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Sermon Date:	May 17, 2007
Sermon Text:	Luke 24:44-53
Church Calendar:	Ascension Day
Delivered By:	Rev. W.M. Arp

"On Christ’s Ascension I Now Build"

On Sunday I spoke with you about Jesus’ words to his disciples on the night He was betrayed: (John 16:28 NIV) "I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father."

Tonight we celebrate the fulfillment of those words and the beginning the next stage in the history of the world. Of course it goes by pretty much unnoticed every year. The world hasn’t found any economic motivation to mark this momentous day – no family traditions have grown up around Ascension involving gift exchanges and meals – no special greeting cards or parties, just an ordinary Thursday between the 6th and 7th Sundays of Easter.

A pastor tells about one memorable Ascension Day celebration at the seminary. It was quite an event, with deans, faculty, and seminarians all suitably dressed in their robes to commemorate this holy mystery. The service ended and the entire assembly processed outside singing a rousing ascension hymn. Unknown to the worshipers, an enterprising student had prepared a surprise ending for them. He had taken one of those near life-sized figures from a nativity scene – you know the hollow, plastic, painted kind – and stuffed it some sort of rocket device. As the procession of clergy marched into the courtyard, the student lit the fuse, sending the statue soaring up out of the shrubbery, and finally doing a nose dive onto the roof of a nearby building where the Ascension rocket sputtered and died.

The dean of the seminary was not impressed with the student’s defense that he was “simply trying to dramatize my belief in the reality of the ascension.”

From a worldly point of view the Ascension just seems so awkward. We all know that what goes up must come down – that’s the law of gravity. In our world rockets go up, the stock market may go up, taxes go up, but who ever heard of a man going up. The rest of the Christian story people can tolerate – a baby born in a manager is kind of cute and sentimental – an innocent man condemned to die a torturous death stirs our sense of justice – even the resurrection with its hope of new life is an appealing image to people.

But it is the ascension that completes the deal – without it the whole notion that Jesus is really, truly God is left open ended. The ascension of Jesus back into heaven moves the story of salvation forward and embraces us with an incredible expectation for our future.

Take another look at it with me again this evening from three different perspectives drawn from each of the readings we just heard.

The first perspective is looking up from down below. The Acts 1 account captures the shock and awe of the eyewitnesses. You see it in their posture – standing “looking intently up into the sky as He was going.” They were dumbfounded and amazed. It’s hard to imagine what their thoughts and feelings must have been. They just stood their staring. God had to send angels to call them back to reality, to get them moving, prepare them for what was next.

We’re not amazed and dumbfounded by much these days. We want to be. People flock to movies about the unexplained and supernatural. They are fascinated by ghost stories and apparitions. Even the accounts of heroic rescues and unexpected survival of calamitous events draw our attention and admiration. People willingly suspend their logic and are carried away by all kinds of stories that move them to cheer and cry.

But when it comes to the things of God we have been trained to be unrelentingly skeptical. It’s really quite ironic, you might go so far as to say satanic, that the one thing absolutely true, grounded in historical eyewitness testimony, is rejected as so much mythology, while all sorts of farfetched nonsense is embraced as harmlessly possible.

The Ascension is God’s final visible appeal to the human race to consider the possibility of His presence, rule and reign of over our reality. What more can He do to capture your heart and your mind for eternity?

Well just this. Pentecost is yet to come and the Holy Spirit offers to lift you up where Jesus is and take another look at life from the perspective of heaven, looking down from up above.

Ephesians 1 our 2nd reading is a prayer for exactly that to happen to you and to me continuously. Paul says “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better.”

Here’s what he asks for: “to know the hope to which God has called you.” That hope is simply the promise that there is more to life than meets the eye. This is not all there is. Heaven exists. Jesus ascended into it. It is a real and physical place. Jesus did not shed his physical body and toss it in the bushes to go back to the Father’s side. His body, his real flesh and blood, a beating heart, a functioning brain, arms, legs, muscles and tendons, stomach, intestines, eyes, ears and nose all went into heaven.

You see what that means? You just sang it. “On Christ’s ascension I now build – the hope of my ascension.” The hope to which God has called you is that in Christ you too will be physically, bodily present in heaven.

Paul goes on and asks that we would know “the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.” Now whatever that includes it sounds pretty good. Heaven is a place of splendor and glory beyond the ability of words to describe.

And if that were not enough Paul adds this: that we would know the “incomparably great power for us who believe.” And he describes that power – and this is truly inconceivable – he says that it is the same power that God the Father used to give life back to Jesus lifeless body! From up above looking down we have the power of life over death at work in us!

There is so much to look forward to. If we could close our eyes and catch even a glimpse of it we would willingly sacrifice any and all pleasures in the here and now to ensure our presence there and then.

Of course that’s the hard part – the waiting. The angels told the disciples – “he’ll come back in the same way you’ve seen him go.” Paul assures us that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God ruling and reigning all of human history with “authority, power and dominion” for one purpose – to get us safely through. That’s what it means when it says God placed all things under Jesus’ feet and appointed Him to head over everything for the church. From up above looking down there is nothing for us to be afraid of.

That’s what gives us the final perspective on the Ascension. We get to look forward at our lives having looked up in awe and by the Spirit’s power looked down from above.

Our gospel offers that final perspective. It has an unexpected ending. After all the disciples had been through, the pain and fear caused by Jesus suffering and death, followed by their joy at His resurrection you would have expected them to be disappointed even heartbroken to see him being taken up and hidden from their sight. But it’s almost as if he never really left them at all – as Luke reports their response to his departure – “Then they worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.”

You see how this works? You are called to look up and consider the truth: God became a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. By his life of perfect trust and obedience Jesus opened the way for your ascension back home to God. His innocent suffering and death pays the price for your homecoming. Your sins are all forgiven – even your slowness to believe with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

When you’ve looked up and seen Him for who He really is you get to look down at life from where He lives and reigns guiding all history to its perfect conclusion. Do you know what that is? The perfect conclusion to human history is your presence with God in heaven. From up above looking down you get a sense of hope, a glorious future, and unbelievable power to live, to not be afraid, to do your best every day, striving to please God in all you think and do and say.

In other words, looking down from up above lets you look forward at your life with great joy no matter what your present circumstances. We live looking forward at a new reality where death and the threat of death are old news. We live looking forward at others with compassion because don’t know how to look up and have never seen life from up above. We live looking forward courageously and with anticipation of what God is up to in the little slice in time that we inhabit.

Come to the Lord’s table tonight – look up, look down and go back to your seat looking forward. Jesus’ didn’t leave us for another place. He is here still, only in a different way – in with and under the bread and wine. He left himself here for us in this meal and has gone on ahead of us in time where he waits for us to catch up to him. His ascension is the guarantee that our future is safe and secure.

Amen.

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