Thursday, May 10, 2018

10 May 2018 - Ascension Day


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!”

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