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The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord, 05/05/2016
Sermon on Luke 24:50-53, by Paula L. Murray
As a child, when I went walking with my Godfather, he would admonish me to lift my eyes to the hills, literally to the mountains ringing the small community of Meridian, outside of Boise, Idaho. He did not insist I keep my eyes on the heights and not the depths simply because he feared I would walk into a light pole while watching for potholes. Floyd Willis Freudenthaler, Ted to everyone from mayors to timber cruisers, wanted his one and only Goddaughter to have a view of the world that was wider and deeper than what sat just outside of her nose. He wanted me to understand my life in a broader context.
The evangelist Luke takes the same approach when describing the ascension of Jesus Christ. He tells the story of the ascension in the wider context of Jesus’ life, and more, for the ascension is about more than even this one, extraordinary life simultaneously human and divine. The story is told for all the nations, shorthand for the whole of the world, and while Luke’s view is not as overtly cosmic as the perspective of John, nonetheless, the redemption of the whole of creation is the context in which the ascension is set. For the second time that day, the Risen Christ opens the Scriptures to disciples who were, just moments before his appearance, mourning his death. The whole of the Scriptures is about the restoration of the Father’s work in creation, and so the ascension is not just for Jesus, not just for his disciples, but for all that was, is, and will ever be. Luke sets the story of the ascension of Jesus Christ in the widest context of all, the redemption of the whole of creation.
In fact, the verses just before Jesus ascends to the heavens, beginning with verse 36 of the 24th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, through verse 49, function as a creedal formula, a summary of what Christians believe of Jesus whom we call the Christ or the Messiah. It is a very short creedal summary (take that, Athanasius), and necessarily incomplete, nonetheless, it is a statement of our beliefs about what God is about in his creation. And while brief, it is Trinitarian, for we see the whole of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at work for our salvation, and the creation’s restoration.
The work of the Trinity is set in the context of the second appearance of the risen Christ to his grieving and bewildered disciples. It is still the third day, the day he rose from the dead, though technically, I suppose, it might be the fourth for it is quite late in the day, possibly after dark. After Genesis (1:5), a day is measured from sundown to sundown, not sunrise to sunrise. The first appearance Luke tells us about is to a couple of Jesus’ followers walking home to Emmaus. It has been a harrowing few days during which Jesus celebrated his last meal, was betrayed, condemned, crucified, and then, purportedly raised from the dead. Some of the women were to the tomb early that morning to do for Jesus what time had not allowed the day of his death. There they were met by two radiant creatures, angels, who asked them why they were, “Looking for the living among the dead.” He is risen, they told the women, go back and tell the others. And that is precisely what they do, run back to the other grieving disciples with good new, the best news of all time. The Lord is risen from the dead.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
But part of being sinners is that we scoff at divine doings. And so the women’s wonderful tale of their morning’s angelic encounter is received with manly, and probably, womanly, too, scorn by all save Peter. It is this story the two disciples walking the dusty road home to Emmaus tell the stranger who walks alongside them as they trudge the six miles or so from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Then, scorn gently returned, this stranger, this man they are sure they do not know, “opens the Scriptures” to them, meaning he explains God’s intent to them for the redemption of his creation from the days of his servant Moses, through the prophets and then the psalms. The two marvel at the understanding of this man who did not, so far as they know, travel alongside their Lord in his earthly ministry. It is not until after they invite him to dine with them and stay the night in their home, and he breaks bread with them and prays, that they “see” the familiar in the unfamiliar. It is the risen Christ!
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Stunned with joy, they return to Jerusalem despite the late hour so they can tell the others the good news that cannot wait even a few hours for the next sunrise. And as they tell their tale to their astonished colleagues, Jesus appears for a second time in the midst of them. He gives his peace to his frightened lambs, proves that he is indeed their Lord by the holes in his side and his hands and feet. He shows he is no mere ghost by eating food in front of them. And then, for a second time, when they are ready to hear him, “opens the Scriptures” to the disciples, revealing to them God’s intent for their salvation and the redemption of creation.
“’Thus it is written, that the Messiah, the Christ, 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.” This is not the end of the creed, for, they, the disciples, “are witnesses of these things.” There is a place in this Christ given summation of their living faith for them. They are witnesses, people who, by virtue of their participation in the relevant events, were able and even obligated to render an account of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Nazorean called the Christ or Messiah. That testimony would not be theirs alone, for Jesus’ “creed” also says that they are to await the fulfillment of the Father’s promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit, “that they might be clothed with power from on high.”
Now, after all this, we get to the actual ascension of Jesus Christ. It is four short verses, only one of which actually says anything about the ascension. Jesus takes the disciples to Bethany, where he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and lifts up his hands to bless them. Now comes the actual ascension. “While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried into heaven.”
One verse, one measly verse, is dedicated to the actual ascension of Jesus into heaven. We know for sure this story is from God, for only God would dedicate a few words to what is, to human creatures, such a wondrous and strange event. We would make a Star Wars like production of it, full of fluffy clouds in shades of gold and pink and white, while Satan thundered his displeasure on the far horizon and the pitiful multitudes on earth toiled and fought for a bitter and brief supremacy over others like themselves. But, this is God speaking, not some otherworldly version of George Lucas, and so more time is devoted to context, that we might understand what God means not just for us but for the whole of the world around us, and that we might give witness to what we know of God’s work.
The story of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven is not some fantastical tale told by ancients with no television or video games to fill their days. It is not a literary device to get Jesus to exit stage right so the Holy Spirit might enter stage left. It is all of a piece with all of God’s workings for our salvation and for the restoration of the whole of his creation. He who was sent by the Father to lighten the world’s sin and death obsessed darkness returns to the Father, his work here concluded, that we who are his might testify to what God in Christ has done for us in, with, and through the “power from on high,” the power of the Holy Spirit. We are to lift up our eyes, to see beyond our noses, beyond our own small doings on this one world, that we might see the whole picture, and, blessed to be a part of it, share it.
The work of the disciples who witnessed the ascension of Jesus did not end their own returns to our Father in heaven. It continues, in those of us who “see” the Messiah in his Word, in bread and wine shared with the whole Communion of the Saints, in our fellowship, in works of mercy for the restoration to health of some small part of this fallen world on its way, through Jesus, to its redemption, and in our common witness to what Jesus Christ is doing for us even now. Nor, unless Christ returns soon, does it end with us. Our testimony, our witness in word and deed continues in those to whom we witness now, our sons and daughters, our husbands and wives, our friends and neighbors, our co-workers, and even complete strangers who share for some few minutes a portion of our lives. The context in which we testify to Jesus and live our lives as Christians is far wider and deeper than what we can see. It is, truly, as big as the heavens themselves.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!