(Since Ascension appears to be rather important to a portion of the congregation and since very few people would come out to a Thursday service, I moved the celebration of the Ascension of our Lord to this Sunday. Next Sunday will be Pentecost.)
When he had said this, as they were watching, he was
lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
·
To find something to preach on with these readings, I had to fall back
on a tried-and-true way of preparing a sermon. I ask myself “What is the ‘Good
News’ here?” If I am to preach the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ, I
need to find that Good News for myself in order to share it with others.
·
How can there be good news in hearing about Jesus leaving his disciples
and returning to his Father? We might say “good for him”, but how is that good
for us?
·
Years ago, a preacher said something that makes sense particularly on
this day. He said that the Ascension tells us that Jesus rose from the dead in
his body, that he walked and talked and ate with his disciples in his body, and
that he was taken up to heaven in his body. All that means that he lives and
since he live in his material body, he has to be somewhere.
·
The resurrected Jesus is not a disembodied, pure spirit, a divine being
masquerading as a human. This is a very real person who walked, talked,
laughed, ate, cried, and suffered as all of us do. This is also a very real person who still
carries (not carried, in the past tense) the marks of the nails and the
spear, even through his resurrection from death. In fact, he is known to his
disciples and his followers by those scars. In the days following the
Resurrection, they were convinced that it really was Jesus by the presence of
his scars and by his sharing food with them. Neither of these things are simply
“spiritual.” For sure, they have a spiritual meaning. They have influence on a
person’s spirit, just as anyone’s experiences influence their way of thinking
and their spirit. Yet these signs of
Jesus’ bodily presence are very physical.
·
The Ascension is celebrated by the Church because it is part of the
Church’s experience of Jesus. The earliest disciples experienced Jesus’
going-away. Luke says in his Gospel that he (Jesus) withdrew from them and was
carried up into heaven. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke says he
was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. Neither
describes the disappearance of a ghostly apparition. The disciples are left
searching; they saw exactly where Jesus went. They need to be reminded by the
men in white robes that more is to come… but that’s next week’s festival.
·
Jesus’ physical presence throughout his life on earth tells us that our
entire selves including our bodies are good. Not great, not perfect, not
sinless, but good. In other words, this is how God wants us to be.
·
We are not spirits that borrow a body, but a body-spirit being from the
start. We can’t be human without both. That is how God made us. From the
beginning we are a union of body and spirit and we are not whole without both.
·
Here’s a sort of example. Do you realize that only humans can laugh?
Angels get the joke but can’t laugh. Animals can laugh (Some can, after a
fashion), but they can’t get the joke.
·
The Ascension of Jesus shows us in a most particular way, the goodness
of the created world. The celebration of Christmas does this as well, looking
at things from the opposite end as it were. We could say that a cycle of sorts
was completed in this Ascension.
·
Jesus was taken to heaven, to the place where God is. His resurrected
body was taken but it was taken as a body. He was born in a human body as an
infant and he was taken to where God is as an adult and after all he’d been
through. The body was not something he left behind as an evil thing or an
artifact that held him back from his full spiritual potential. In every way
possible, his body is him. The goodness of the created world is shown to be
true once again.
·
We are part of that created world. We live as bodies and interact as
material beings. We express ourselves in material and sensible ways – speaking,
writing, gestures, facial expressions. We hear the Gospel with our ears and it
feeds our spirits. We eat the Lord’s Supper like we eat any other food, but
this meal feeds our spirit like none other. Without our bodies we are not
human, we are not as God made us.
·
There is another point regarding the Ascension. Had Jesus stayed with
his disciples, he would have been restricted to one place at a time. With the
Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, he is not restricted or
limited to only one place. His spirit is in all of us and his spirit can be
discerned in the most surprising places! Had he remained bodily among his
disciples, he would not be able to be with all of his disciples at any time and
in any place. With the coming of the Spirit, it is possible for Jesus to be
with all of us.
·
This is important since his presence in and with each of us permits and
empowers us to bear that presence to every part of our lives. In the book of
Acts, Luke writes ‘But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the
ends of the earth.’
·
We are witness to Christ’s presence and grace because he lives in each
of our lives. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes I have been crucified with
Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.
(Gal. 2: 19-20)
·
This is what we are looking for, each of us. We wish to know Christ as
he lives in us. Beyond that, this is what the world is looking for in us.
‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to
suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and
forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning
from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’
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