The Essential Church: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension, year A

One of the things I do to prepare for worship each week is spend the week in conversation with our texts for the following Sunday. Early in the week, I normally begin to look at artwork, listen to music, and read poetry that touches upon the upcoming readings. Over the years I have gathered quite a collection of these items.

One of my favorite, strangest images I have for the Feast of the Ascension is one a friend of mine shared from a shrine on the east coast of England in Norfolk. The backstory to the image is this. In 1061, a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a local nobleman, and a shrine was soon built there, and became a major pilgrimage site in all of Europe. After Henry VIII’s break from Rome, the shrine was demolished, but was later restored when the Anglo-Catholic movement was launched within the Church of England in the 19th century, Anglican veneration of Mary became popular again. In the 1920s, the Anglican priest who oversaw the Anglican parish in the town built an Anglican shrine to Mary and included a chapel devoted to the Ascension of our Lord.

Rather than depict the scene with a painting or a statue, on the ceiling over the altar there is a gilded piece of art that depicts two pierces feet and the hem of a golden robe ascending into the clouds overhead. This depiction is certainly unique. For as often as it makes me laugh, this sculpture also comforts me. It’s a reminder of the fact that Jesus is still with us, even after the Ascension, just not always in a way we might expect. 

It’s a funny thing that the ascension of Jesus gets little descriptive mention in the gospels—and in fact the best description we have is in the Acts of the Apostles, believed to have been written by the same person who wrote Luke’s gospel. As you recall, Luke and Acts work together as a whole, and they are both believed to have been written by the same author, whom we will call Luke. Although Easter lasts 50 days, there is a notable event at day 40—the Ascension of the Lord. It is traditionally observed on a Thursday; this year, that was May 21, even though the celebration of this event is usually moved to the following Sunday as we are doing. Then ten days after that Thursday, next Sunday, we will celebrate Pentecost, which has two overlapping events associated with it as we see in Acts: first, it is the Jewish Festival of Weeks, or Shavuot, a harvest festival, and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples as foretold in our reading today.

After 40 days of explaining to the disciples, of them hearing Jesus constantly reminding them that he is leaving them but comforting them with the promise of the Holy Spirit, the disciples still have questions—kind of like an audience that keeps calling for encores to keep the concert going just a little longer. Jesus has spent an additional 40 days after his resurrection explaining to the disciples what is essential. And once again, the disciples miss, spectacularly, understanding what that means. Just like we do all these years later.

The thing they ask him-- again-- is whether he is going to finally re-establish the independent monarchy to this tiny country groaning under the burden of yet another occupying army. They try to turn Jesus into a partisan hack. Even after all this time, they cannot resist trying to get Jesus to be the warrior king they had been waiting for, asking him to restore the monarchy to Israel. The oppression that Israel has endured throughout most of its history—save for the brief moment of the reigns of David and his son Solomon, frankly—is something they always believed would be ended with the coming of the Messiah.

Yet forgotten within the request for a king is the particularity of the request. When Israel first asked for a king, their prophet warned them that the only king and allegiance they needed was God, and that in choosing a human king, they were choosing to be oppressed by a strong man rather than be led by God into true freedom and equality. Yet they insisted—and it didn’t turn out too well. If you read between the lines, you see that even by Solomon’s reign, for all his supposed glory and wisdom, the people were being deprived of the right to their own labor as the king sought ever grander wars and palaces to showcase his own vanity.

The other problem with making Jesus a national king is that they are still passively waiting for Jesus to do things rather than understand that Jesus is calling them to their work as disciples. Once again, Jesus has to remind them that there is something more important that they will be empowered to do: to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit” and then BUILD the kingdom of God by “being my witnesses… to the ends of the earth”. They are not to wait for God to transform the world. THEY are God’s hands to transform the world. The disciples are given the power. The disciples will have the ability to utilize that power and will need to be willing to take risks to fulfill that commission.

And we are the disciples today, as member of Christ’s body in the world- the Church. As the Church, Christ is with us and we are in Christ, as we were reminded last week in our gospel reading. They are reminded by two angelic figures not to stand around all day gawking but to get to it (a literal paraphrase of v.11). This is our essential nature as the Church. It is our charge and reason for existence. Not worship for our own sakes. But discipleship and action for the sake of the world. 

Jesus’s response to them reminds them that he is the Savior of the entire world, not just for Israel. Disciples of Jesus are called to let go of trying to make a God a tiny, nationalistic God. Instead, they—and we—are called to our own work, making disciples of every nation not through force of arms but through force of faith, hope, charity, and love, bearing witness through the power of being a Spirit-filled people. When Jesus ascends, he breaks free of nationalist expectations. When he ascends, the disciples are then empowered to carry his message to Israel and beyond.

Jesus doesn’t sit at the right hand of God as the representative of one nation. The incarnation is meant to remind us that these human-made boundaries only serve to divide us. It is an important reminder to us, especially on this Memorial Day weekend that aggressions against these human-made boundaries, and the jealousies, oppressions, and tyrannies they encourage, and especially the wars they foster, unfortunately lead to death and destruction.

The Lord of Life is not the property of any one nation or people, but is a universal Savior one who gathers all the nations of the world not through force of arms or conquest but through love, compassion, and wisdom—to an ethos of sharing rather than hoarding. The reign of Israel is restored through Jesus via their gift of the Messiah to the world, but not as a conquering king riding at the head of armies or empires. The kingdom of God is never directed at granting an advantage to any one people or nation. Attempting to make God a national symbol—or worse, setting God lower in our hearts than divisions we make for ourselves in terms of our devotion. As Calvin noted, Jesus reigns over all creation, to overcome both the distance between us and God and between each other.

As the disciples watch Jesus ascending, we see a parallel scene from Easter morning. Then too, in Luke’s retelling, two angels in dazzling white appeared, and asked the disciples gathered why they are looking in the wrong direction for the wrong thing. Jesus is not simply to be gazed at and adored. They are not to stand there dreading his absence, but look amongst each other and see Jesus in each and every face they see—to see Jesus everywhere. Not just among the “good” or the “righteous,” but among the lost, the forsaken, and the fallen as well.

The repeating of this symbolism reminds us of the hope of Easter enduring. Even after Jesus’ embodied time on earth ends, his embodiment continues, uniting us with God as much as we are united with each other, loving as God calls us to love, without barriers of the heart. And in this time of pandemic, the only barriers God calls us to maintain are those of the masks we wear to protect those around us, to the barrier of self-control and love of other that puts limits on our own selfishness and use of others as tools for our own petty wants and desires.

The early disciples had no desire to start an institution like the Church. They wouldn’t have started one, either, if they had continued to stand around, mouths agape, staring up into the glory of heaven revealed as Jesus ascends. And indeed, the early disciples after the ascension were certain that Jesus was going to be back within their lifetimes—you see that hope reflected in the earliest Christian writing we do have from St. Paul. That’s probably why they didn’t bother writing down any of their first-hand accounts of Jesus in any formal way. The four gospel accounts that were selected for the biblical canon, plus the book of Acts written by the same person who wrote what we call Luke’s gospel, were written by necessity as the generation of witnesses passed away.

And even today, we get people who believe that there are things that THEY can do to cause the second coming of Jesus. And yet, the reign of God was inaugurated by Jesus’s coming to earth and taking on human flesh calls for us to cast aside our support for anyone who calls us to do things that would hurt others, even as accidental casualties.

Jesus is not a possession or a talisman. We who claim Jesus as our Savior cannot clasp him only to ourselves as a personal possession any more than we can hold water in our hands. Just like love, we only get more Jesus by sharing his good news and his invitation to wholeness with others.

There’s been a lot of talk about “the Church” in the news, especially this week, as some of our political leaders have been weighing in on whether worship services in person should resume immediately. And so, it got me to thinking about how we were going to conduct worship this week, while I am down here in Tulsa with my family caring for my mom after her stroke last week. I haven’t been able to be outside much, and so I thought this would be a good opportunity to remind ourselves that worship doesn’t only take place in buildings.

And what a blessing that is—even in this time of COVID-19, we are forcefully reminded that we can worship across distances and that without walls, our worship but more importantly our witness is seen by hundreds of people who would not have come through our doors previously.

I steadfastly agree that churches are essential. The most essential way for the church to exist is as people devoted to action, not to see ourselves as walled away in buildings. What’s essential is using the reason and science and wisdom God has implanted within us to have faith enough in God to know that God is wherever we are gathered in love and charity, no matter how we do that.

But this is also a good time to remind ourselves that worship is not the be-all and end-all of the Christian life. I am convinced it is impossible to “close” the Church. We are not called to just stand around looking up to heaven. It’s so alluring, I know, to want to look to heaven to solve all of our problems. Jesus’ ascension is NOT about Jesus abandoning us to go back to heaven. Our readings remind us that God is right here, within us, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The story told in Acts is meant to build up our courage so that we may joyfully take up the mission he loves us enough to entrust to us: to take up our call not as observers but as disciples; to actively proclaim Jesus’s gospel of love and reconciliation in the world.

It’s about hearing that question directed at us: "Why are you standing there, looking up at heaven?" This is a question posed in love and in encouragement. With Jesus’s ascension, WE are Christ’s Body in the world. It is up to us to literally embody Jesus’s gospel in our lives, our attitudes, our words, and our actions. And that means not endangering each other—and the untold people with whom we come in contact with—by ending our fast from in person worship at this time.

Faith that discounts love and concern for others is no faith at all, as we discussed last week. Being a Christian is NOT a spectator sport. Being a Christian calls us to not only transform OUR own lives, but to make visible to the world the possibility of its transformation and restoration. Now more than ever this is so needed. Being a faithful disciple is a social and political act, and act of hope, bravery, and enduring willingness to see the potential and the beauty within this Earth and within every inhabitant of it. That’s the work of the Church. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, it cannot be contained within four walls.

Amen.

Preached from The Gathering Place in Tulsa for the 10:30 am worship from DSt. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on May 24, 2020.

Readings:
Acts 1:1-11 
Psalm 47
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53