Christ United Presbyterian Church
June 1, 2014
Ascension Sunday
Sermon: Luke
24:44-53
This past Thursday, May 29,
was the day on which the church liturgical calendar actually says that we
should celebrate Ascension Day. Based on
the narrative in the book of Acts, the disciples witnessed the Ascension 40
days after the day of the Resurrection.
Since we celebrate the Resurrection on a Sunday, Ascension Day is always
on a Thursday.
In the early church Good
Friday, Easter Sunday, Ascension Day and Pentecost were the main festival
days. (Please notice that what we call
Christmas wasn’t one of the original festivals!)
The Ascension is kind of
tricky. In some ways it – perhaps even
more than Easter – represents all that Christ was sent among us to carry
out. It represents the successful completion
of his ministry on earth. Even after the
Resurrection there was still this one last thing to happen so that we would
come to realize that Jesus is the Lord!
Throughout the Gospel story
people frequently ask Jesus if his time has come. The Gospels speak of the crucifixion and
resurrection as his glorification but the story doesn’t actually come full
circle until the Ascension. John’s
Gospel says it best: “In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with
God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not
one thing came into being. [John 1:1-3]”
That’s Jesus he’s talking about. In his ascension he returns to God’s eternal glory.
Some people will be quick to
tell you that the Ascension never happened. It was a story, they say, that the
church made up, based on even earlier stories in the Hebrew Scriptures of
prophets ascending into the clouds. If you had been there that day, you
couldn’t possibly have seen this event.
Fascinating. We can’t understand the acts of God. The question is not whether we can place the
story of Christ’s ascension into some logical human frame of reference. The question is whether or not the Ascension
is consistent with Christ’s role and powers as God.
What does the ascension means
for us? Today. In the crucifixion, the
resurrection and then the post resurrection appearances the apostles finally
came to realize that something very different had happened not only in their
lives but in the life of the world. They
started to realize that Jesus really was the Messiah and the Son of God. A group of people who had hidden themselves
away after the crucifixion, people who like Peter had shown fear and even
cowardice as Christ’s life came near its end, began to realize that something
really different had taken place and that they were the witnesses to it.
We all know the basic science
stories about how birds push their young out of their nests so that they can
learn to fly and live independent of their parents. We all know that in a variety of ways human
parents must do the same thing if they want their children to live healthy
lives in the world. Sometimes doing so
takes an act of enormous faith because you aren’t quite sure if they are
ready. You have taught them all you can
about strength of character and morality and kindness and love and even faith,
but until you send them out you never know if those lessons really found a
home.
At the moment of his
ascension, the Lord made clear to his disciples that he had to leave so that they could go and witness to
the world all that they had seen. He was
pushing them out of the nest. He had
taught them everything that they needed – through word and deed – to carry on
the work. It was now their turn. And if they loved him they would produce the
fruit that the world needed.
How could they possibly carry
on God’s ministry? “You
will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
[Acts 1:8]” In the Gospel lesson he tells them you will be “clothed with
power from on high.[Luke 24:49]”
You will receive power; you will be clothed in power. It’s this news that they shall receive power
– that they did receive power – that made them – and makes us – celebrate the
ascension. In that early church these
were folks who didn’t need to be reminded that they were powerless on their
own.
We live with the illusion that we have power of our own. Those disciples had no such illusion. They were fearful, anxious and confused, but
they were beginning to understand what it had all been about.
Jesus was the Messiah. He
was the Son of God.
We are told that they spent the next 10 days “constantly
devoting themselves to prayer [Acts 1:14]”.
Jesus told them to stay in Jerusalem until the power had come upon them,
and so they returned to their room and prayed and waited because it was all
starting to make sense to them. In Luke
we are told that Jesus opened their mind with scriptures. He helped them to see how it finally had all
come together. Their anxiety fell away and
they prayed and they waited because they knew that it was so: Jesus was the Son of God and they had
witnessed his time on earth.
Now they no longer had any doubt. They believed that he would
pour out the power they needed to complete their mission, the power of the Holy
Spirit. His was all the assurance that
they needed that they could do what he expected of them.
The world we live in wants to
believe that we have all the power we needs.
We have the might of perhaps the greatest military force ever assembled
in all history. We have the
technological innovations that have transformed our communications and social
and political interchanges. We have an
economy that is still striving to be the strongest in the world. Everything that we could possibly need is
only a matter of us going out and getting it.
We dare not examine that idea
that we even know what it is we need.
Throughout history joining a
Christian church has been a countercultural act. It’s an
act that says we don’t really know what we need, and we certainly don’t have
any power apart from the power that even today the Holy Spirit gives us. Whenever we gather around this table sharing
the Lord’s meal, we proclaim that there is a power greater than us and that God
grants us the necessary power and sustains us so that we accomplish his work in
the world.
As a congregation, we are
gathered to give thanks and praise to God, to give witness to God’s redeeming
love and to share that love with one another and our community. People wonder whether this congregation will
survive. If our reason for being here is
to carry on the work of the Gospel, then the Spirit will provide us with the
power we need to carry our God’s ministry.
That ministry will thrive and grow.
If we have any other reason
for being here, well then we are on our own, left to our own devices.
Nothing that we try to do
that is all our idea, even if it is the well-intentioned idea that we must preserve
the way this congregation used to be, can succeed in the end. On the other hand if we are committed to
nurturing God’s ministry in the world and this community, led by the Holy
Spirit and using the power that the Spirit will provide, then somehow we shall
succeed.
Without the power of the Holy Spirit that
Jesus promised at his ascension and which remains a promise to his followers
today, we can do nothing of lasting value. The
work of the Spirit, on the other hand, never comes to an end.
The death of Christ United
Presbyterian Church would not end the movement of the Spirit to bring God’s kingdom
alive on earth. God will accomplish what
God sets out to do and if we allow him to make use of Christ United
Presbyterian Church to accomplish God’s goals rather than our own, then we
shall continue for as long as we let the power of the Spirit use us; as long as
we bring bodily life to the mission of Christ.
He shared scripture with them
and they opened their minds. He promised
them the power of the Spirit would come upon them, and they waited praying
constantly. Seeking the truth in
scripture and prayer remain the two ways that we should be waiting for the
power of the Spirit. Searching the
scripture and praying will prepare us finally to recognize the presence of the
Spirit and the incredible things that we can do when we gratefully received that
power.
Listen again to the promise as Christ pushes us out of the
nest: “You will receive power when the
Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in
all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. [Acts 1:8]”
As you wonder about the future of this church, seek that power
and be his witnesses.
Amen.
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