Scripture Readings:
Hebrew Scriptures – 2 Kings 2: 1, 6-151
1Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. … 6Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on. 7Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. 8Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.
9When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.” Elisha said, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” 10He responded, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.” 11As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. 12Elisha kept watching and crying out, “Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.
13He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. 14He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.
15When the company of prophets who were at Jericho saw him at a distance, they declared, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” They came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him.
Acts of the Apostles – Acts 1: 1-112
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.”
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.”
Gospel Lesson – Luke 24: 44-533
44Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
50Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
We’re Still Working Out Some of the Details.
I don’t know about you, but I feel sorry for certain national holidays like Presidents’ Day, Flag Day, Arbor Day…and did any of you miss National Tartan Day?4 Sure, historians, flag enthusiasts, environmentalists, or those of us of Scottish ancestry observe one or more of these occasions, but if it weren’t for department store sales, some of these days simply would be forgotten. There they are on the calendar, just waiting to be celebrated, but hardly anyone remembers them anymore. Call them the redheaded stepchildren of national holidays, if you like. They’re the holidays that pale in comparison to the A-list celebrations like Mothers’ Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July.
The Christian calendar, like our civic one, has its own often neglected holidays, and today is one of them. Actually, today isn’t one of them; the real holiday was supposed to be observed this past Thursday. But we’re Methodists, and we can’t be bothered to come to church for a worship service in the middle of the week any more, let alone on a Thursday! We might miss “CSI”, “Grey’s Anatomy” or the season ending finale of that new cop show, “Southland”! And so Ascension Day slipped by, didn’t it, unnoticed and uncelebrated by most of us. We’ve pushed our celebration off to this Sunday following the actual day.
Two questions come immediately to mind. First, what is Ascension Day anyway, and second, why in the world is it important? Are we really missing out if we don’t have fireworks and floats to celebrate it? Well, it may be important for us to celebrate this day because it marks two things. First, it’s the crucial marker in the church’s understanding of the transformation of a rabbi from Nazareth into his existence as the Christ. Prior to the Ascension Jesus was walking around talking and eating with his disciples – physically present to them – teaching them, leading them, praying with them, and sharing in every aspect of ordinary human life. The Ascension marks the last time any of them had any perceptible sense of his presence among them. After that he was just, well, gone.
Secondly, Jesus’ transition from life on earth to some as yet not fully understood life after his death marks a transition in salvation history for us, as we move from the time of Jesus to the time of the Church. Now, in spite of the attitude of many of us who believe that we’ve really mucked it up ever since Jesus left, since the human Jesus was no longer physically present, the movement that bore his name had to now find some way to manifest his presence and his ministry in the world. In and through the Church, Jesus becomes present to the world in the breaking of bread – in soup kitchens, around the dinner table, and around the communion table. In and through the Church, Jesus is supposed to become present to the world in the healing of the wounded, in the preaching of the good news to the poor, in the comforting of those who mourn, and in the work of peace and reconciliation. Jesus has left us. But, more than that, he’s left us the task of continuing the work that he himself was doing as a sign of God’s presence in the world.
In a way, you might say that the Ascension marks the completion of Easter; it’s for that reason that our acolytes carry out the light of Christ in and to the world at the close of every one of our worship services. Now, I don’t know of any Progressive Christian who still believes in a three-tiered universe anymore – with heaven up there for Hubble to photograph and hell down there somewhere beneath our feet. But the symbolism of these stories is meant to tell us that when Jesus left, while God’s creative work of bringing new life to the world may have been completed, now that power still waits to be fully set free through us.
As I hinted earlier, the Ascension is one of the most difficult articles of the creed for most Christians to understand – if they ever bother to wrap their minds around it! It is hard, if not simply impossible to picture Jesus as a kind of Peter Pan rising off into the clouds. Artists who’ve painted that scene have often made it look either grotesque or simply ridiculous.5
In the one line of this account, though (that I just love) from Acts 1: 1-11, suddenly two men in white robes appear to stand by the disciples – who, presumably, are still looking upward with their mouths open – and these angelic beings say to them, “Men (and women) of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Why, indeed? The new images of the Ascension will come from the struggle and joy we all can experience as we engage in the creative quest that our faith demands – and not from standing around in dumbfounded awe gazing up into the sky.
There’s yet another favorite story of mine of a Jewish rabbi; this one announced to his congregation one Sabbath day that the Messiah had come. Shocked, of course, the congregants began to protest that the ongoing presence of hunger, warfare, homelessness, and all kinds of abuse and suffering all challenged the rabbi’s sanity. To this he simply responded, “Yes, yes, I know. We’re still working out some of the details.”
From our twenty-first century perspective the rabbi was right. The Messiah has come, and we’re the ones who’ve been left to work out the details. So, I submit, Jesus was never looking for ecclesiastical patriarchs, administrative functionaries or political assistants; he was looking for faithful witnesses. What’s more we’ve been promised that you and I – if we’re paying attention – will be given all that we need to do what has to be done. Jesus isn’t around any longer. He’s gone. But we can witness to the power of his presence every time we give ourselves to working out the details.
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1 As Elijah waited for the whirlwind that would take him to heaven, his disciple Elisha asked for “a double portion of his spirit.” Sure enough, when Elisha picked up Elijah's mantle, that's what he got – a powerful dose of the Spirit. In much the same way, Jesus promised his disciples that he would not leave them comfortless, but would give them the Spirit. He meant for them to have an inheritance. And when, in a manner of speaking, they picked up his mantle, that's what they got – a double portion. The Spirit at Pentecost! We can still feel the force of it, whistling around our ears. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself; that’s next week’s chapter!
2 While the crucifixion and resurrection stories are told and retold in the gospels, the Ascension and Pentecost stories, oddly enough, are told only in Luke’s second volume called The Acts of the Apostles. It’s Luke’s way of saying that the retelling of these events central to Jesus’ life are the heart of his gospel message. One of the things going on here, too, is that Luke wants us to recall the ascension of Elijah, but that Jesus completely surpasses it.
So Acts 1 begins where Luke left off in his last chapter of the Gospel account with this story of Jesus’ ascension. Although he’s left, the theme of this chapter (and, in fact, of the entire book of Acts) is the celebration of the presence, not the absence, of the Holy Spirit.
3 Luke’s stories say that Jesus is taken up into heaven – like Elijah – and while we may remain unconvinced, simply by the impossibility of the physics of it ever happening in the way that it’s described, we have no trouble at all understanding it emotionally. We’ve come to learn too much about loss. Loved ones are suddenly taken from us and the way that they go fills us with both terror and awe. It is an amazing, and yet, dreadful thing. Even though well meaning people feel compelled to tell us that they’re going to “a better place,” we can’t – at least not yet – follow them, and so we have a hard time imagining that we ever will. In the strange days afterward, we have to come to terms with feeling bereft of ever receiving an inheritance.
So these stories about Jesus’ ascension are about what’s come to be a Christian attitude toward death. Take away the fantastic and, yes, unbelievable circumstances of such a departure from the earth as this, and here is the hard reality we’re left with: Jesus is gone. He rose, not just from the dead, but right up and out of our world. Now what?
4 Americans of Scottish descent have played a vibrant and influential role in the development of this country. However not until 1997 was this influence recognized by a single-year U.S. Senate Resolution that appeared in the Congressional Record of April 7, 1997. In 1998 National Tartan Day was officially recognized on a permanent basis when the U.S. Senate passed Senate Resolution 155 recognizing April 6th as National Tartan Day. This was followed by companion bill House Resolution 41 which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on March 9, 2005. That date actually commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, which asserted Scotland's sovereignty over English territorial claims. Some of us Scotsmen even believe that declaration was an influence on the authors of the American Declaration of Independence.
5 There’s even one rendering of the scene on the ceiling of York Minster Church in England where, with an apparent sense of humor, the artist has depicted the soles of a pair of feet, seen from below, with the hem of a robe forming a circle around them, and, beyond this, the upturned faces of the Virgin Mary and eleven disciples, all looking upward at this vision as, directly above them, Jesus sails away into the clouds (F. Harrison, York Minster [Jarrold and Sons Ltd, Pub., Norwich, England, 2007], p. 55).