Celebrating Ascension B2018
Acts 1:1-11, Luke 24:44-53
by Pastor Sarah Stadler
Even though we rarely recite the Apostles’ Creed in worship here, perhaps a line from the Creed is floating through your brain this morning as it is through mine.
“He—meaning Jesus—he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” On the fortieth day of Easter, meaning 39 days after Easter and thus forever celebrated on a Thursday (we’re cheating a bit this morning), according to the account in Acts, Jesus ascends into heaven. The writer of Acts, Jesus, the disciples, and indeed everyone at this time in history believed the earth was flat, with heaven above, the place of the dead below. Watching Jesus ascend into heaven, the disciples likely imagined him rising higher and higher through the clouds, at some point reaching a discreet dividing line between earth and heaven, there to live and reign at God’s right hand until some undisclosed time in the future.
The disciples are waiting for something great. The way they ask the question of Jesus: Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? makes me wonder if they still, after all this time, are holding out hope that Jesus will reign in Jerusalem politically. Earlier, they had wanted Jesus literally seated on the throne of Cesar, and despite Jesus’ death and resurrection and a fair amount of instruction, they just won’t let it go! When, Jesus, will you reign? they persist. The disciples’ persistent question likely nurtured the theological development of different views of Christ’s second coming, that moment we profess Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead.
“This is fascinating to me as none of the elaborate descriptions of Christ’s second coming can be found in scripture. None of them.”
This is fascinating to me as none of the elaborate descriptions of Christ’s second coming can be found in scripture. None of them. Certainly, the early Christians believed that Jesus was coming back—and soon, but the one thing all of early Christian testimony about Jesus’ coming agree on is that 1) we don’t know when it will happen and 2) we don’t what will happen exactly. And this is, of course, exactly what Jesus tells the curious disciples who seem to have not been paying attention. Jesus says: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”
What do we know, then? While the disciples are still gazing up toward heaven, two men in white ask them: “Men of Galilee, 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.” We know that Jesus will come back, and we know that Jesus will come back in the same way he went into heaven: while gathered with the disciples, moving from earth to heaven, from the bottom, up, not from the top, down.
Because we know that the earth is not flat and that heaven is not some place high in the sky. We know that, if we ascend, we go into space, not into heaven. And we know that if we come from below, we are not coming from the place of the dead but from the core of the earth. We are privileged by a fuller understanding of God’s creation than the disciples had. So perhaps it is easier for us to accept that Jesus’ ascension and, eventually, second coming have less to do with place and more to do with relationship. Jesus is coming back but not from a place on high, not from outer space, not from the heavens. Jesus is coming back from below, entering into our world, encountering us in relationships.
We may picture in our mind’s eye Jesus coming back on a cloud descending from the heavens, down to earth, maybe the Grace courtyard, complete with white robe, sandals, flowing blonde hair (ugh), trumpets, the booming voice of God. That may be our picture of Jesus’ second coming, but the reality when we listen carefully and take an up-close look at scripture is that Jesus is promising relationship. And Jesus will not manifest in simply any relationship but in those relationships we have with people when they are vulnerable, when people lack glory and power and majesty. For Jesus will come from the bottom-up. The great irony of the ascension and its implications is that the very thing we’ve made it is what it’s not.
“The good news is that we aren’t actually waiting for Christ’s return because he has already come over and over again. ”
The good news is that we aren’t actually waiting for Christ’s return because he has already come over and over again. Jesus has entered history again—but in a way none of us expected: through us when we are most vulnerable, most in need, most down and out. When faced with our own or someone else’s weakness or vulnerability, we could very easily overlook the presence of Christ, but we know from the way Jesus lived on earth that, instead of avoiding what is most painful, he walked right into it.
One day, perhaps, Jesus will return in some other way. One day, Christ may restore the kingdom to Israel. If or when that’s going to happen, we honestly don’t know because, as Jesus says, it’s not for us to know. That’s not our job to know; that’s God’s job. But for now, the good news is that, even though Jesus ascended into heaven two thousand years ago, we see Christ revealed among us here and now, over and over. There Jesus goes again! Entering not into glory and power and majesty but into the most broken, the most desolate, the most difficult of circumstances. On this day when we celebrate the ascension of Christ, when we remember Jesus leaving this earth, we also rejoice that Christ has risen among us.
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.