He ascended into heaven
Commentary
The readings for this day are standard in lectionary cycles A, B, and C. This means that the preacher in a tradition that observes Ascension Day will face them year after year. They are not the easiest of readings for a congregation to digest. Acts 1:1-11 is a case in point. How, for example, will some listeners react to the story of Jesus rising into the clouds and the angelic promise that he will return the same way?
I would encourage the preacher whose tradition excludes a formal observation of Ascension Day to consider using it on an appropriate Sunday in the Easter season. Here is a suggestion. As you brood over the reading, think in terms of the purpose of Luke the theologian and evangelist. What affirmations of the faith does he seek to proclaim through his stories of Jesus and the early church?
Just a few Sundays ago on Easter 2 we dealt with John's account of the giving of the Holy Spirit. John unites the death and exaltation of Jesus, the giving of the Spirit, and the commissioning of the disciples in one event. Luke extends the time frame. Why? Did he stretch things out in the interests of teaching and proclamation? Some have called him the founder of the church year. I prefer to understand the structure of his narrative as related to his theological purpose to instruct the church at a time when a new generation of Christians was settling into history for the long haul. Old expectations and the understanding of the church's mission had to be restated in terms of new insights birthed through prayer and deep thought under the tutelage of the Risen Lord. The ongoing guidance of the Holy Spirit is a basic tenet of faith for Luke. Approaching the two Lukan readings with these thoughts in mind can open up Luke's challenge to us in the here and now. The epistle reading opens up other clues to the mission of the church in the world.
Sermon Seeds In The Lessons
Luke 24:44-53
Beginning with the gospel reading prepares us for the narratives to come in the opening chapters of Acts. According to Luke the Risen Jesus spent 40 days with the apostles interpreting the scriptures to them. In ancient Jewish tradition a teaching repeated 40 times is full instruction that qualifies a pupil to become a teacher. In Luke's account this interim period of gathering, prayer, worship and deep thought is the prelude to the creative burst at Pentecost.
This is suggestive. The gift of the Spirit does not come willy-nilly. This Lukan picture of the early church wrestling with their questions resonates with experience. Rollo May in a lecture on creativity pointed out that moments of high insight and inspiration do not just happen. They are prefaced by hours, days, months of concentrated thought. What the artist calls the afflatus, the moment of seeing, may come at an unexpected time, but not just out of the blue. Relaxing on a park bench, Albert Einstein reached into his pocket and on the back of a crumpled envelope wrote down the formula that ushered in the nuclear age. What he had wrestled with all suddenly came together. Luther's insights came out of inner struggle. Here is a seed. How does a congregation come alive?
In all the gospels, encounters with the Risen Lord are also moments of commissioning. This again indicates the church was coming to an understanding of its vocation. Luke identifies that vocation as proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins. The church is to go out in his name and live redemptively toward others. The affirmation of the church as a community under orders is quite at variance with the religious privatism so prevalent around us. An interesting New Testament word is the Greek word paraklesis. It is related to John's word for the Holy Spirit, Paraclete. Paraklesis means variously to comfort, strengthen, admonish. One aspect of it can be called controversial conversation with the world. Is that not one way repentance is proclaimed by the church?
Acts 1:1-11
Luke's introduction and start of a second volume signals us that the story of Jesus goes on. The church is at an historic crossroads as it moves out of its Palestinian homeland and has to come to terms with a new understanding of its vocation and reexamine some inadequate expectations. "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" That is one of those expectations. Past models will not do. The mission is universal in scope. Luke sees a road to Rome. Paul would see a road leading to Spain.
What will the contemporary listener make of this story of Jesus rising up to heaven? The scaffolding is a first century world view. It is not the scaffolding that is important but the affirmation being proclaimed. Jesus is now no longer bound by time and space. I think of this statement as a two-sided coin.
Jesus is now forever part of our understanding of God. Jesus is now forever part of our understanding of what it means to be a human person. Wherever we travel, be it to the edges of the light years of the universe, it will be back to Jesus of Nazareth that we will point as the key to things Divine and human. There is the affirmation imbedded in the narrative of the ascension of Jesus.
Ephesians 1:15-23
The word power in this passage catches the eye. It's a heady word. It is a word that suggests domination, power over, clout. Paul speaks of "the immeasurable greatness" of the power of God which was put to work in Christ. We know something about power and its place in our lives and world. We know something about power struggles whether between individuals, or groups and nations. We know how the image of power can be coveted whether by the youngster who pumps iron and measures his strength by the size of his muscles or the nation that measures power via economic or military statistics.
When we scan the earthly scene and mark the way power resides in and is exercised by political systems, special power groups, spin doctors, cultural values, all the systems the vocabulary of Ephesians describes as the principalities, dominions, and powers, we are tempted to think Paul has overstated the case for God's power. Those principalities and powers control the playing field. Or do they? Are the systems vulnerable to the Word that judges and redeems and can restore them to their proper vocations?
Ephesians carries within it a vision of the public vocation of the church. The church has a mission to be part of the human cultural, social, and political dialogue. The style of that participation is under the constraint of Christ. It is not a power trip to dominate others nor a way to claim Divine sanction for one's own particular ideology or agenda. I heartily recommend to the preacher Walter Wink's concluding volume to his three-part study of the principalities and powers, Engaging the Powers (Fortress Press, 1992).
I would encourage the preacher whose tradition excludes a formal observation of Ascension Day to consider using it on an appropriate Sunday in the Easter season. Here is a suggestion. As you brood over the reading, think in terms of the purpose of Luke the theologian and evangelist. What affirmations of the faith does he seek to proclaim through his stories of Jesus and the early church?
Just a few Sundays ago on Easter 2 we dealt with John's account of the giving of the Holy Spirit. John unites the death and exaltation of Jesus, the giving of the Spirit, and the commissioning of the disciples in one event. Luke extends the time frame. Why? Did he stretch things out in the interests of teaching and proclamation? Some have called him the founder of the church year. I prefer to understand the structure of his narrative as related to his theological purpose to instruct the church at a time when a new generation of Christians was settling into history for the long haul. Old expectations and the understanding of the church's mission had to be restated in terms of new insights birthed through prayer and deep thought under the tutelage of the Risen Lord. The ongoing guidance of the Holy Spirit is a basic tenet of faith for Luke. Approaching the two Lukan readings with these thoughts in mind can open up Luke's challenge to us in the here and now. The epistle reading opens up other clues to the mission of the church in the world.
Sermon Seeds In The Lessons
Luke 24:44-53
Beginning with the gospel reading prepares us for the narratives to come in the opening chapters of Acts. According to Luke the Risen Jesus spent 40 days with the apostles interpreting the scriptures to them. In ancient Jewish tradition a teaching repeated 40 times is full instruction that qualifies a pupil to become a teacher. In Luke's account this interim period of gathering, prayer, worship and deep thought is the prelude to the creative burst at Pentecost.
This is suggestive. The gift of the Spirit does not come willy-nilly. This Lukan picture of the early church wrestling with their questions resonates with experience. Rollo May in a lecture on creativity pointed out that moments of high insight and inspiration do not just happen. They are prefaced by hours, days, months of concentrated thought. What the artist calls the afflatus, the moment of seeing, may come at an unexpected time, but not just out of the blue. Relaxing on a park bench, Albert Einstein reached into his pocket and on the back of a crumpled envelope wrote down the formula that ushered in the nuclear age. What he had wrestled with all suddenly came together. Luther's insights came out of inner struggle. Here is a seed. How does a congregation come alive?
In all the gospels, encounters with the Risen Lord are also moments of commissioning. This again indicates the church was coming to an understanding of its vocation. Luke identifies that vocation as proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins. The church is to go out in his name and live redemptively toward others. The affirmation of the church as a community under orders is quite at variance with the religious privatism so prevalent around us. An interesting New Testament word is the Greek word paraklesis. It is related to John's word for the Holy Spirit, Paraclete. Paraklesis means variously to comfort, strengthen, admonish. One aspect of it can be called controversial conversation with the world. Is that not one way repentance is proclaimed by the church?
Acts 1:1-11
Luke's introduction and start of a second volume signals us that the story of Jesus goes on. The church is at an historic crossroads as it moves out of its Palestinian homeland and has to come to terms with a new understanding of its vocation and reexamine some inadequate expectations. "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" That is one of those expectations. Past models will not do. The mission is universal in scope. Luke sees a road to Rome. Paul would see a road leading to Spain.
What will the contemporary listener make of this story of Jesus rising up to heaven? The scaffolding is a first century world view. It is not the scaffolding that is important but the affirmation being proclaimed. Jesus is now no longer bound by time and space. I think of this statement as a two-sided coin.
Jesus is now forever part of our understanding of God. Jesus is now forever part of our understanding of what it means to be a human person. Wherever we travel, be it to the edges of the light years of the universe, it will be back to Jesus of Nazareth that we will point as the key to things Divine and human. There is the affirmation imbedded in the narrative of the ascension of Jesus.
Ephesians 1:15-23
The word power in this passage catches the eye. It's a heady word. It is a word that suggests domination, power over, clout. Paul speaks of "the immeasurable greatness" of the power of God which was put to work in Christ. We know something about power and its place in our lives and world. We know something about power struggles whether between individuals, or groups and nations. We know how the image of power can be coveted whether by the youngster who pumps iron and measures his strength by the size of his muscles or the nation that measures power via economic or military statistics.
When we scan the earthly scene and mark the way power resides in and is exercised by political systems, special power groups, spin doctors, cultural values, all the systems the vocabulary of Ephesians describes as the principalities, dominions, and powers, we are tempted to think Paul has overstated the case for God's power. Those principalities and powers control the playing field. Or do they? Are the systems vulnerable to the Word that judges and redeems and can restore them to their proper vocations?
Ephesians carries within it a vision of the public vocation of the church. The church has a mission to be part of the human cultural, social, and political dialogue. The style of that participation is under the constraint of Christ. It is not a power trip to dominate others nor a way to claim Divine sanction for one's own particular ideology or agenda. I heartily recommend to the preacher Walter Wink's concluding volume to his three-part study of the principalities and powers, Engaging the Powers (Fortress Press, 1992).
