Sermon: Ascension Sunday, 5/12/2024

Text: Luke 24: 44-53
Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Wonderment is an important activity in the spiritual life. To wonder is to allow oneself to be surprised, to perceive a freshness or newness in the world around us. It is to humbly know that we do not know everything in this world, there is always something more looming over the horizon. Not everything can be grasped and subdued by our minds, but rather, we can bask in the awe and splendor of the reality that overcomes our categories and confinements, providing us with a feeling of the grandeur and glory of all things that exist. In light of what we celebrate today, the Ascension of Jesus Christ to Heaven, I came across this wonderful quote from the great George McDonald, the Scottish fantasy writer and Christian minister that inspired the likes of C.S Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien: “To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace-the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us”. The Ascension is very much the cause of great wonder and appeals to this part of our nature that yearns and is in tune with trying to perceive the “more” of life. It is truly an event that made itself a home in the wonderful life of those first witnesses, and by consequence, also in the heart of the church throughout history. Now, wonderment is not a sacrifice. This day is not to wonder incredulously on whether the Gospel writer literally meant that Jesus flew into the skies like Super-Man, or if any of the artistic depictions of Jesus hovering above in the clouds is how it happened. The Gospel interpreted the witnessed wonder as the community understood it, and we are left to wonder for ourselves, how this great moment unfolds for us. One thing remains the same from the Gospel writer all the way to us, it is the one God in Christ we worship and trust, this very one ascended, promised and gave the Holy Spirit. He empowered the gathered disciples, who in turn shared with us the faith in this God that has brought us to new life each day, impressing on us the wonders of Himself. And so, with the witnesses of the Ascension, we venture forth with great joy at what God in Jesus Christ has done, and we enter into the realm of an expansive reality as a community of wonderers and witnesses of the things of God, where everything transcends and is more alive than we could ever imagine. This is what this text invites us to participate in, as Jesus tells the disciples: “You are witnesses of these things”.

So what happens in the Ascension, what is its significance for us? First and foremost, it is the crowning event that culminates the appearances of the Risen Jesus to His disciples and all the early witnesses. After the resurrection, and throughout the Easter season, we have listened to the stories where the Risen Jesus makes His presence known to His despairing disciples. He becomes the turning point of their lives, having witnessed the fulfilment of God’s promises in the resurrection of Jesus. There are three pivotal moments by which the church is energized to fulfill what it’s called to do. First, we of course have the resurrection, and the second pivotal moment is the Ascension, followed by Pentecost, when the Church goes out into the world empowered by the Holy Spirit. So the Ascension is, in some sense, the midwife moment, by which God would outpour the Holy Spirit, which is the promise of God’s power that will come upon the disciples on Pentecost. It was necessary for Jesus to ascend, so that the Holy Spirit might inhabit their lives. And this is the significance of ascension, that through the Holy Spirit, Jesus might be present in all things. That is the great marvel of the Ascension that the church has celebrated for 2,000 years. Jesus becomes this continual presence that is born in our lives again and again every time we call on Him and we are thus molded into Christ’ own image. Our lives becomes full of Christ because and beyond the body of the Risen Lord.

The ascension is thus connected to the idea that God in Jesus Christ becomes present cosmically. Some people have called this the Cosmic Christ. The ascended Christ is present in the sacraments of the church as He said He would be, He is present to us in prayer, as He promised He would be, He is out about in the world, as He said He would be. He becomes this continual presence in the life of the church and the world until He comes again to be all in all, as declared in the Gospel of John.

I find this to be such a profound reality. It means that everything that Jesus did and represented becomes the fabric of God’s rulership over the world. Jesus’ love, His Mercy, His Compassion for us are the rubric by which God acts throughout the whole world. And the church’s gift, that promise which the disciples await for in our text before the day of Pentecost, is that we become participants and conduits by which God becomes present to the world’s suffering, pain, and sin. It is the culminating movement of the Gospel story, God comes down as human, and rises up the human towards God. In Christ, our lives are forever brought up to God. Humanity becomes eternally sealed in the heart of God, and in the same way our lives, become god-full as we abide with Christ. So appropriately, in the narrative of Acts, the angels tell the witnesses of the Ascension: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven?” Almost like belying the fact that they had just witnessed an amazing and incredible thing. The messengers of the Lord are like, why are you standing around down there, chop chop, you’ve got work to do. It seems like the amazing and incredible things they should be seeing are not found looking up, but right under their noses. Great work and fruit that God had in store for them and for us even now. To be a community of beloved disciples, practicing the love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ everywhere we go, fomenting the growth of life that renders glory and praise to its Creator. This Jesus that ascended is now all around in their lives, there is nowhere they can go, that Christ can’t be present to them there. His rule is over all, and in all places His love is meant to take root in the hearts of people. And that will be the mission of the church as they go out into the world empowered by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, to be the people that reflect the reign of God in the world, a world that reflects the perfect love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ. What a life of wonder indeed!

The scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote the following wonderful words on the power of the ascended Christ: “[Since the ascendance of Christ over all of life means] this is God’s world and … the rule of love is at work, then our mandate is not to draw into a cocoon of safety; rather it is to be out and alive in the world in concrete acts and policies whereby the fearful anxiety among us is dispatched and adversaries can be turned to allies and friends… The newly ascended power has decreed that there is more than enough, and greed is inappropriate in a world of God’s generosity…Here is a new act of legislation from the government of God that says, Perfect love casts out hate, that we are not free for vengeance but must leave such matters to the wise Father. Here is an edict from the government that says, Do not fear for I am with you and the world will hold” How would our lives be transformed and challenged by the rulership of this ascended Christ? How different would the direction of our lives take? Your neighbor is one you invite to the feast, not one you exclude from the joy of God, your neighbor is one you help out in need because you are commanded to love one another, not one you ignore, Creation is a reflection of God’s glory meant to be cared for and cherished, not exploited and destroyed. We would cry for peace, not war. We would ask for mercy, not punishment. We would ask for fairness and equity, not inequality and exclusion. God is God, not us. We are witnesses. Truly, we are facing wonders untold inhabiting this cosmic quality of the ascended Christ.

Beloved, for this reason and more, I exhort you to always come with a spirit of wonderment when you gather here. This feast, these words we hear, these graces we receive, this service and works of love and praise that we do together, they are gifts from God in Christ. They are made possible because in Christ, we are His very own. When you come here to receive the sacraments and hear the Gospel preached, be open to the newness it can bring to you. What areas in my life God is looking to renew? Where am I looking aimlessly up, caught up by distracting sights? Where is God calling me to wait and act? Where is my love being called for? Where is my sense of justice being called for?
Where are my words of compassion being sought? Beloved, it is a life of wonders in the here and now, among the matter of your very life, that God is calling to shine forth His presence. Your life is part of this Cosmos of Christ, of which He has taken your life in His heart. You are witnesses of these things, Jesus says. You will be witnesses of these things indeed. In light of this, consider your life, consider the small things and the big things, shine on them the light of Christ. You will find ever new repentance, forgiveness, and love. And as the disciples did after witnessing the Ascension: worship, return with great joy to the temple, and bless the God who blessed us.

Let us pray: Lord, in celebrating your Ascension, we praise and bless you, because You have shown us that the world might turn and turn, but you are ever there, you are our constant in uncertainty, our direction in the midst of chaos and confusion, our inspiration and life when the world despairs and deadens. Instill a spirit of hope and love, O God, that we may live lives that witness to your presence, O God. In your name we pray, Amen.