. Isaiah was stunned by this sight. His mortality and impurity and humanity became abundantly clear alongside the holiness of God. He could not even declare God’s holiness as we did in our opening hymn but instead offered a prayer of confession:

Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!

But Isaiah’s impurity and humanity didn’t really matter in that temple, for everything there was centered in the holiness of God that could change everything for Isaiah. To make this clear, one of the angels flew over to Isaiah, carrying a live coal from the altar. The angel touched the coal to Isaiah’s lips and proclaimed,

Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.

In that moment, something changed for Isaiah. He went from being fearful of this mysterious God because of his sin to being called out to new life because of God’s wonder and glory. The mystery of God had opened just enough for the mission of God began to emerge. When another voice thundered through the temple, asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”, Isaiah knew that he could respond with confidence:

Here am I; send me!

Isaiah’s vision puts the mystery and mission of God on full display for us, too. Amidst the mysterious servant angels, we see God calling for someone to journey forth. Amidst the clouds of smoke that cover the glory of God, we see a revelation of God’s self that shows us that we must respond. And amidst the wondrous way of forgiveness opened by the fiery coal from the altar of God, we are freed to join in the mission of God without fear.

All this mystery and mission are a great fit for the mysteries of Trinity Sunday. After all, who really understands how God can be three in one and one in three? Who understands how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit manage to be three independent beings of one God? How we can identify the actions of one person of the Trinity when we have enough difficulty recognizing anything that God is doing in our world anyway? How we can see such distinction in the actions of the persons of the Trinity even as their actions are indivisible? And what difference does it really make why God is trinitarian in the first place? Answers to these questions are far more complex than we have time for in a twelve- to fifteen-minute sermon, yet the fact that we explore them as Christians ought to show that we take the mystery of God seriously.

Even as we get a clear glimpse of the mystery of God, the mission of God also becomes clear for us here. Just as God emerges from the mysterious cloud to call Isaiah, so we too are called from the mystery of God’s being to participate in God’s mission in the world. Over the last several months, our church leadership has been thinking and talking and praying about ways to engage us in intentional mission in the world. We have always been a missional church, with substantial financial gifts given to support mission efforts locally, nationally, and internationally through the deacons and many of you regularly inviting us to join in working with organizations and projects that you care about. Even as we honor these deep commitments and long histories of engagement, we also recognized the importance of taking up mission together, so we discussed several possible projects where we might come together to be active as a congregation in supporting mission efforts in our community and world. We agreed on two new projects as a long-term commitments to new mission engagement in our community and world even as we continue to support the Grace Church Food Pantry, Heifer International, and other projects and look to welcome even more ways to engage in mission together from the passions in our midst.

First, we will work to build relationships with mission partners in Madagascar. Last fall, we welcomed Lala Rasendrahasina, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar, to speak with us about that nation and the church’s work there, and he sparked some initial interest. We will be supporting Daniell and Elizabeth Turk, two Presbyterian mission co-workers who assist the church in Madagascar with agricultural, environmental, and health projects. The session has already approved a substantial contribution toward their work, and we will be working to engage with them in other ways in the coming months.

Second, we will be supporting UNiTE, the United Nations Secretary General’s campaign to end violence against women and girls. Among other projects, we hope to “Orange Our Neighborhood” during sixteen days of international activism around these issues in November and December. You’ll be hearing more about these projects as the date nears and we have an opportunity to learn more about these important issues and help others in our community join in these efforts.

These are places where we have heard God calling us, and I hope and pray that you will find a way to join in responding “Here am I; send me!” just as Isaiah did.

Even amidst the mystery of what this mission will look like for us in the end, our mysterious God who works in so many different ways and is so well described in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit invites us to respond just like this, offering ourselves in service that reflects the incredible presence of this mysterious God so that the mystery might be peeled back for others and ourselves as we join in God’s mission together.

So as we join Isaiah and countless others in joyfully responding to God’s call, may God’s mystery and mission become all the more clear for us so that we might welcome others to join us in watching and waiting and working for God’s new creation to become real in the world as all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

Resurrection, Continued

May 24, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Ezekiel 37:1-14
preached on Pentecost, May 24, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Over the years, I’ve gotten to be a big fan of Easter. As a child, it was all about the Easter bunny, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a deeper appreciation of the need to celebrate the resurrection. This strange and wonderful event, after all, is the reason why we Christians exist at all. The death of Jesus was certainly important, but that death would have meant nothing were it not for his resurrection. It made the power of God to bring new life clear once and for all, brought a change in the day of worship from the Saturday sabbath of Judaism to Sunday, the day of resurrection, and reminds us of the new life that has been promised to us and is already coming into being around us.

Today’s reading from the prophet Ezekiel is a perfect bridge between the joys of celebrating the resurrection in the Easter season and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This story is one of the great resurrection stories, perhaps as appropriate for Easter as for Pentecost, because it has as much to do with new life as it does with the Spirit.

The prophet Ezekiel, writing from the confines of exile in Babylon, tells of a strange vision where death shifts to life by the power of the Spirit of God. God takes him to a strange valley, filled with bones. There were a lot of bones there, and they were very dry. Upon his arrival there, God questioned him quickly: “Mortal, can these bones live?” In that time and place, life seemed utterly impossible. The valley was dry and barren, and the bones were just as dry and just as barren—dead as a doornail, we might say. Those bones were like everything around Ezekiel—bearing hopelessness, mired in darkness and despair, dried up and withering away, decaying beyond belief.

But Ezekiel knew better than to assume that God could not work beyond human visions of death. Soon God was instructing him to prophesy to the bones, to proclaim that they could be alive again, to insist that they were something more than dead, dry bones, to call forth sinews and flesh and skin to cover these bones so that they might live. When Ezekiel did this, he heard a great rattling as the bones came together, “bone to its bone.” As the scattered bones became assembled skeletons, muscles and flesh and skin came upon them, and what once had been a barren valley of lifeless bones was now filled with lifeless bodies.

This first word had put things back together, but it was not enough to bring new life. So Ezekiel turned again to hear God’s voice commanding him, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain,
that they may live.” When he offered this second word as God commanded, breath came upon the lifeless bodies of that deserted valley. What had once been a lifeless valley was now filled with an eager multitude. What had once been a pile of dry bones was now a crowd of standing bodies awaiting new possibilities ahead. What had once been the most certain sign of death was now most definitely very much alive.

After this new life became clear to Ezekiel, God finally explained what it all meant in one final word of proclamation and prophecy. God instructed Ezekiel to follow up his words to the bones of the valley with one more proclamation to the exiled people of Israel, promising them that new life would emerge for them from their graves, that they would return to their homeland, and that they would be filled with the spirit of God and so live in fullness of life.

All the new life in those dry bones came about because of the spirit of God. The great Hebrew word used here is ruach. It’s one of those words you can’t help but love to say, and when you learn everything that it means, it feels even better to say it. Like many words in Hebrew, ruach does not have an exact equivalent in English. Depending on the original context, we can translate ruach as “breath,” “wind,” or “spirit”—the same three words that we so often use to describe the Holy Spirit. Whether it be breath, wind, or spirit, this ruach always comes from God, and even before anyone ever understood it, this ruach was showing us the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit.

God’s ruach brings life to the lifeless, blows through our world to restore all that is broken, and inspires the church to join in God’s work of bringing new life. This ruach is not our own breath, not the wind created by a fan, not the spirit of a departed loved one. This ruach is the Spirit of God, the wind that blew upon the chaotic waters at creation to begin the creation of new life, the breath placed in each of us as we take our first breath outside our mother’s womb, the fiery presence that filled Jesus’ disciples on that first day of Pentecost and helped them to be heard as they spoke to those who gathered in Jerusalem, the spirit that fills our world with the presence of God and guides us the continuing work of resurrection in that valley of dry bones and beyond. God’s ruach blows where it will, guiding us in bringing new life to our world that seems to be ruled by death, bringing the dead to life when we might least expect it, and showing us that we can live in ways that we never imagined we could live before.

As we celebrate this Pentecost, as we look at the myriad ways that God is at work to bring new life into our world, as we see how God can transform the brokenness of our world in bringing together the dry bones of Ezekiel’s valley and the diaspora gathered in Jerusalem, as we join the multitude who rose up in that valley and who responded to the words of the disciples in Jerusalem, we continue the work of the resurrection begun by God on that first Easter that has continued for two millennia. In coming in power on that first Pentecost, in restoring life to those dry bones, in inspiring us for the work of new creation each and every day, the Holy Spirit is the presence of God at work in our world. The Holy Spirit guides our reading and interpretation of scripture, helping us to understand what these ancient words mean to us as God’s people in our world. The Holy Spirit shows us how God wills us to work and to live in hope and new life, encouraging us to set aside the ways of death where we feel led out into valleys of dry bones ourselves so that we can know that power of God to bring new life. And the Holy Spirit breathes new life into us, showing us that we are not the lifeless people of the past, not those dead and dry bones, and not some temporary flicker of a momentary flame but rather reminding us that we are the people of God, inspired for new life each and every day so that God might be glorified through the transformation of our world.

So as the resurrection power of God continues in our world, may we be filled with the breath of God that gives us life, the wind of God that blows us into places we never expected might give us hope, and the Spirit of God that shows us how to walk in newness of life as we are filled with the Holy Spirit this Pentecost and every day until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Belonging and Blessing

May 17, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 24:44-53
preached on May 17, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When I think of the ways that my family has shaped my life, my thoughts turn to two particular areas: belonging and blessing. Over the course of my thirty-six years, my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, colleagues, and others have shown me repeatedly what it means to belong to one another even as they have given me their blessing—perhaps at times reluctantly!—to follow where God is leading in my life.

The idea of belonging is likely quite familiar, for at some level, I suspect that we all are just looking for a place to call home, a place to fit in, a place where we can be loved, whether that be in our families, among our friends, in our church, or in some other relationship or community. And the idea of blessing, too, is common around us, for we are shown love and care—the core components of blessing—in so many different ways from so many different sources as we receive the sense of comfort and hope that we need to live in mercy and grace each and every day.

Today’s story of the ascension of Jesus from the gospel according to Luke also addresses these two big themes of belonging and blessing as his earthly ministry comes to an end. Luke tells us about how Jesus gathered the disciples for a time of teaching and fellowship some forty days after his resurrection. He recounted again to them the meaning and story of his life and ministry, using the Hebrew scriptures once again to show them who he was and why he had lived and died and rose to new life. He instructed them that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in [the name of the Messiah] to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem,” and he reminded them that they would receive the gift of “power from on high” to assist them in this work of bearing witness to his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. He told them that his ministry on earth would continue in them, for they had been and would continue to be his beloved friends, and that even in his reign on high they would stay connected to him.

Then, after assuring them of all the ways in which they belonged to him, Jesus led them out of the city and began to bless them. He raised his hands and shared the presence of God with them once again. Before they could see this blessing end, “he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” Even though they could no longer see it, they were certain that the blessing continued, and they responded with joy and praise by returning to Jerusalem to offer their own blessing to God for all that they had seen and experienced.

The belonging and blessing shown here in the ascension of Jesus are also captured well in the majestic words of Psalm 47 that we just sang a few moments ago. Its powerful words echo the understandings of the ascension as told in Luke’s gospel and remind us of the real implications of this end to Jesus’ ministry. In our day and age where most monarchs have only ceremonial powers and we ourselves are far more familiar with a representative system of government, it is easy to miss how these great words proclaiming God as king affirm the ways in which we belong to God and find blessing in the risen and ascending Christ. Even as we “stand in awe of God” and watch as “God brings nations low,” these words remind us that God’s provision for us is beyond all our human understanding and God’s gifts for us extend beyond our wildest imagination. This divine ruler gives us not only what we need to live in fullness of life but also invites us into relationship so that we might know how deeply and completely we belong to God. This belonging goes far beyond our ownership of any of our human human belongings, for it is not ownership but relationship—the kind of relationship that makes us feel at home, that shows us how much we are loved, that gives us all that we need. Even more than those places where we best feel like we belong to another person or to a particular community, our sense of belonging to God—even this God who reigns on high—gives us energy and hope to go forth in service each and every day.

Alongside this belonging, the blessing that emerges from the ascension of Jesus shapes our lives each and every day. When Jesus was carried up into heaven as he was blessing the disciples, we see him enacting this unending blessing, arms raised, offering his affirmation of hope, calling them to live in his new way, showing them and us again and again, without end, the new life that he brings into the world.

In some ways, this blessing is very surprising. As commentator Thomas Troeger reminds us, “[Jesus] had cause to be cursing them. They had abandoned him, denied him, run off like scared rabbits, even dismissed his resurrection as an idle tale when the women first reported it.” (Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, p. 523) Yet Jesus left the disciples while blessing them, with his hands raised to share the depth and breadth of God’s mercy and grace with them, offering them only the beginning of this unending blessing, insisting that they were worthy of belonging to him even amidst all the struggles that they had experienced together along the way, promising them that they would be more than their missteps, greater than their uncertainties, and filled to overflowing with the blessing of God.

So what do these ideas of belonging and blessing mean to us today? Even with all of this biblical backup for the ascension, why should it matter to us that Jesus ascended to reign at the right of hand of God, as we profess so many Sundays in the Apostles’ or Nicene Creeds? How are we to live in the light of this good news—if indeed it is good news at all? After all, it usually is not good news when we must say farewell for good, as the disciples did with Jesus here. Even when we can offer our greatest confidence about God’s promise of new life, death is still very final for us in our world. Even in our hyperconnected world where we are linked by text and voice and video with friends and family around the world, we still have moments that are final goodbyes for us.

Yet when we see how we belong to God and are continually being blessed by Jesus in the ascension, this seeming finality disappears. In the ascension, the only thing that seemed to be final for the disciples was Jesus’ raised arms—his act of continual blessing for them, his ceaseless intercession on their behalf, his eternal reign at the right hand of God that showed them that they belonged to God, his ongoing blessing that enabled them to share that blessing with others. So for us, Jesus’ final acts of belonging and blessing are not like what we might expect when those we love depart from us but rather stand as reminders of God’s call in our lives to live as people who belong to God and who are blessed by God all along the way.

The belonging and blessing we experience in the ascension offer us comfort for our lives and hope for all that is ahead for us, but they also challenge us to do more than just wallow in these gifts that have come to us. The belonging and blessing that we see in the ascension of Jesus tell us that we are called to make space for others to belong and be blessed too, that we are charged with breaking down the barriers of the world that get in the way of others experiencing the grace and mercy of God, that we must join in the work that God is doing among us to bring a new world into being. The belonging and blessing we find on this mountaintop are not just something for us to enjoy for ourselves or to hoard up for those like us—they are to be shared far and wide, from shore to shore, to the ends of the earth and beyond, for we have been claimed by God as God’s own and invited to share the fullness of this blessing in Jesus Christ.

So as we celebrate the ascension this day, as we look up to see the departure of Jesus from the earth, may we never forget the unending blessing of God in Jesus Christ that shows us how deeply we belong to him so that we can share it far and wide with all those who need to know the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord until he comes in glory to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.