Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
Ascension Day , 05/25/2017
Sermon on Acts 1:1-11, by Richard O. Johnson
Acts 1.1 In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4 And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” 6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
–Acts 1.1-11 (ESV)
“On the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” These words from the creed recount in a brief phrase the story we hear in our first lesson today—Christ’s ascension in to heaven, the account of how, just forty days after the resurrection, Jesus led his disciples to a hillside outside of Jerusalem, and there was taken up into heaven before their eyes. Since the very early days of the Christian Church, that 40th day after Easter has been celebrated as Ascension Day. In many parts of Europe and Latin America, it is still a major holiday, a time when all the stores and businesses close and people crowd into church to hear this dramatic story. In America, the day is hardly noticed; perhaps it is because it always falls on Thursday, not a usual day for religious observances. Or perhaps it is just that this story about Christ disappearing into the clouds is a difficult one for us to understand. It seems to come from another time and place, and we do not quite know what to make of it.
Yet it is an important story, for it is the ascension of Christ that fulfills and completes our faith in the resurrection of Christ. It is not a dusty dogma, devoid of any serious meaning in the modern world, but a vital and exciting part of our transforming faith. Let me tell you why this is so.
It speaks to our human weakness
The story of the Ascension speaks first of all to our human weakness. Throughout all the gospel accounts, we watch with sad amusement as the disciples fail, time after time, to understand what Jesus is trying to teach them. Remember James and John, who come to Jesus asking that they be given the place of honor in his kingdom? As if the kingdom of Christ were about thrones and crowns and earthly honors! Remember Simon Peter, the braggart, who first criticizes Jesus for suggesting that suffering will be his fate, and then, when the suggestion seems about to become reality, insists that he, Peter, will go with Jesus to his death? But Peter, it turns out, misjudges not only God’s plan but his own courage. Remember the despondent disciples, gathered together after the crucifixion, who scoff at reports from the women that Christ has risen? Remember the words of the stranger on the road to Emmaus—“O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!”? Even after Easter, the disciples just don’t seem to be able to grasp what God has in mind!
And now, is it any wonder that they are at it again? Even after forty days of fellowship with the risen Christ, still they come to him with their very human question: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Lord, we thought you would be crowned king a few weeks ago, we thought you’d defeat your enemies at that time, we thought everything would come to a climax then, but we were wrong. You had other plans. But now . . . tell us, isn’t it time for you to ride back into Jerusalem and topple the throne of Herod? Isn’t it finally time now for you to seize the reins of power from Pontius Pilate?
And Jesus patiently replies, for what seems like the 100th time, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.” It is not for you to know. For us, so many times in our lives the question comes to our hearts and our lips: Why is God doing things this way? Why does God allow this to happen? It seems to make no difference whether we are confronted by Syrian refugees or North Korean nuclear threats or shootings of unarmed black youth; or by very personal tragedies of sickness, death, or failure. We human beings are always asking why God doesn’t do things according to our plans and wishes.
Perhaps this story can remind us: It is not for us to know. Times and seasons and all the course of human history have been set by One whose thoughts are not our thoughts, and whose ways are not our ways. “Have you not known?” cried the prophet Isaiah, “Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable.” I love this poem by the American poet Christopher Morley:
I went to the theater
with the author of a successful play.
He insisted on explaining everything.
He told me what to watch,
the details of direction,
the errors of the property man
and foibles of the star.
He anticipated all of my surprises
and spoiled the evening for me.
But, mark you,
the greatest author of them all
made no such mistake.
Christ has gone before us
And so the Ascension of Christ teaches us that God’s ways are not our ways, and that we cannot fully understand all that happens to us. But it teaches us as well a very precious truth about our life with God. We say the words, “He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” Notice that the tense changes in that sentence, despite the rules of English grammar. He ascended—that’s in the past tense, it has already happened; but he sits at God’s right hand—that’s in the present, it is happening now. From that day on the Mount of Olives, the disciples knew that the physical Jesus, the Jesus they had known, was no longer with them. But he was with the Father, and more important still, he is with the Father. Perhaps the disciples, as they watched him disappear from their sight, remembered the words he had spoken not so many weeks ago: “I am going to prepare a place for you; and when I have done that, I will come again and take you to myself.”
You see, the Ascension means that Christ has gone on before us, that he has gone ahead to get things ready. When we face the mystery of death—whether our own, of that of one we love—we can be confident that there is a place prepared, a place of welcome, a place of love and rest and joy. Christ is there, and so there is no need to fear.
Christ has not abandoned us
Finally, we must learn from the Ascension that Christ has not abandoned his people, but he is now, in a very real way, as close to us as ever. Some modern readers have trouble with the story of the Ascension because it seems like a myth. We are well-versed in astronomy; we know that this picture of Christ rising up into the sky like a rocket launch seems a little strange. We know that heaven isn’t “up there,” that if Christ were really to disappear in the clouds as the story describes, he would end up someplace in a galaxy far, far away, and not at the right hand of God the Father.
But there’s a very powerful reason why the apostles saw what they did, and why they expressed it as they did. Even in our modern language, we use the idea of “rising” as a symbolic way of saying that someone is increasing in power and authority. We talk of “rising to the top” of our profession, or “climbing the ladder of success.” Of course, we don’t mean literally that someone at the top of his field is standing higher than those below; rather we mean that the one at the top has been given some kind of authority over others.
And that’s what this Ascension story means. To say that Christ was taken up is to say that he has been given the authority and the power to rule over all the world. Paul says as much in his letter to the Philippians: God has highly exalted him, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. What those disciples understood that day as they saw him rise was precisely that Christ had not gone away, not gone to forsake them and leave them alone in the world; but he had gone up to sit at God’s right hand, to take charge, to rule, to put all things under his feet. And while things on earth looked pretty much the same—Rome still seemed to be in control, trouble and conflict and death were still rampant—what the apostles knew was that Christ was now the one really in control, and it was only a matter of time before every knee would bow to him.
That’s why the story of the Ascension has given great comfort to Christians in time of crisis. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Lutheran pastor who opposed the Nazis and because of that spent the last year of his life in Buchenwald prison until his execution in 1945, wrote a letter to his parents from his prison cell. “Today is Ascension Day,” he wrote, “and that means that it is a day of great joy for all who can believe that Christ rules the world and our lives.” A day of great joy—and why? Because the Ascension of Christ means that he is the Lord of all. It means that he does rule the world, that he does rule our lives. It means we no longer have to be afraid of anything, for there is nothing Christ cannot conquer, nothing he has not already conquered! It means, to quote St. Paul, that “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us . . . [and] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”