He said to them, \u201cThese are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you\u2014that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.\u201d Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, \u201cThus 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. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.\u201d Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.<\/p>\n
BREAKING FREE<\/p>\n
This day, 40 days after Easter, is Ascension Day in the Western Church, although it won\u2019t be celebrated in the Eastern Church this year until June 4. The difference has to do with the dates when Easter is celebrated in the Gregorian Calendar (West) and the Julian Calendar (East). In both churches, however, it is a Feast Day, one of seven such days in the liturgical calendar. As such, it is a day of great importance in the church and has been celebrated since the fourth century. One might think, therefore, that this day might be lauded with trumpets and kettle drums. In fact, there are 55 countries in the world that still regard Ascension Day as a national holiday! Not so in the United States. And that could be the reason why gradually church attendance on this day in the U.S. has diminished. In some churches, there will be no worship service at all, and if a sermon like this one is to be received, it may merely be read online!<\/p>\n
How did this happen? Will it happen with Christmas or Easter? Surely it has something to do with the fact that this Thursday is a workday in the U.S., encouraging many churches to celebrate the event this coming Sunday. It may also have to do with the fact that the ascension of Jesus has often been portrayed so fantastically in art that modern Christians find it difficult to enter into the meaning of the event. Although the text simply says, \u201che withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven\u201d, since the earliest centuries that scene has been dramatized with hosts of angels lifting the glorified Jesus into a home in the skies. Knowing what we know today about the limitless nature of space, it\u2019s not easy to take such a scene with the literal specificity of a medieval artist\u2019s brush. Just yesterday I watched NOVA special on TV about dark matter and the limitless dimensions of the universe in which thousands of constellations are kept in place by an invisible substance called \u201cdark matter\u201d Modern humans will struggle to place the traditionally pictured physical ascension of Jesus into such an infinite framework.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the powerful story of Jesus\u2019 life, death, and resurrection that has embraced us in the last months needs to have some kind of climax. Like children who have been held captive by a grand narrative, we wait in silence for some moments, and then we say, \u201cAnd then what?\u201d The Ascension story is the response to that question, but we may need to interpret it differently for our adult minds. We can use a 1st-century worldview aided by the imagery artists have depicted and imagine Jesus zooming home to the Father\u2019s throne. Or we can try to understand as a climax to Jesus\u2019 life and ministry the destiny that has been prepared for us. With the disciples, we have been witnesses to the power of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. We have been baptized into the new life that celebrates how our world can be changed when all that the Father has promised through Jesus can begin to have an effect in our world through us. How have we been doing with that very real possibility?<\/p>\n
I realize that we have learned to make distinctions between what secular governments do and what we as individual Christians are capable of doing but let me engage you in a current question for a moment. Two years ago, and since, the media focused on the Israeli\/Palestinian situation, and it was assumed that viewers would make judgments about it. An element of one human community (Hamas, a political arm within the Palestinian community) attacked Israel and 1500 people are killed. Israel\u2019s leadership, the very leadership, by the way, that grew up learning to say, \u201cVengeance is mine, says the Lord\u201d, assures the world that IT will take vengeance. Now two years later, we learn that that that vengeance took the form of 70,000 Palestinians having been killed. I pick this example not to critique either Israel or Palestine, but to say that the very practice of revenge that all countries have practiced for time immemorial is being practiced once again. And we have been sucked into it\u2014we who claim that through Jesus we have been set free from the need to take revenge!<\/p>\n
Is it really possible for us to say, \u201cWell, that\u2019s a government thing. Governments can do that.\u201d When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and President Roosevelt said, \u201cThis will be remembered as a day of infamy,\u201d American citizens knew that revenge was called for. We may try to avoid being vengeful against those who hurt us in our families, circles of friends, and associates, but at the level of government, that\u2019s a different thing, we may argue. At the moment, I\u2019m simply raising a question, wondering if we shouldn\u2019t take some time together to debate it. What is the larger meaning of repentance and forgiveness if we can only apply it at personal or local levels?<\/p>\n
While we\u2019re thinking about that, let me invite you to think about the complicated matter of the setting in which Jesus talks about proclaiming \u201crepentance and forgiveness to all nations\u201d. Some years ago, I received a calendar from Lutheran Brotherhood, an insurance agency that now is known as Thrivent. Each month there was a large image that had been drawn for a contest in which high school students participated. The image that struck me\u2014 and that I\u2019ve never forgotten\u2014 was the one for this month of May. The student pictured the ascension of Jesus. All the viewer sees are the feet of Jesus penetrating a grid that crumbles into falling confetti as he entered an entirely new dimension! I could ponder that imagery for hours. What does it mean that the world we have known with its rigid, hard-hearted, structured, legalistic responses to others\u2019 actions has been transformed by Jesus\u2019 life and ministry into confetti\u2014lighthearted, joyful, incomprehensible, supportive gestures of love?<\/p>\n
The people who did what I\u2019m about to describe had never seen this high-school student\u2019s picture, but they would have understood it. They own a paper store in Dublin, Ireland, and were troubled that the newspapers were filled with hate-driven commentary about a marriage equality referendum. Admittedly, in every debate, there are issues that need to be resolved, but these owners of the paper store decided to sell bags of the torn-up newspaper called \u201cShreds of Decency\u201d. They were creating bags of confetti \u201cmade up of 100% lies,\u201d as they put it, to allow purchasers to throw it around and create a new perspective, a new world.<\/p>\n
\u201cBehold,\u201d says Jesus, \u201cI make all things new.\u201d Would Ascension Day become the celebration that it needs to be, that would fill our churches once again, if we considered together how, based on who and what we have become in Jesus, we tried to make all things new? It\u2019s not that even in the secular realm this hasn\u2019t been considered before. Out of interest, I decided to google the term \u201cBreaking Free\u201d because it occurred to me that the film with that name starring Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens dealt with people who tried to reject a past and start over again. A troubled teen has a choice between incarceration or providing service for blind people in a co-op. Thinking he\u2019s chosen the easy way out, he decides to go with working with the blind\u2014but it transforms him. It\u2019s not easy to surrender what you thought you were, what you considered to be important, in order to become something entirely new!<\/p>\n
And then I noticed that there were 58 film titles that dealt with some aspect of \u201cbreaking free\u201d. In the Shawshank Redemption, Dead Poet\u2019s Society, Good Will Hunting, Rudy, Ratatouille, etc., someone had attempted to avoid dead ends, revenge, being lost, feeling useless\u2014and attempted to fashion a new life.<\/p>\n
But this is nothing new! You and I have known this is a possibility for a long time. As Christians we know that when Jesus gathered his disciples together and left them, he had given them all that they needed to live a fulfilling life. With his parables and healings, his teachings and actions, he had made all things new. He had helped them to break free from a way of life that leads to a dead end. Isn\u2019t that something that you and I want to talk about this Ascension Day? Have we not been given the means to say hate and revenge are not the answer\u2014even among nations? Can we not, just \u201clittle you\u201d or \u201clittle me\u201d, but, in fact, \u201clittle Christs\u201d, say with our words and show with our lives that there is a better way?<\/p>\n
Just as the disciples left Bethany and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, knowing that in the face of all that can bring us down, we have been given the love, the acceptance, and the insight to call ourselves to a new and better life, a life that follows Jesus on the road ahead. We may still leave here today troubled by the meaning of a physical ascension to a modern world that knows itself to be in a limitless and expanding universe. However, we can know the greater message for us of Jesus\u2019 leaving us and setting us free. We, individually, have been set free from old taskmasters that only destroy human relationships. We have been set free to say \u201cno\u201d to revenge and to embrace in every setting repentance and forgiveness.<\/p>\n
All of us have pasts, but on this Ascension Day, we remember that Jesus\u2019 parting words of repentance and forgiveness can set us free.<\/p>\n
Hymn: Savior, I follow on, Guided by Thee<\/p>\n
David Zersen, D.Min., Ed.D., FRHistS<\/p>\n
President Emeritus, Concordia University Texas<\/p>\n
zersendj@gmail.com<\/p>\n
414 727 3890<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ASCENSION OF OUR LORD | MAY 14, 2026 | Luke 24:44-53 | David Zersen | He said to them, \u201cThese are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you\u2014that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.\u201d Then he opened their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,727,375,157,853,108,222,110,319,349,3,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-26285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lukas","category-archiv","category-himmelfahrt","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-david-zersen","category-engl","category-kapitel-24-chapter-24","category-kasus","category-nt","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26287,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26285\/revisions\/26287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26285"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=26285"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=26285"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=26285"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=26285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}