Ascension Day — 10 May 2018
Trinity – 12:15 pm
Acts 1:1-11 | Psalm 93
| Ephesians 1:15-23 | Luke
24:44-53
“Repentance and
forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning
from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” [Luke 24:47-48]
[[I’m going to make an assumption – I don’t doubt a
reasonable assumption for some of you, but perhaps not for some others of you,
and if that’s so I apologize, it’s okay, I’m not criticizing! – an assumption
that you who are attending this Ascension Day service in the middle of lunch
hour have attended Ascension Day services before, and thus you have previously
heard Luke the Evangelist’s narratives of the ascension of the Risen Jesus to
heaven. Both of them, from the Acts of
the Apostles and from his Gospel. And
you have previously noted that they are not quite
the same story, at least in terms of their chronology. There is no reasonable doubt that the Gospel
and the Book of Acts were written by the same author, but, as Lauren pointed
out in her sermon last Sunday, we have no indication of how much time elapsed
between the writing of the Gospel and the writing of Acts. Did Luke finish the Gospel, roll up the
scroll of the manuscript, say “Well, the first half is done!” and open a fresh
scroll to begin Volume Two? Or was there
a lapse of time – maybe a little, maybe a number of years – between the
composition of the Gospel and the composition of the Book of Acts? We don’t know. One thing we can say is that although they
are by the same author, there are distinct differences in literary genre. The first book uses the genre of “gospel” invented
by St. Mark, one of St. Luke’s major sources, and the second book is in the genre,
more or less, of Hellenistic historiography.
That, and the possible lapse of some time during which St. Luke may have
done further reflection and perhaps received additional reminiscences from the
early Christian community, might explain the differences. The bottom line is, it doesn’t really matter.]]
Today I want to focus on what the Gospel records Jesus as
saying to his disciples just before his ascension. (I say “ascension” because that’s what we
traditionally call it, and spatial imagery is pretty much unavoidable, as long
as we understand that “heaven” in this context is not “up in the sky,” even
though for the Greeks the word “ouranos,”
“sky,” always also connoted the realm of the gods. The point is how the Letter to the Ephesians
puts it today, “[God] raised [Christ] from the dead and seated him at his right
hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and
dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in
the age to come.” [Eph. 1:20-21] As I said, spatial imagery is pretty much
unavoidable!)\
Anyway, you
recall that during Jesus’ earthly ministry, his disciples tagged along after
him, very frequently not getting the point, but occasionally doing pretty well
(remember when Jesus sent them out two by two and they were able to heal in
Jesus’ name). Well, now this is it. Jesus says, “Now it’s your responsibility. You can’t just stand around watching me do
stuff anymore. [Or, as the angel in Acts
puts it, “Why are you guys standing around staring at the sky?”] You will receive power when the Holy Spirit
has come upon you, and you will now be my witnesses. And (as St. Matthew’s community remembered
it) I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
So Ascension Day is not “Goodbye, Jesus!” Ascension Day is “It’s time to get on with
it!”
