June 1, 2025 Sermon
Sermon title: “The Ascension”
Scripture: Acts 1:1-11
(Other lectionary suggestions include Psalm 47, Ephesians 1:15-23, and Luke 24:44-53.)
Acts 1:1-11
The Promise of the Holy Spirit
1In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning 2until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; 5for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
The Ascension of Jesus
6So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8But 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.” 9When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. 11They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Today is Ascension Sunday, and maybe what we heard in our Scripture lesson today is hard to believe for those of us living in the 21st century. People in Jesus’s day believed in what we now call the Three-Story Universe: Earth is here, Heaven is up there, and Hell is down below. What we heard today is almost funny: the disciples are looking up in the sky with their mouths hanging open – it doesn’t say so, but how else would you describe it? And they get a rebuke! “Get busy!” the angels say. Jesus will come back the same way you saw him leave. What the disciples were told was, essentially, what St. Teresa of Avila said: “Christ has no hands but ours, no feet but ours.” Maybe the angels were saying this: “Jesus has left the scene, so now YOU are the body of Christ. Get busy!”
Personally, I love it that the disciples are told that “It’s not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” And even though we have Jesus saying those words, Christians throughout history have tried to determine exactly when the last days will be. One argument I have with the Jehovah’s Witnesses is that they try to determine when the last days will be by reading the Bible in a certain way. DON’T DO THAT, said the angels. DON’T DO THAT, said Jesus. YOUR job is to continue the things that Jesus started: feed the hungry, heal the sick, raise the dead. In short, BE the Body of Christ, and stop trying to figure out when the last days will be. Those days will be upon us soon enough, so keep workin’ for the kingdom, as an old black spiritual says.
Here is what the Rev. Jeanne Warner says about today’s passage. She is a Lutheran pastor in Northwest Wisconsin. She says, “They had had a rough few weeks. Holy Week was a whiplash-producing switch from coronation to condemnation, all at the hands of the very people Jesus had spent three years teaching and healing. Good Friday was anything but a good experience for those standing at the foot of the cross, watching their rabbi and friend die in agony. Easter morning brought the shocking revelation that Jesus was no longer in the tomb and was making good on his promise to rise after three days. Then there were 40 days of surprise appearances, which reassured the disciples that Jesus was back. And now, now Jesus had taken them outside the city, promised to be with them forever, and then disappeared up into the clouds. Yes, you have to feel for these guys.”
For me - and others greater than I am - Jesus has to stop appearing, and so the story of the Ascension is a way to get him off the page. Says the Scottish scholar William Barclay, “the Ascension was an absolute necessity.....(T)here had to be a final moment when Jesus went back to the glory that was his. The forty days of the resurrection appearances had passed. Clearly that was a time which was unique and could not go on forever. Equally clear the end to that period had to be definite. There would have been something quite wrong if the resurrection appearances had just simply petered out.”
As I said earlier, first-century people believed in a Three-Story Universe. You and I know that if you go up into the sky, you’ll keep on going! But our first-century brothers and sisters thought that Heaven was “up there,” and so Jesus didn’t go to the moon or to Mars. He went back to Heaven. In Barclay’s words, “Therefore, if Jesus was to give his followers unanswerable proof that he had returned to his glory, the Ascension was absolutely necessary. But we must note this. When Luke tells of this in his gospel he says, ‘They returned to Jerusalem with great joy.’ This is in Luke 24:52. In spite of the Ascension, or maybe because of it, the disciples were quite sure that Jesus was not gone from them but that he was with them forever.”
One more thing.....only Luke tells the story of the Ascension. True, near the end of Matthew, Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” That’s in Matthew 28:20. It’s also the very last verse of Matthew’s gospel. But no ASCENSION is mentioned!
We have FOUR gospel accounts, and I’m not sure why! I understand why we may want more than ONE - Mark is kind of short, and it ends with no resurrection story and certainly no Ascension account. Matthew ALMOST gives us an Ascension account, but not quite! And the beloved gospel of John, with its wonderful “God so loved the world” verse in 3:16 says nothing about an Ascension. Only Luke gives us that story. The only Gentile writer in the New Testament gives us the Ascension story, and we need it! We need to get Jesus away from the earth, and Luke gives it to us.
I mentioned Lutheran pastor Jeanne Warner earlier. She concludes her commentary on today’s Scripture this way: “We too are sometimes immobilized by doubt or confusion or a sense of being all on our own. Even though we have received the Holy Spirit when we were baptized, we balk at being bold in our witness. Even though we are part of the body of Christ, we underestimate the power of our work in the world. The story doesn’t just stop with the angels providing a V-8 style thump to the disciples’ foreheads; it continues through the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to be with and empower them through the Holy Spirit. And that, brothers and sisters, is the good news that carried them from stunned gawking at the clouds to performing deeds of faith and power that built a church. Now, don’t just stand there looking like a bunch of turkeys -
do something! Do something amazing in Jesus’ name! Amen.”
Pastor Skip
