“Why
Are You Standing Around?”
Acts 1:1-11
Ascension Sunday
May 24, 2009
Dave Russell,
----
This
past Thursday was Ascension Day. I’m
guessing that it just slipped past most of you.
Come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing any of you at the big
Ascension Day parade.
Well,
it is not one of the bigger holidays. Families
don’t gather together on Ascension Day.
We don’t bake a ham or turkey.
Kids don’t get out of school. Retailers
don’t have Ascension Day sales, we don’t exchange Ascension presents, and no,
we don’t have Ascension Day parades.
It
was interesting, however, that when we lived in an Amish community, we found
that Ascension Day was an important day for the Amish. Those who owned businesses closed for the day,
and English-owned business that employed a lot of Amish might also be closed,
and church services were held.
Since
most mainline churches don’t have Ascension Day services, today is often
observed as Ascension Sunday. But to be
honest about it, the whole idea is a bit odd.
This is the only day we celebrate - or perhaps “remember” might be a
better word – that Jesus has left us. We
celebrate Jesus’ birth at Christmas. We
celebrate his resurrection at Easter.
But why would we want to celebrate that Jesus went away, that he is no
longer with us in the flesh?
As
we have mentioned several times already this year, 2009 marks the 400th
year of the beginnings of Baptists. We
have periodically had bulletin inserts with bits of Baptist history, as we do
today. While 1609 marked the beginning
of the first Baptist congregation, made of English Separatists who had
emigrated to
I
bring up Gallileo because this actually has some connection with our
scripture. We no longer believe that
heaven is on the other side of the clouds.
We no longer have a 3-story universe with hell below, earth in the
middle, and heaven above. The Ascension
seems weird to us, kind of a holdover from an earlier cosmology. The idea of Jesus floating up to the clouds
seems like a bad movie.
But
if the cosmology of it is a bit primitive, the theology of the Ascension is
very timely for us. We can’t dismiss the
ascension because of the prescientific worldview of that day. We don’t have to believe in a flat earth with
hell below and heaven above to believe in ascension any more than we have to believe
the earth was created in seven 24-hour days to believe in creation.
This
morning I would like for us to look at what the ascension means for us and what
the ascension says to us. Before
ascending to heaven, Jesus told the disciples that they would receive the Holy
Spirit and that they would be witnesses.
He gave them a task: they were to continue his work. As Jesus left this world in body, the Church
became the Body of Christ.
Jesus’
ascension meant that while not present in the flesh in a specific place, he
could now be present in the spirit to people everywhere, in all times and
places. Brian Wren’s hymn “Christ Is
Alive” puts it this way:
Christ is alive! No longer bound
to distant years in
but saving, healing, here and now,
and touching every place and time.
The
Ascension means that Jesus has entrusted the work of the kingdom to us. We are given responsibility for sharing the
good news. We are given the work of
furthering God’s peace and justice and righteousness. Jesus has left the building. Christ has ascended to glory and we are to
carry on Christ’s mission. But it’s not
that easy. We have some problems in continuing
Jesus’ work.
The
Acts account of the Ascension of Jesus has built into it some of the
difficulties this posed for the disciples--and some of the difficulties we have
in living out our faith as the Body of Christ.
First,
there is what we might call “Separation Anxiety.” I can just imagine the disciples wondering,
“How are we going to carry on without Jesus?”
He had always been there. He was
the leader and they were the followers.
How could they manage without him?
As
many of you know, we have a new dog at our house. Rudy had been a shelter dog and while we are
unsure of all of his past, we know that he has not had an entirely easy
life. When we leave the house, we put
him in a crate. He is not thrilled with
the idea but he does relatively OK. But
when we get back, he is so happy to see us and he will even cry when we let him
out of the crate. You would think he
would cry going in, but he cries when we let him out because he is so happy. He has anxiety about being separated from us.
Separation
anxiety is not just something that affects dogs. When you leave a child in the nursery for the
first time, he or she will likely cry.
It can be hard to separate. And,
in fact, it’s not just pets and children, but separation anxiety can affect all
of us.
How
could the disciples carry on Jesus’ work without him? They had never been without him. He had always been there. They had to question whether they had what it
takes.
We’ve
all been there. We are new to a job or
new to a certain responsibility and we’re not sure if we can do it without the
help that has always been there. The kid
learning to ride a bike isn’t sure that he or she can do it without mom or dad
holding on. You’ve been in Sunday School
for years but now that you are the one teaching the lesson, you’re not sure you
can do it. You’ve flown the plane with
the instructor but your first solo flight scares you to death.
It
may be hard, but as long as mom and dad hold on, you really can’t learn to ride
the bike. If the teacher is always
there, you will never yourself become a teacher, and until the flight
instructor stays on the ground, you can never build confidence in your own
ability to fly the plane.
Jesus’
work on earth was done, and now it was up to the disciples. Now it is up to us.
Being
apart from Jesus is not the only problem the disciples faced at the
ascension. There is the complication of
In-Between Living.
The
Ascension was both an ending and a beginning.
It was an end to Jesus’ time on earth.
It was the beginning of something new.
Just what, the disciples did not know for sure. There was uncertainty and no doubt some apprehension. It was an in-between time.
Jesus
has always been there. They know the
past. He tells them that the Holy Spirit
will come, that they will be witnesses to
We
all know about in-between times. High
school seniors are living in the in-between time. There is uncertainty and anxiety. What will college be like? Who will my friends be? What should I do with my life? What decision should I make?
Parents
facing the empty nest have some of the same questions. What is it going to be like now that it’s
just the two of us?
You’ll
be watching a basketball or football or a baseball game and whenever a player
hurts a knee or an ankle, the coach will say, “we don’t know the extent of the
injury, we will have to wait on the MRI.”
That is an in-between time that many of us know about. Going through a series of tests and then
waiting for that call from the doctor can be a very scary in-between time.
When
a baby is about to be born, or there is a divorce, or a move or a new job, it
is an in-between time. For the
disciples, the time between the Ascension and Pentecost was their in-between
time. Jesus told them to go back to
Living
our faith can be difficult in the in-between times. Being the Body of Christ can be difficult in
times of change and times of uncertainty.
The
disciples also faced the problem of Keeping On Task. Verses 9-11 read: “...As they were watching,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up
toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, men of
Why
do you stand looking up toward heaven?
Why are you rubber-necking when there is a job to do?
Things
have changed in this age of extreme airport security, but many of us have watched
the plane carrying a loved on fly off into the horizon. Or we watch the car drive down the road until
we can’t see it anymore. It’s something
we all do. But we can’t continue to
stare into the sky or watch down the road indefinitely. We have to get on with living.
We
can often act as though Jesus is going to walk through the door and tell us
what to do, and solve our problems, and make everything right. We forget that we have been commissioned by
Christ. We forget that we are the Body
of Christ. Friends, “We are the ones we are waiting for.”[1]
If
you look closely at this passage, there is a subtle shift in attention. The disciples ask, Lord, is this when you will restore the
There
is a sense in which Jesus’ ascension empowered the disciples. Would they have done all they did if Jesus
were still around? If he had not
commissioned them for service and then gone on, would they have stepped up to
the challenge?
A
guy was sitting a table at the coffee shop when an acquaintance, a farmer, came
in and sat down. The town dweller asked
the farmer, “How’s your corn doing?” “Didn’t
plant corn this year,” the farmer said. “I was afraid of corn blight.”
“Oh. Well, how’s the soybeans?” Didn’t plant beans either. I hear that soybean rust is making its way up
from
“Alfalfa?” “Nope. Afraid the price might drop.
“Well, what did you plant? Oats?” The farmer replied, “I thought about oats, but
I was afraid we might not see enough rain this year.”
“Well, then,” asked the man, “what did you plant?”
“Nothin’,” the farmer said. “I just played it safe.”
We may feel like we are playing it safe by sitting on the sidelines. We may feel like we are playing it safe by
waiting for someone else to do what needs to be done. We may feel like we are playing it safe by
not biting off more than we can chew and not taking on new initiatives that
involve a measure of uncertainty. But
like this farmer, we have to wonder whether playing it safe is really playing
it safe.
It is an awesome responsibility that we have been given--to be the Body
of Christ. We – fallible, imperfect,
flesh and blood, everyday people – are called to do God’s work, to be God’s
hands and feet, to continue the ministry of Jesus Christ. We have a job to do, all of us, but we can
stand around, looking at the sky. We can
stand around, waiting for God to change things, when the way God intends to
change things is through us. We can say,
“Do something, God” and God answers, “I did.
I made you.”
There is a story told about the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini. In 1922, at the age of 64, he was diagnosed
with cancer. In spite of his illness, he
continued to work at the opera Turatidot,
which many consider his best. Friends
tried to convince him not to use his remaining days on a piece he would not
complete, but he could not be dissuaded.
Close to death, he wrote to his students, “If I don’t finish Turatidot, I want you to finish it for
me.” He did not complete the opera, but
immediately following his death his students gathered all the scores, studied
them with care and completed the opera.
The opening performance took place in 1926. Conducted by one of Puccini’s students,
Arturo Toscanini, the orchestra began its performance. Reaching the place where Puccini had stopped
writing, Toscanini put down his baton, turned to the audience and said to them,
“Thus far the master wrote, and then he died.”
No one moved or spoke for several minutes. Then Toscanini picked up his baton, turned to
the audience, smiled through tears and spoke again. “But his disciples have finished his work.”
Friends, this is our calling. In
the Ascension, Jesus left this earth in body so that Christ may be present with
each of us in Spirit, and so that his ministry might be carried on by all of
us. Amen.
[1] This quote is from Hopi Indian elders. I have also seen it attributed to poet June Jordan and it is the title of a book by Alice Walker. Also quoted by Barack Obama. And I’m sure many others.