Preached by the Reverend Durrell Watkins at the Sunshine Cathedral on Ascension Sunday, May 28, 2005.
The grace of our Master Teacher — the love of God in the Oneness of Spirit — be with you all.
God Most Powerful on High: You fill the universe with ‘Who You Are’, yet you stooped in the dust of earth to form our first parent by your very own will. As Lao Tze said: “From its first days, the universe came from the One.” We cannot imagine how powerful and glorious you are, but we can know how intimate and personal is your Presence in us. Jesus tells us he was One with you, just as we are one with him and with you.
Yet we still so often think we are all alone on this ball of clay. Lord, have mercy.
We regard others as strangers, as somehow different from us. Christ, have mercy.
We see our world as alien and hostile rather than as friendly and generous. Lord, have mercy.
Wipe away our false view of things even as you forgive our failures and frustrations. Renew our vision of our world and ourselves. We focus of Jesus, who is our Great Example. May we live as he did, in full communion with you and with each other. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Acts 1:4-11 (abridged)
4Forty days after the Resurrection Jesus was eating with his followers. He spoke to them: “Remain here in Jerusalem. God has a messages for you, the message I promised. 5Yes, John baptized with water; but in a few days you will be baptized — indeed, overwhelmed — with Spirit.”
6While they were there they asked him, “Master, now are you going to restore Israel’s political power?”
7He replied: “This is none of your business. Timing is God’s business. Here’s God’s promise for you right here, right now: 8you’ll receive new vitality when the Holy Spirit overpowers you. You’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, indeed to the ends of the earth.”
9Then, right before their eyes, he rose up and disappeared in a cloud. 10They stood there, staring into empty space. Suddenly two beings in white robes appeared, saying: 11“You Galileans, why are just standing here looking up at an empty sky? This same Jesus who has disappeared into heaven will come back just as surely — and in the same way — as he left.”
Luke 24:44-52
44Jesus said to his followers, “Didn’t I explain all this to you while we were together? This is the fulfillment of everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms.”
45Finally they grasped it all as he opened their minds, helping them understand the Scriptures. 46“This is what is written,” he said. “The Anointed One will suffer, only to rise from the dead on the third day. 47Then this life-changing, past-forgiving Good News will be declared in his name to everyone, beginning right here in Jerusalem. 48You’re seeing it happen here and now. 49And now, I’m sending what our Heavenly Parent has promised. Stay right here in the city until you’re energized with this celestial power.”
50They followed him from the city to Bethany, where he lifted his hands and blessed them. 51As he spoke he disappeared from their sight, carried up to heaven.
“Billy Graham tells of a time, during the early years of his preaching ministry, when he was due to lead a crusade in South Carolina, and he needed to mail a letter. He asked a little boy in the main street how he could get to the post office. After the boy had given him directions, Billy said, ‘If you come to the central Baptist church tonight, I'll tell you how to get to heaven.’ The boy replied, ‘No thanks, you don't even know how to get to the post office!’" [1]
We’re very interested in this heaven business. We may not all call it heaven, but most of us seem to believe in or at least have some hope for a continuation of consciousness beyond this experience of life. And this fascination with ultimate things isn’t unique to our culture, community, or generation. Throughout the bible we read various speculations about a world beyond this one.
In Genesis chapter 5, Enoch (who has found favor with God) just disappears. God takes him away.[2] Where? Presumably to a wonderful reality. Let’s call it heaven for our purposes today.
In the book of 2 Kings, Elijah is caught up in a whirlwind and carried off to the heavens. His disciple Elisha witnesses the event and receives a generous anointing of the prophet’s spirit.[3]
In the New Testament, St. Paul says that he knows someone who somehow got caught up into the third heaven, a paradise realm, where he heard amazing things.[4]
And in Revelation, the author claims to look through an open door to heaven, and sees some very interesting events.[5]
Over and over, we read about people visiting heaven, peering mystically into heaven, thinking about heaven, hoping for heaven, entrusting their loved ones to heaven, ultimately and triumphantly relocating to heaven. And the metaphor of heaven always seems to involve rising. One rises above heartache or disappointment or failure or death and ascends to heavenly places, or to a heavenly state of being, sometimes to stay, sometimes to return, sometimes after death, sometimes before, sometimes instead of. Even from Roman Catholic teaching, many of us will remember the story of the Assumption of the Blessed Lady, Mary, who without dying simply rises to a heavenly realm.
Whether it is Enoch or Elijah or Mary cheating death and being taken up to heaven, or the Apostle Paul’s anonymous friend visiting a heavenly realm for a bit, or the Revelator peering into heaven by way of some mystical experience, the metaphor is always one of hope and empowerment: Things are not always fair or easy, they don’t always end according to plan, and yet encoded in our very DNA, our cellular structure, is an indomitable hope that the story does not, cannot end there. There is something more than pain or sorrow or even death. There is something more, and that somehow is meant to help us not grow weary or lose heart.
In the readings this morning the faithful imagination again returns to heavenly themes. Jesus has been arrested, tortured, humiliated, and executed. But that’s not the end of the story.
Jesus is raised to on-going life and significance in the experience we call the Resurrection. Even though he died, his friends continue to encounter him, to speak with him, to sense him, to enjoy his presence, to be nurtured and comforted and strengthen by his wisdom and truth and dignity which could never be killed. But as wonderful as that is, even that is not the end of the story. The story continues, for Luke (both in the gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles) with Jesus ascending into heaven. Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes of destruction, the glorified Christ rises to new heights, new awareness, new realms of power and purpose and possibilities. And this way of thinking about Jesus is not limited to Luke’s imagination. In the fourth gospel, the gospel of John, the writer has Jesus say to Mary, “Do not come near me, for I have not YET ASCENDED to my heavenly parent…” The idea that even consciously surviving death isn’t the end of the story is again affirmed. Death may end the suffering. Resurrection may keep one among the living. But there is also ascension, a rising to eternal significance and ever increasing glory.
OK. Jesus was resurrected, and the resurrection story even gets more dramatic by his ascending to heaven in front of witnesses. And like Elisha, these witnesses are promised some on-going experience of their Teacher’s spirit. The real question is: who cares? Why is any of this important? Why spend time this morning reflecting on these ancient stories? I’m so glad you asked.
Jesus was killed by crucifixion, the horrifying and especially brutal form of capitol punishment used by the Roman empire. Can you imagine how seditious, how rebellious, how “in your face” it is to say to the world’s only super power, “you killed our hero but he didn’t stay dead.” What can you do with that? You can only kill someone once, and if it doesn’t take, you lose! The Resurrection is a way of restoring hope to the hopeless, giving power to the powerless, helping the defeated experience victory, and allowing the exiled to know freedom. If the best you can do is kill us then you lose because you CANNOT kill the perfect and divine idea of God, Christ in us, the hope of glory![6] It is indestructible. All you have is weaponry; we have divine Love and it casts out all fear[7] and it lasts for all eternity. And as exciting as that is, the story doesn’t end there.
The first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, the most powerful ruler in the world at the time, is called Lord. The oppressed respond by calling one of their own “Lord” – Jesus. The God that shows no partiality[8] can anoint and raise a Galilean carpenter as well as an imperial nobleman or general. The least and the lowly are empowered in the thinking of divine Mind, where the last are made first[9] and the death is robbed of its terrifying sting[10]. But not only do the oppressed and the marginalized and the vilified find hope in their non-imperial Lord, God’s anointed raised up from among their very midst, but their lord is constantly held up over and against the oppressive Lord Caesar. At his death, Caesar Augustus is cremated, and from his funeral pyre a Senator claims to see his spirit rising to the heavens to rule forever on a cosmic throne. And here, just a few decades later, the followers of Jesus say, “guess what, we can beat that! Caesar’s ascension had one witness. Jesus’ has many. Caesar is said to have risen from a dignified state funeral service. Jesus rises first from the indignity of death by crucifixion, and then again by ascending to heaven to sit on his eternal throne.”
The gospel is a story of excluded people who will not be defeated. They may be killed. They may be excluded. But they will not lose their sense of dignity. They will not lose hope. They will not lose their sense of eternal significance. They will not lose the truth that God loves each of them just as they are and always has and always will and no government or family or religion or principality or power will separate them from this great liberating and empowering hope[11]. Jesus did not stay dead, and in fact, ascended to eternal glory, and not just in opposition to Caesar, but as an example that includes all of us.
The least. The lowly. The lonely. The defeated. The marginalized. The left out. The forgotten. The vilified. The misunderstood. The targets of bigotry or hate or ignorance or power struggles have a throne of their own, that is, a seat of power and glory and eternal significance. The Ascension is a story that reminds us that OUR thrones are ready for us to claim right here, right now, and forever.
Deuteronomy 32.11 says that just like a mother eagle circles her nest and flutters over her young spreading out her wings and taking her eaglets bearing them on the strength of her wings to teach them how to fly, so does our God hover over us, lift us up, and teaches us how to soar, how to ascend above the indignities of life to sanctified significance and divine dignity and holy hope now and forever.
The ascension is our promise, not that it did happen but that it does. What Jesus did, we can do. Jesus wasn’t showing off, he was showing how…how we all are children of God and as such are entitled to hope and the healing that it offers. Your throne is ready. Let’s begin our ascension to the throne of dignity and hope and empowerment right now. Amen.
