Ascension Hope - Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension (May 12, 2024)

Scripture Readings: ​Acts 1:1–11 | Psalm 93 | Ephesians 1:15–23 | Luke 24:44–53 

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” (Luke 24:51).

Today is Ascension Sunday: the final Sunday of the season of Easter, and a time to commemorate the moment when Jesus Christ the Risen Lord was taken up from the sight of His disciples, and into the highest heaven… to take His seat at the right hand of God the Father, and from there to take up His royal reign forever.
 
The feast of the Ascension calls us to look toward heaven, and recall the real reason for our hope for our world… not the hope of a retreat somewhere else, but the hope of the recuing reign of the Risen King. And these days, we don’t need all that much reminding that our world stands in real need of some real hope to hold onto… reasons to not give up, and get to work bringing about things like beauty, peace, and light. But sadly, and for some time now, it seems that many of us Christians have forgotten the true hope we’re called to share with the world around us, and have instead placed our hopes in getting to escape from it. Seeking simply to be swept away from all of this darkness and mess we humans have made.
 
But as common as this message of escape might be, even in Christian circles, it isn’t the real hope that the Bible or the Christian faith is about at all. In the Holy Scriptures, and in the Creeds we find, not the hope of being rescued from the earth… but the hope of being rescue along with the earth… set free to live under the reign of our Saviour King forever.
 
And so, as we turn now to our Scripture readings for this morning, and take a closer look at what the Ascension of Jesus Christ really means, pay close attention to why we can have real hope for the future of our world.
 
Turning first to our second reading, from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we find the Apostle commending the faith and the love of this early Christian community.
 
Ephesians 1:15-16, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.”

And yet, it seems that St. Paul recognizes that there is something this Church community was needing… namely, he prays for them to have hope… to understand the story that they were a part of already in the Risen Christ, and to know where this story is headed, despite the darkness and difficulties they were facing in their day.
 
Ephesians 1:17-19, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”
 
St. Paul can be a bit wordy at times, but his meaning here is important for us to here today: we too need to come to understand the hope that we are called to as Christians… both the glory that awaits us, and how God’s power is at work bringing it about.
 
We can’t just lean on wishful thinking, or cling to vague ideas about a happy afterlife, somewhere out there, over the rainbow… we have been offered real, concrete reasons to have hope for our future: and that is God’s life-giving power which we have seen at work raising Jesus Christ from the dead… and in His ascension to the right side of God the Father.
 
St. Paul goes on in Ephesians 1:20-21, “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him 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.”
 
While many of us today find it easy to imagine that the point of Jesus leaving His disciples was to go off somewhere else, for the first Christians like St. Paul and the rest of the Apostles, it clearly meant something very different, and much more hopeful: the ascension of Jesus  was not His escape from the world… but His elevation to it’s highest throne. He’s not abandoning creation, He’s taking charge of it! Taking His place in the divine command centre, so to speak… to guide and direct God’s people, and to empower us to carry on the work of His Good Kingdom here and now.
 
And so, the Church… the worldwide community of those who have turned our lives over to Jesus Christ in faith, and who have already received the gift of His saving love… we are the ones who are now called to share this hope… the hope of the Risen Saviour King.
 
Ephesians 1:22-23, “And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
 
The Church community, the shared life of us believers… not simply on Sundays… our lives together are to be the main location on earth where the Kingship of the Risen Christ is acknowledged, and made known. Our lives are to be the sign that, above every other claim to power, authority, and might… Jesus Christ is Lord of all… and that one day, every other power, as St. Paul puts it, will find its proper place under His feet.
 
That’s a startling image for us, for sure. How is it Good News to be placed under the feet of a king? This is an image of being conquered! In ancient times, vanquished foes would have their victorious opponents symbolically stand upon their necks. Wasn’t the ascension of Jesus supposed to be about offering hope to our world? What kind of hope are we talking about here?
 
Of course, some Christians have picked up this kind of imagery in the Bible, and run with it… imagining that Jesus wants to violently overthrow all who dare oppose Him, or those who get in His people’s way.
 
We know there are those who have thought this way for centuries… from the early Christian Emperors in the late Roman times… or the medieval rulers of Europe… or advocates of Christian nationalism here in North America today… those who would use Christianity to justify their own aggressive grasping after worldly power… and who seek to rule by actively destroying the hopes of those who aren’t on their side.
 
This is how tyrants have always ruled… following a principle we could call “Limited Concern”: insisting that our tribe, our culture, our way of life must be on top, and in control… that our will must be done… and who cares what happens to everyone else.

But it’s not just tyrants and moral monsters that have a habit of seeing the world this way. Lots of us may simply limit our concern to our little corner of the world, in much more subtle ways. In our reading from Acts Chapter 1, and its account of the Ascension, we see can that even the disciples had a hard time shaking this mindset of ‘limited concern’… but Jesus Christ the Risen Lord, calls for a very different approach for His people, back then and today.
 
Forty days after Easter, the disciples excitedly ask the Risen Lord: Are you about to bring God’s good kingdom to Israel at last?
 
They knew all of the prophetic promises that had helped Israel hold onto hope for centuries… promises from God that despite the devastation and darkness of Exile, the Living God would again rescue and restore His people, that the Messiah-King would one day come… and that from Jerusalem the blessed reign of God would be victorious.
 
And Jesus knew the limited scope of their hopes… focussed on Israel’s restoration alone. Israel’s peace. Israel’s future as God’s beloved children.

And all this mattered to Jesus too. But He had, and has, a much bigger mission in mind… offering a hope that far exceeds their expectations… one which would fulfill all of the promises of Israel’s prophets… by extending God’s good reign to the ends of the earth.
 
Acts 1:6-8, “So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
 
The Good News of God’s reign is not just for one people, one culture, one nation… it is for all the earth to enjoy! All are invited to believe, to be loved, and to be inspired by this whole new vision of where our human story is headed.
 
The disciples were more concerned with their own corner of the world. And we are concerned about our own corner too, here in Gondola Point. And so is God. The Good News of the Ascension of Jesus Christ reminds us that Gondola Point is to be a real part of God’s good Kingdom. And we are His witnesses here… our lives display His Lordship today.
 
But to be clear, the hope of the Ascension is not about some of us being elevated over our neighbours… sitting by watching while others are crushed underneath Christ’s feet. Listen to what St. Paul says here!
 
Ephesians 1:21-23, the Father elevates Jesus “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. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
 
Jesus is lifted up, elevated above every name… all things are under His feet… including you and I. This is not about how we Christians can make our kingdom come, and our will be done… but God’s alone. Absolutely everyone and everything is now underneath Christ’s feet.
 
Again, this image may strike us today as disturbing, rather than as Good News, and a reason to have real hope. But that is because we keep forgetting what God’s Kingdom and God’s will actually looks like. Along with our non-Christian neighbours, we tend to keep imagining that God’s rule is basically oppressive, damaging… about keeping us from truly experiencing the “good life” we deeply desire.
 
But again, the Ascension reminds us that the One who has been both raised from the dead, and raised to the highest throne of heaven is none other than the One who gave up His life to save His beloved world! The One who has been given the ultimate authority in the universe… the One who will one day call us all to account, and sort out all of the mess we humans have made in every corner of creation… this is the same One who stretched out his hands in suffering, to be nailed to the cross in our place… dying to save, not just Israel… or any one people, or nation, but the world through the Father’s self-giving love, which the Scriptures have pointed us to all the way through.
 
Luke 24:44-48, “Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.”
 
The same Jesus who died to save us while we were still sinners… to bring us true forgiveness, and the freedom of God’s New Life… the same Jesus who still bears the scars of the cross even now, is the same One who reigns on high, and because He does, we can have real hope for our world  today.
 
Christ’s resurrection, His victory over the grave is the first sign of God’s intentions for the world we see around us. As dark and as devastating, and even as dead as things may seem at times, the very same power that was at work raising Jesus Christ to eternal life will also rescue and reconcile all things, sorting out His beloved creation in justice and love, putting everything back together again in its proper place… underneath the nail-pierced, peace-bringing feet of our Saviour King.
 
And as Christ’s people, here and now, our place is to be His witnesses… to live as those who are already existing are under His good reign: learning more about, and living out our faith… growing deeper and wider in God’s great love for all… and sharing the hope of His good Kingdom, both here in our little corner of the world, and beyond.
 
This is a tall task, but not one that we are expected to do all by ourselves. We’ll have more to say about this next week, as we celebrate Pentecost, but it’s a key part of the whole story of Scripture, and especially the Ascension: the same power of God that raised Jesus from the dead, and that will one day restore our broken world, has already been poured out on those of us who place our faith in Jesus… the power of God’s own Holy Spirit.
 
As Jesus the Risen Lord is lifted up to the Father’s right hand to reign, He sends the Holy Spirit to empower His people to live God’s way in the world.
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We hear this in Luke 24:49, where Jesus says, “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
 
And in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
 
And right before our reading today from Ephesians, St. Paul says this in Ephesians 1:13-14, “In [Christ] you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”
 
As I said, we’ll talk about the Holy Spirit more next week, but these passages remind us that the Ascension is certainly not the end of the story, but simply the beginning of a whole new movement… the power of God’s Holy Spirit at work in His people, as we share the hope of His Good Kingdom with our world.
 
So, may the Good News of the Ascension of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord to reign at the Father’s right hand, fill us with the hope that our Saviour King has no intention of abandoning this world He died to save… the hope that His justice, and mercy, and faithful love reach out to every corner of creation… and that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, and which has been poured out into the lives of His people today, will bring God’s broken world back together again in Christ, once and for all. Amen. 
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