Seventh Sunday of Easter, June 1, 2025
Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Ascension
In the first book, Theophilus,
I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught
until the day he was taken up,
after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit
to the apostles whom he had chosen.
And now to introduce the second book, which Luke called “The Acts of the Apostles,” what Jesus does is in the background, so to speak. Now it’s the disciples’ turn to shine. Luke spends most of his second book telling us the stories of Peter and then Paul, but the other disciples are busy too, traveling in every direction from Jerusalem.
But first, there is Jesus’ ascension, and that’s what we celebrate today. How many years since AD 30? One thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five, I think. We are just five years from two millenia, when the party might last all year, but our celebration can be as over-the-top today … this is Jesus we’re talking about, Jesus come to earth, Jesus gone to heaven, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Who let the dogs out! Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music!
As they were looking on,
Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, “Men of Galilee,
why are you standing there looking at the sky?
This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven
will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
So. Jesus gone to heaven, Jesus coming back again. Take it or leave it, this is the diamond center of Christian faith. Our religious thought might get sidetracked into ethics and politics and other human-centric stuff, but this is the big thing. God came and God is coming again.
Is God coming soon? It’s impossible not to think of this “coming” and not wonder when. We are creatures who live and move and have our being in time. Days, hours, minutes, years that make up lifetimes. Of course we want God to return during our lifetime, and scenarios throughout the Bible invite us to imagine it. Stop, look, listen. Be ready.
Then the “when” doesn’t matter.
Is God here now? Could be. No wonder Christians divide into so many separate groups: over those nearly two thousand years we thinking human beings have understood Jesus’ ascension and impending return so many different ways. Our tentative and incomplete knowledge of good and evil does not allow us to read God’s mind. He made us, but it’s tempting to think we can make him. We think and think and conclude all kinds of stuff about God, instead of sitting silent at his feet.
It is not for you to know the times or seasons
that the Father has established by his own authority.
Jesus speaks, and I want to say, “Oh. OK. You know and I don’t. So I sit silent at your feet. Then Jesus invites me into hope, that in my humanity I can share what he’s given me with others.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.”
Just sitting here, somewhat silent at his feet, I begin to grasp how integrated and complete Jesus’ teaching is. I think that’s what changes in me when the Holy Spirit rushes in. I stop asking unanswerable questions. There is something much more than my questions.
Margaret said yesterday that the currency of heaven is measured in gratitude and generosity. Witnesses to the end of the earth are generous and grateful. Getting this in my heart, I can live in the questions in my mind and enjoy my unknowing. Freely I’ve been given, freely I can and will give myself away. Paul wrote about this to his Ephesian friends.
Brothers and sisters:
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation
resulting in knowledge of him.
May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call.
What is that “knowledge of him?” The more I practice using only the currency of gratitude and generosity, the more I “know.” Not in my mind, or not just there: really it’s the “eyes of my heart” which show me that I have more than enough. Here in my cloud of unknowing, when God calls, I listen. And hope fills me up – immeasurable, endless hope. A “new and living way has opened for us through the veil.”
So let us approach with a sincere heart and in absolute trust,
with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience
and our bodies washed in pure water.
Let us hold unwaveringly to our confession; it gives us hope,
for he who made the promise is trustworthy.
Matthew is at the party. He watched Jesus and heard his words:
Go and teach all nations, says the Lord;
I am with you always, until the end of the world.
And Luke, who left his calling as physician to answer the call of Jesus – he might have come late to the party, but he’s there now.
After Jesus blessed them, he parted from them
and was taken up to heaven.
They worshipped him
and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy,
and they were continually in the temple praising God.
Celebrate! Celebrate! Dance to the music!
(Acts 1, Psalm 47, Ephesians 1, Hebrews 9-10, Matthew 28, Luke 24)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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