Luke 24:44 -53

The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord | May 18, 2023 | Lk 24:44 -53 | David Zersen |

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus 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. ⁴⁸You 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.”

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. (NRSV)

SCATTERING CONFETTI AS WE SERVE

Ascension Day, one of the major festivals of the Christian year, doesn’t draw much attention today in the United States. However, in a surprising number of countries it is a national holiday. I well remember my own experience with the day many years ago as a student at the University of Göttingen in Germany. As theology students, we made a pilgrimage to Bursfelde, an old monastic chapel next to a forest in a small village in the countryside. The students packed the chapel, some standing on partitions above doors and in the aisles. The preacher was Götz Harbsmeier, a professor at the University. He assured us that Ascension remembered the truth that Jesus has ascended into die reine Zukunft (“the pure future”). In discussing it as we walked home, we wondered what he could have meant. Had he surrendered the historical meaning of the event for some Bultmanian mythological interpretation?

We will ask that question today as well, as we picture the event in a stained-glass window in the church, in Sunday School literature or in our imagination. What can it mean to us who understand something of the infinite dimensions of the universe that the physical body of Jesus entered realms that even our rockets and space capsules cannot approach? How do we understand the text, the only one in our four Gospels, that discusses both the fulfillment that Jesus brings to his ministry as well as the commission that he gives to his disciples for the time when he will no longer be physically present with them?

We have no way of knowing when the first Ascension celebrations began, but we have both textual and pictorial evidence of remembrances as early as the fourth century. In some settings the remembrance was combined with Pentecost and in others, it took place on a Thursday, the fortieth day of Easter. Many customs have surrounded the celebration down through the years, one of the most meaningful being the extinguishing of the Paschal candle, symbolic of the end of Jesus’ physical presence with his disciples. More important than customs and traditions, however, is the theological meaning that Ascension gives to the ministry of Jesus. It insists that Christ’s ministry is fulfilled and that he has commissioned his followers to serve him in the world.

Christ’s ministry is fulfilled

Let’s think theologically for a moment. Very early in the Jesus movement, Jesus’ followers began to express their faith in short summaries of faith we call creeds. Scholars believe that the so-called Apostle’s Creed was formulated as early as 180 and the Nicene Creed resulted from the meeting of clergy summoned by Constantine in 325. In both of these creeds, the church thought it basic to affirm that after his resurrection, Jesus returned to his Father in heaven and established a reign over those still living and those already deceased that would last forever. It was important to establish as a postulate of the faith that Jesus had come, had fulfilled his mission and then returned to the One who had sent him. Ascension was the assurance of a mission accomplished.

Even earlier than the creedal formulations, however, the community of believers insisted that the Ascension was God’s way of affirming the ministry of reconciliation, of repentance and forgiveness that Jesus had preached. Thirteen times in the New Testament writings, Psalm 110: 1 is quoted, sometimes from the lips of Jesus, as a way of establishing, early on, that when the ministry of Jesus had come to an end on earth, he would return to his Father as Lord, and begin to administer a spiritual rule that would last forever. The passage from the Psalm reads, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool for your feet.” The earliest followers of Jesus took this to mean that David himself had said that God would welcome Jesus back into himself as ruler of heaven and earth. For the earliest church, then, and for Christians ever after, the use of this passage from the Old Testament affirmed that something was forever changed as a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Ascension insisted that this is not just a material world, but that it has spiritual dimensions to it. Through the ministry of Jesus, we have been made God’s very own people. Theology matters.

It is one thing to acknowledge that this belief in the Ascension was basic to the earliest church’s teaching, and quite another to understand what happened at the event so well remembered by the followers of Jesus. There are some truths that can be rationally explained and others that are best described with metaphors, music, visual art forms and stories. One of the most profound theological explorations of Ascension I personally experienced resulted from viewing a painting by a high school student on a 1982 calendar published by Lutheran Brotherhood, one of the partners that formed the Insurance and Financial agency now known as Thrivent. It pictures the feet of Jesus rising through a grid established by the principalities and powers, the structures and control systems of our world. As the Lord rises up through this rigid captivity of human making, he shatters it and turns it into joyous, multi-colored confetti. I once wrote Thrivent to ask what might have become of this young artist who would now be over 50, but they had no information about him. That’s sometimes the way it is. A person, a story, a painting, a piece of music touches you—just for a moment– and helps you understand something in a way that a reasoned explanation could not. This painting assured me that the Ascension was a necessary part of the Christian message because without it the new beginning, the transformed world, the ethic based on love and forgiveness, could not have been initiated. No rational explanation of how the Ascension took place could have done that for me. With that painting, I understood that Christ alone broke the bonds that sin created and set us free to live joyfully amidst celebrating confetti! Analogies, symbols and metaphors can do a great deal to assure us that theology matters.

Christ commissions us to serve him in the world

Now let me invite you to think practically for a moment. The ascension of Christ addresses powerfully the position in which disciples find themselves. It must have been frustrating for Jesus again and again to remind his followers not only what he was about, but what they were to be about. Often the Gospel writers make it clear that after Jesus taught in parables or performed a healing or was involved in a conflict, the hearers or those watching didn’t know what to do. At times they weren’t sure who he was. Even his parents didn’t understand him occasionally. In a classic example, James and John, totally missing their calling, once asked “Shall we call fire down from heaven and burn them up?” Jesus only shook his head and wondered if they would ever learn—because the time would come when he would no longer be there to clarify a teaching or nudge them into a more loving lifestyle.

Now that time had come. It always comes for teachers and students. Jesus had to cut them loose. The disciples had to practice what Jesus had preached. They had to become what they were intended to be. Did it work? It took some time, but eventually all the disciples found their way into other lands where they themselves could echo the teachings of the master, and often lose their own lives as martyrs. However, we learn from the Epistles of Paul and others that all too often their own students failed to master the call to discipleship. In Corinth, for example, we learn that Christians were tolerating incest, suing one another in court, eating in pagan temples and misbehaving at the Lord’s Supper. In our text, therefore, Jesus reminds his followers as he leaves them that they have been witnesses to all that he has taught and demonstrated and that now they will be given power to live out what they have learned.

How is it with us? Most of us have listened to the stories of Jesus’ compassion and we have experienced their meaning through the faithful actions of others. Now we are cut loose to live what we have learned, to be the sons and daughters of God we have been called to be. Recently, I heard a blunt story that made me reflect on this. A carpenter has been working for us turning our attic space into a usable second floor. He is a recent immigrant from Albania. One day we were talking about disciplining children. He told me that when he was a little boy, he had stolen a live chicken from the neighbors and put it in a box in the family barn. His father discovered it and said, “Now what are you going to do? You can take it and return it to the neighbors and apologize for what you did,” something very hard for the ten year old son to do. “But if you don’t do that,” the father cautioned, “you will no longer be my son.” It was an important lesson because the father had taught the son what all of us already know. We have been set free to live as the Christians we claim to be or to deny, as Peter once did, that we belong to Jesus.

It is a big question that we ask ourselves as parents, but certainly also as disciples of Jesus: How long does a person need to be taught and molded before he or she can be cut loose to live life as students of the master teacher? How long do we have to learn about forgiveness before we find it easy to forgive others? How long do we have to study what it means to love even our enemies before we actually try to do it? How many credits to we have to earn in the school of Christian discipleship before we are ready to show compassion on our own?

I caught a segment of a recent Book Channel program on TV in which the Roman Catholic author, Gary Wills, was being asked how long it would take the Pope to preach pacifism and convince everyone that he was a disciple of Jesus. It’s a powerful question—implying that even leaders in the Christian community may not feel that they have been set free to believe that those who take up the sword will perish by it. When I read the forums on the internet and note with what vengeance and hate people react to one another, I despair in thinking that there are many Christians in the public square.

Today is, however, a new day, my friends. The Ascension of Jesus reminds us that he who taught his followers about love and compassion, peace and forgiveness was despised and rejected by the very ones he had come to set free from their hate and revenge. It also reminds us that with the disciples of old we have been loved and graced into action—set free to be the sons and daughters of God. Let this celebration of Jesus’ return to his father be another encouragement to remind us that we have been commissioned to seek the Spirit’s guidance as we make our own way. We have been summoned to gather around the table as members of a loving family and to share the changes at work within us that make this world God’s very own. Commissions matter.

Can you see the confetti falling all around us today?

Do you feel the joy in knowing that you are among those who have been set free to make a difference in our world?

David Zersen, D.Min., Ed.D., FRHistS

President Emeritus, Concordia University Texas

zersendj@gmail.com