The Feast of the Ascension (Mother Marisa)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We are given the same story twice tonight. Does that ever happen? In our first lesson, from the Acts of the Apostles, and our second, from the Gospel according to Luke, we see Jesus ascend into heaven, leaving his disciples behind. But at the beginning of Acts, the disciples don’t look quite as good as they do at the end of Luke. And though both were written by St. Paul’s companion, it is in Acts that we find the disciples as we might expect them to be. Nervous and prone to missing the point. Jesus has just spent 40 days with them, convincing them that he’s alive and still the same person, teaching them about the kingdom of God, and now telling them to stay in Jerusalem and await the coming of the Holy Spirit. 

We can almost see the disciples nodding their heads as Jesus speaks. They were listening intently; but they weren’t hearing what they wanted to hear.  “Is it now, Lord,” they asked, “that you are going to restore Israel?” 

Jesus’ disciples were still hung up on an old problem, still unable to let go of their old hopes, still thinking in old terms. Surely, Jesus was Messiah — for Israel alone. Which misses the point entirely. And Jesus wouldn’t allow his disciples to remain in that mindset. He doesn’t even answer their question. “You won’t know what the Father is planning,” he says. “It’s not for you to know. But know this: you will receive power from the Holy Spirit to be my witnesses not only to Jerusalem but to Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth.” And then he was gone, lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 

How long the disciples would have stood staring at the sky we don’t know because two angels appeared and knocked them out of their revery. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? He will come in the same way you saw him go.” 

Caught in the tension between their hopes for a renewed Israel and a chastised Rome and the sudden and final departure of their beloved teacher, Jesus’ disciples didn’t know where to look. Everything they thought they knew, everything they had expected, had changed — too quickly for comfort. And now they were losing the one, the only one it seemed, who knew what was going on. The transition wasn’t easy. Or flattering.

Which is why this account is so important — because it shows us us. We are just like the disciples, asking the wrong questions and then looking in the wrong places for the answers. And understandably so. 

It has been nearly 75 years since the world has seen such political, economic, and social upheaval. Practically everything is unsure and unstable. Like the disciples did so long ago, we want to know what will happen. We want to know what God is up to. We don’t want to wait for the future to unfold of its own accord. To do so is to experience the kind of existential discomfort modern Americans cannot stand; which is why we get stuck staring at the sky or, more likely, at our phones, slowly calcifying while the present slips past us. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand staring at the sky?” Why do you stand staring at the sky when the Lord of Life has made you free to live not just any life, but eternal life. Now. 

When his disciples asked Jesus about the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, he firmly, gently corrected them, and then he left. Before the disciples were ready. Before the disciples could wrap their heads around the mission they had just been given. Before they could even say goodbye. 

God would not wait and does not wait for when his creatures are ready to receive the gifts he longs to give us. He doesn’t wait for us to finally learn the right lesson or to find the right words. God pours out his love for us now, for everything that we are — and for everything that we can be. 

God knew his disciples. He knows us. He knows each and every person in the light of eternity, and he will bring us there, not by picking us up and carrying us like some impatient parent, but by walking with us and working on us until the day comes when we are transformed, and the human being and God desire the same thing. 

God has given us a speaking part in the story of our salvation. He wants us to grow into our own. He wants us to get up and walk. 

Which is why the story of the Ascension is so important. It shows us we can because it’s been done before. By living a human life, by dying a human death, Jesus redeemed everything that is, renewed everything that is — and carried it all with him to Heaven. For the first time, humankind entered those heavenly courts; and not for the last because our Great High Priest dwells there and would have us dwell with him. He has prepared a place for us, a home for which he prepares us in every moment of our every day. 

Because the Christian life is not one of stasis, not one of even staring at the heavens, holy as that may sound. The Christian life is one of learning to act together with God and move toward Him and with Him and in Him, while also moving forward, loving God and our neighbor with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength; which is a posture that takes some practice but always bears good fruit.

As we learn to turn away from the things of this world — from the need to know the signs and portents, from the desire to control those events, from the longing for safety and security that keeps us from stepping out in faith — as we learn to turn away from those things and turn toward God, we will learn to love the world aright. We will learn to see with heavenly eyes. We will learn that God fills all things and knows all things and loves all things. And that is something worth looking for. 

Just like Jesus’ disciples, we can’t know what is coming this year or next year or in 10 years. What we can know and be certain of is that Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God and Son of Man, is seated at the right hand of the Father and there is nowhere he is not. He will come again, just as he went so long ago; and when he does return to judge the living and the dead, he will find a sanctified people, filled with joy, blessing God and worshiping him in his temple. AMEN.

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