(A sermon preached on Ascension Day 2023. Photo obviously of two angels explaining to the Disciples … 🙂
The Ascension ought to be a festival season. Didn’t it used to be a bank holiday, a half day of school, early closing, some of you might be old enough to remember it? Never mind about the government but shame on us the church that we have forgotten how essential it is.
In just these two readings we have at least six reasons. I don’t expect you to remember any of them, but I would like you to go away thinking to yourself Wow there’s more to the Ascension than I thought.
Lets start with the Gospel of Luke – the risen Jesus explains to the Disciples how everything must be fulfilled – so lets look to the Gospel of John to see some of the promises Jesus made about the Ascension. Jesus promised that He would send us another advocate – without the Ascension there’s no Holy Spirit.
He asked us to be glad about that and that is tricky but what we’re looking at is exchanging a single Jesus in a single body in a single space in time and in Jerusalem, with the Spirit of Jesus inside each and every Christian the world over, throughout all time. When you put it like that, that should make us glad.
Jesus promised that He would be in heaven preparing a place for us.
The Book of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is in heaven praying for you – I find that particularly encouraging on days when I’m struggling to pray
So for Jesus to fulfil His own promises to us, He must ascend.
The Risen Jesus explains that the messiah must suffer – we see this phrase echoed in Acts – how Jesus, After His suffering – such a gentle euphemism for such a horrible way to die.
But note that the risen Jesus presents himself to Thomas with holes in his hands, with a gash in his side. When we talk about healing we often think in terms of scars and wounds being all nice and smoothly healed over, but Jesus has kept these wounds.
And that seems to me to be good and right. We might expect that in heaven all our scars and wounds will have gone. Perhaps so, or perhaps only those scars that have made us bitter and unforgiving. Perhaps we will have let go of those scars. And Perhaps we will retain the wounds that have made us better Christians.
John Bunyan in Pilgrims Progress puts into the mouth of Mr Valiant for Truth, just as he is about to die, to cross over the river to the Celestial city – he says My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me, that I have fought his battles, who will now be my rewarder.”
Jesus goes onto explain that repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached. It really is astonishing to see how those first disciples really did forgive each other, Thomas, Judas, the Religious Leaders, the Romans. At the earliest of days there’s just no bitterness no revenge.
Stephen, being stoned by mob violence, looks up and sees the Ascended Jesus in heaven and its this vision of Jesus that gives him the strength to forgive those who are killing him, and it gives him the hope of heaven and the grace that he needed for a good death.
Jesus calls his disciples to stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high, until you have been baptised with the Holy Spirit. That’s sounds exciting but Jesus did not say “By the way this will only be 10 days.
How good are you at waiting?
They had to learn to live in the period of Now and Not Yet – Now they know that there is more to life than Life Then Death – they know so much and yet they know that there’s more.
We live on the other side of that first Pentecost but like those disciples we suffer from the frustration of the Now – knowing God’s great love and power and we have glimpses of the Kingdom – but we live in the Not Yet – the fullness of God’s kingdom is still to come – and so we pray and we do what these disciples did, we worship and praise God with great joy.
Jesus promised us that through the Ascension He would send the Holy Spirit, that we would be clothed with power, baptised with the Holy Spirit and that would be the catalyst for us to be witnesses.
So over these 10 days of Thy Kingdom Come, pray for the Church, pray for us to be clothed with power, for us to be so full of the Holy Spirit that we witness to Seaford the great power of God’s love and transforming forgiveness.
Because then we can look forward to the return of This Same Jesus – who will come to judge the living and the dead. And of all the people, of all the gods, that you have ever heard of, Jesus is the one you want to be doing the judging.
This is the Same Jesus born in poverty not with a silver spoon, familiar with being a refugee, who calls people who are not the cleverest nor the holiest, this same Jesus who has time to stop and heal an old woman with internal bleeding, who hugs a man with leprosy, who has time for blessing children, who allows a persistent pagan woman to be witty and stubborn and blessed – “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters table”
This same Jesus who forgives those who nailed him, who walks unrecognised on the road to Emmaus, who hugs Mary, who lets Thomas poke him. This Same Jesus has time for you and me, He forgives us and walks with us.
This is Same Jesus is the one you want to be your judge.
So through the Ascension we learn so much, I’ve given you too many today. Perhaps today my favourite point is the point that in the Ascension Jesus has begun to fulfil His promise – to send us the Holy Spirit –
and in that we are reminded that This Same Jesus keeps His promises –
to be with us always to the very end,
to come and make his home in us,
to be praying for us in heaven,
to be preparing us a place in heaven,
to be coming back to take us to be with him.
This Same Jesus. That’s enough for today.
Happy Ascension Day to you.