Ascension — Andy James

Looking Up

May 8, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on Acts 1:1-11
preached on May 8, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The Ascension of Christ, Hans Süss von Kulmbach, 1513. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The moment of Jesus’ ascension is probably unlike most any other in human experience. Artists and writers have tried to depict this moment in various ways over the centuries. The ascension is a very common theme in religious art, including the very interesting image on the cover of our bulletin today that leaves our focus on Jesus’ feet hanging down from the heavens. In more recent years, a commentator has suggested—and rejected—two more modern images: Jesus rising into heaven like a rocket launch or being “beamed up” as in Star Trek (Ronald Cole Turner, “Theological Perspective on Acts 1:1-11,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, p. 498). No matter what image we might use, the ascension is strange and unexpected enough that human words and images just can’t capture the wonder of this strange event.

The strange and unexpected wonder of this day is nothing new—even the disciples had to be confused and uncertain when Jesus ascended into heaven. They had enjoyed the presence of the resurrected Jesus for some forty days after his resurrection, and they went with him to the mount not at all expecting that this journey would be their last with Jesus. Sure, he had repeatedly warned them that he would be leaving them and sending the Holy Spirit to be with them, but their lack of understanding culminated in those uncertain and puzzled looks that we see in the painting on our bulletin cover.

Their act of blankly looking up encapsulated everything that they had experienced in all their following of Jesus. Their many expectations of what Jesus would do and especially how he would do it had been upended at every turn from the very beginning. They had repeatedly been forced to change their understanding of what God was doing and how God would do it in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And time and time again they had been left dumbfounded by Jesus’ words and actions as they struggled to figure out what it all would mean for their lives and their world.

As they looked up in those moments after Jesus disappeared from their eyes, the disciples’ conversation with Jesus atop the mountain only moments before had to be echoing in their ears. He had given them three clear points for their consideration—perhaps introducing in that moment the form that would dominate Christian proclamation many centuries later!

First, Jesus had told them that they needed to wait in Jerusalem for what would happen next. I suspect that this is not what they had been planning to do. The disciples were not city folks, after all—they had followed Jesus to Jerusalem from the countryside of Galilee, and they couldn’t have been particularly comfortable with the idea that they needed to stay there. To date, the whole Jesus movement had been pretty much confined to the countryside, and this would indicate the beginnings of a major shift ahead. Still, Jesus assured them that the things soon to follow would be worth it:

You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

As they waited for this upcoming baptism and transformation of their lives, Jesus continued with his second point that destroyed some of their expectations about the things that were ahead. The disciples were anxious and ready for him to “restore the kingdom to Israel” and lead a more complete transformation of their community and nation, but Jesus would have nothing of it. “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority,” he told them. Beyond all this uncertainty in timing, the sort of drastic, dramatic transformation that the disciples seemed to want here—and so many times before, too—was not in the cards for Jesus. He had not come to overthrow the powers of the world through traditional means of waging war or political revolution, for by defeating death itself, he transformed the world by defeating the deeper powers of evil and destruction that separate us from God.

The conversation on the mountaintop between Jesus and the disciples concluded with Jesus’ third point reminding them of the things ahead. They were to “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon” them, and they would be given new and greater ability to engage Jesus’ message of freedom and new life. But even more, they would become his “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The disciples would be more than a band of students united by the teachings of their teacher—they would start a movement that would change the course of history all around the world as they told about their experiences with Jesus and invited others to join them in living as he invited them to.

As the disciples stood looking up to heaven, pondering these words and their experiences along the way, they received one final message to direct their way ahead. Two men in white robes suddenly joined them on the mountaintop, reminiscent of the two men in dazzling clothes who had appeared to the women at Jesus’ tomb on the day of resurrection. Just as they had on Easter morning, these messengers spoke amid the uncertainty and confusion of a strange moment, this time inviting them to take a different perspective as they gazed up into the sky.

Why do you stand looking up toward 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.

In these words, the two men sought to recenter the disciples in their experiences with Jesus, remind them of his promises to them, and focus their attention on the real things that were ahead for their witness to Jesus in the world. It was easy, you see, for the disciples to stare at Jesus’ feet dangling in the sky, to spend all their time looking up, to mourn the departure of their friend and teacher for the last time, rather than to confront the real possibility and challenge of the mission that Jesus had placed before them.

We so easily fall victim to this ourselves, too. It is easy to spend our time looking up, looking ahead to a promise of a different world that we might enjoy for ourselves, and miss Jesus’ call to make God’s new life real in this world, too. It is easy to put our time and energy into wondering where Jesus is in our lives and so forget to bear witness to him in ways that reveal him to others. And it is easy to pause in joy and amazement at the moments of glory that sneak into our lives and miss that these are the very moments that should lead us into words and actions that join in God’s transformation of the world.

As commentator Richard Landers puts it,

Ascensions and moments of divine encounter can dazzle us so that we forget the surrounding world. We glory in the moment, only to find that God has moved on, and so must we. (“Homiletical Perspective on Acts 1:1-11,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, p. 501)

The ascension of Jesus calls the disciples and us to do more than spend our days looking up. The ascension invites us to explore together how Jesus’ reign with God in power, sealed for us by this vision of his ascension into heaven, gives us hope for the transformation of our world. The ascension gives us assurance in the promise of the Holy Spirit that we will not be left to offer our witness to the wonder of Christ alone. And the ascension shows that God empowers us for our own lives of faith and work, for just as God has moved on from the glory of this moment, so we too must move forward and join in God’s work to reveal that glory again and again in the church and the world.

So as we celebrate the ascension of Jesus this day, as we remember how the disciples spent so much time looking up, as we are tempted to draw our eyes heavenward and miss the call of God around us, may God give us hope that there is something more than what we have seen before, confidence that are not left alone to bear witness to the wonder and glory of Jesus in the days ahead, and power to be faithful witnesses of all the things that God has done, is doing, and will do in this world and the next until the one who reigns in glory now is revealed in all fullness and hope as all things are made new in Jesus Christ our risen and ascended Lord.

Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! 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.

The Adventurous Ascension

June 1, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 24:44-53
preached on June 1, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I have a strange love affair with Pixar animated movies. It’s not really about the cartoons for me—it’s more about the wonderful way these folks can tell stories. One of my favorites, Wall-E, manages to begin the story and give us a pretty complete picture of the title character, a robotic trash compactor, without using a single word of dialogue in the first twenty minutes.

And then there’s Up, the story of an ornery and obstinate old man, a retired balloon salesman, facing the twilight of his life as everything changes around him. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so early in a movie in my life—after only ten minutes I was in tears as the brilliant storytellers at Pixar showed a photo album of the man’s life, as he finds and marries the love of his life, they grow in love and age together, and finally she dies before they can truly enjoy the adventurous life of travel that they dreamed of and saved up for throughout their life together. In that beautiful montage, we once again hear an incredible story without a single word being spoken, and its power and simplicity moved me to tears.

But the film’s title comes from the craziest conceit of the story. The city has built up around this old man’s house, but developers can’t convince him to sell until they trick him into being forcibly removed, supposedly for his own safety. Just as they come to take him away, a huge bundle of balloons pops out of the roof and lifts the house off its foundation into the sky, beginning a new journey for this man who had always sought but never found adventure before.

The Ascension of Christ
Hans Süss von Kulmbach

In a strange way, that’s much of what we find here in the story of the ascension—Jesus suddenly, surprisingly, unexpectedly rising up into heaven, floating away to begin a new adventure back where he had come from before coming to earth. But that’s where these stories diverge. While in the movie Up we rise up into the sky with the old man as his adventure begins, here in the story of the ascension we are the ones trapped on the ground, only looking up, wondering what is going on, staring at Jesus’ feet as he disappears into the clouds like the men depicted in the painting on our bulletin cover, challenged to sort out what to do now that Jesus has moved on and ascended into heaven.

Our reading from Luke’s gospel tells us that Jesus had prepared the disciples for this moment. Before they went with him out to the mountain and watched him ascend, he had give them two instructions. First, they were to fully and completely learn what he had been about on earth, and then they were to wait in the city so that they could receive power from on high. Surprisingly, after he blessed them, “withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven,” they for once actually did what he told them to do. They returned to Jerusalem to wait, and while they waited they praised God for all that they had seen and heard and experienced and believed.

So what are we to do here, stuck on the ground, watching Jesus and everything else go up? How are we to respond? What are we to do in our days of waiting? We could be like a lot of folks in the movie, the construction workers and others who were taken aback by everything they saw, calling out to the man as his house rose up, telling him that he must pop all his balloons and come back down now! Or we could be like some other people who when things start to change get scared and angry and threatened by the uncertainty and loneliness that come in transition and transformation. Or we could watch Jesus ascend into heaven and then just walk away, ignoring it, assuming that it doesn’t matter for us, or saying that because we don’t completely understand it we should just pretend like it never happened.

But I think there is a much better path for us. Back in the movie, there’s actually a stowaway in the house with the old man, an extremely annoying boy scout who had been trying to make the old man a friend and so was lurking on the front porch in hopes that the old man might finally change his mind. As they go up together, their adventures are unlike what either one of them expected—not only do they manage to get beyond their annoyances and frustrations with each other, they end up exploring the new land where the house comes to rest, making a few new friends, and defeating a troubled and disgraced explorer who tries to exploit the beautiful and exotic land for himself.

So I think their path is actually instructive for us. I believe that our best response to the ascension of Jesus is to figure out what the adventure of our faith will be for us in the days ahead. That’s very much what the disciples did. They didn’t just sit idly by and keep staring off into the sky when Jesus ascended. They didn’t give up and run away. They didn’t cower in fear. Instead, they prepared themselves for an incredible journey because they knew that Jesus himself had gone on a new adventure, and they wanted some little part of it.

And so I believe the Ascension calls us to a new way of adventurous life and living, for Jesus Christ died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and the old boring way of life just can’t cut it anymore. The things we might try to do just aren’t enough to do this work justice. We can’t simply stand still with our chins in the air and our mouths wide open, gawking in amazement and confusion or waiting patiently and doing nothing until Jesus comes back. We can’t watch in frustration and walk away fearful of what is ahead. And we certainly can’t just confess this amazing thing as we do every Sunday and move on living exactly as we did before.

If in the ascension, we see that God’s reign is real, if we recognize that the power of the resurrection reaches beyond the tomb and out into the world, if we confess that in Jesus Christ God has already won all the battles we may choose to fight, if we acknowledge that in Christ all the things that we seek are already coming into being—if all this is true, then we must step out and act. In this adventurous ascension, we are called to claim something more for all people, to deepen our cries for justice, to broaden our prayers for peace, to sustain our work for new life, and to trust that God always goes before us to make a way for all these things to take hold in our lives and in our world.

In his ascension, Jesus calls us to join him on an adventurous journey, unafraid of where we might be led and maybe even a bit unsure of where we are going but always certain that somehow we are going to join him in going up to the place where he goes before us. So as we celebrate the ascension once again, may God strengthen us for wherever we may go as we follow on this adventurous journey before us until that day when we join Jesus in going up. Alleluia! Amen.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s… Jesus?

May 20, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Acts 1:1-11 and Ephesians 1:15-23
preached on Ascension Sunday, May 20, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There are plenty of things up in the air these days, but Jesus is the last thing you expect to see when you look up. Flying in general today is incredibly simpler than it was 100 years ago. Even though the space shuttle never quite worked out to make going into space as common as some had hoped, it’s still incredibly easy to go up. There are hundreds if not thousands of flights out of our city every day. When the winds and the location are right, you can take a more leisurely hot-air balloon flight across the countryside. And if you have enough money, these days you can reserve a spot on a brief flight to the edge of space. When we look up, you never quite know what it is you will see. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Or could it be Jesus??

In biblical times, it might have actually been Jesus, according to our readings today from Acts and Ephesians. Today we’re celebrating the great Christian feast of the Ascension, so we are rightly looking upward to think about how Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after his resurrection from the dead. The book of Acts starts out with this important story in our reading this morning of how Jesus disappeared from the disciples’ sight by rising into heaven. After his resurrection, he had been teaching them about the coming kingdom of God and giving them instructions for what to do when he left them, and they kept asking him questions about when God would restore Israel to its former glory. He responded with a reminder that no one could know about the restoration of Israel, but more importantly, he told them to be ready to receive power from the Holy Spirit so that they could be his witnesses in Israel and beyond. Then, as they were talking with him, he was lifted up into the sky, and a cloud took him out of their sight. Was it a bird? Was it a plane? No, it really was Jesus!

The wonder of all this is lost in our days when we find it so much easier to become airborne. The disciples were reasonably astonished at what they were seeing – human flight was not something any of them had seen before! The air was the exclusive domain of birds, insects, and other flying things, and Jesus needed to be down here with them. Gradually, though, after Jesus rose up into the air, this event began to take on great meaning for the disciples. They took the words of the two men who suddenly appeared with them seriously and stopped staring idly into the sky. They began to do as Jesus had told them and expected to see him return just as he had left. They got ready to welcome the promised Spirit to be with them in the days ahead.

By the time the letter to the Ephesians was composed some thirty or forty years later, the Ascension had taken on new and incredible meaning for those who followed Jesus. As this letter opens, we get a glimpse of how the early church understood this revelation of God’s power in Jesus’ ascension. The writer here offers his prayers for the Ephesians so that they might know the hope that emerges from Christ, the riches that he shares with all the saints, and the “immeasurable greatness of his power.” This power comes from God and was put to work first in Christ’s resurrection and then in his ascension and exaltation to the heavenly places. His rise into glory is above all earthly rulers, power, authority, and dominion; his name is above every other name for all time; and he is head over all things for the church and the world. It is clear, then, that the ascension seals the deal for the followers of Jesus so that we can know the fullness of his power and glory and honor and hope, now and always. That thing up in the sky is not a bird or a plane but Jesus, ascending to reign and rule in all power, glory, honor, wisdom, and joy, now and forever.

I for one think the Ascension of Jesus gets short shrift in our world today. While our opening hymn celebrating the ascension dates back to the seventh century, in our own time, about the only way you’d know that this past Thursday was a church holy day is that alternate side parking rules were suspended for the day! We’ve become so consumed with the commercialism of Christmas and Easter that we rarely note these lesser feasts of our church calendar where we remember these important biblical events and in this case celebrate the continuing reign of Jesus Christ as Lord of all creation. But even more than all this, I think we consciously or unconsciously avoid this day of celebration at least in part because we resist the real implications of these great words. What would it mean for us to live like Jesus Christ is Lord of heaven and earth each and every day? How would life be different if we took the Ascension claims of God’s power and reign more seriously?

I think there are several important ways that we can respond faithfully to the gift and challenge of the Ascension in this time when its meaning is less clear and anyone anywhere can go up for the right price. In our society that resists accountability at all costs, the Ascension reminds us that we always remain accountable to the one who died and rose and ascended into heaven to reign. In our world where the almighty dollar and yen and yuan and Euro is at the center of nearly everything, the Ascension reminds us that God’s power and dominion extend to every corner of our lives and call us to faithful stewardship of everything that we have and just treatment of those who are in need. In our lives where we think we are in control and can answer to no one but ourselves, the Ascension shows us that Christ reigns over us with justice, grace, and mercy even amidst our resistance. And in the moments when we question God’s care and concern for us, whether in matters of the moment or of eternity, the Ascension gives us hope and confidence that we will share with Jesus the joy of resurrection life.

Lest we get confused about the things that go up or forget about this seemingly lesser feast day, the Ascension still stands before us, year after year, forty days after Easter, as we await the coming of the Holy Spirit. We can try to ignore it, but Jesus still reigns and calls us to recognize him and follow him, not so much in his journey to power but in his journey to greater love for ourselves, for one another, and for all creation.

So may we trust the good news of this special day, not so much wondering if we are seeing a bird or a plane or Jesus rising up before us – because we know that it is Jesus! – but always confident that Jesus ascends into heaven to go before us to reign in power, glory, mercy, justice, grace, and peace, so that we might know the fullness of God’s power in Jesus Christ our Lord until he comes again. Lord, come quickly!! Alleluia! Amen.