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May 16, 2010
Luke 24:44-53; Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23

I did this week what I usually do when it’s a preaching week for me — I read the scriptures many times, I studied them, I had conversations about them, and I basically lived with them running through my head at the breakfast table, in the shower, while I drove around, and while I slept. 

Initially, I thought the fact that there are two versions of the same story for today might throw me for a loop, but then I realized repetition and retelling is pretty much the standard mode of operation in my life.  Maybe it is in yours too. 

Does this sound familiar?  “Sit your hiney in your seat until your green beans are gone ... Do not get out of your chair until you finish your vegetables ... You may not be excused until there is no more green on your plate.”  

Then there’s the fact that we live eight hours away from our closest family and many of our good friends have scattered post-grad school, so I give the same updates to a variety of people via phone, e-mail, and Facebook on a regular basis. 

And you know, my brain’s just not as clear as it used to be since my concussion last December, so my patient husband (and probably some of you) occasionally have to hear the same story a number of times.  Thank you for your patience.  And thank you for your patience.

Anyway, repetition - we repeat out of necessity for communication.  We do it for emphasis.  We do it for clarity.  We repeat ourselves out of tradition and as a part of ritual, to shape our living, to make meaning, and to sharpen our understanding. 

Luke, who is credited with writing both these Ascension stories, is doing all of those things today.  He’s ending his Gospel, his Good News, with this story of exaltation, and he’s beginning Acts, the story of the early church as it unfolds in the lives of a bunch of motley disciples under the influence of the Holy Spirit with this same story. 

He’s communicating.  He’s emphasizing.  He’s ritualizing.  And mainly, I think, he’s clarifying for his community just what he’s trying to get at with this "beam me up, Goddy" kind of story. 

It’s obviously important to him, right?  He’s using it to frame both his story of Jesus and his stories of what the people who loved and walked with Jesus did as a result of having been exposed to God’s love made flesh in the world.  Either that, or he had a concussion.  We’ll really never know, so let’s go with the first. 
   
And let’s begin by talking about Luke’s first version of the Ascension story.  He starts his Gospel by addressing it to his friend, Theophilus, which can be interpreted as “friend of God” or “beloved of God” or “lover of God,” so it’s probably his way of telling his version of the Jesus story to those in his community who are serious about pursuing God’s love story for the world. 

He writes so that God’s beloved might, in his words, “know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”  Another translation reads, “so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” 

Truth and certainty — these are exactly what Luke’s Jesus is getting at in his careful instruction and preparation of the disciples at the end of this Gospel in the Ascension story.  He is leaving the disciples, and he wants to give them all the tools and strength and assurance he can, so they can carry on his message and his acts of love and live well with God’s people in the way God intends. 
   
Here’s what he gives them in Luke’s gospel:

First… Understanding.  He leads them through the scriptures, giving them the assurance that they stand on a strong foundation and lean back on a rich reserve.  He teaches them how he fits into and fulfills their stories in the scriptures and in their lives.

Second… Jesus gives them a message.  He doesn’t send them out into the world without an elevator speech.  “Return to God,” he tells them to say, “reshape your lives for abundance and love and experience the tremendous forgiveness, grace, and welcome God has for you.”

Third… Jesus gives them a target audience.  It’s the whole world, by the way.  They can look at it as a big and impossible job, or they can look at it as “hey, we can’t miss the mark.”  This target audience, the whole of God’s family, is another reminder for the disciples of the extravagance and generosity of God’s love.  In a world that drew tight boundaries about who was in and who was out, who mattered and who didn’t, who had worth and who had none, this was a radical message from a God of radical love.  To know that this was the God behind their charge must have brought the disciples some relief and excitement for the journey.

Fourth… Jesus blesses the disciples and the journey that is ahead of them.  He showers his love and presence on them and fills them with joy, a joy that the gospel writer tells us cannot be contained.  It spills out of the disciples in their worship and in their return to life in Jerusalem.  It brings them to God “continually” Luke says, and they bless God in return.
 
And fifth, and most importantly, Jesus then gets out of their way.  He gets out of eyeshot so they can adjust their sight to the new reality that lies ahead of them.  Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes of this moment using the analogy of turning on the light when you awake.

“Imagine what it is like when you first wake up in the morning,” he writes. 
When you put on the light, all you are conscious of is the brightness of the light itself.  Only gradually do your eyes adjust sufficiently to the light that you are able to make out other objects.  After a few moments, however, you cease to be conscious of the light itself, and start to see what else is in the room, as it is illumined by the light.
 
The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, says Williams, show him to have been like that initial morning light: at first, Jesus’ resurrected self was so blinding that the disciples, worn out with grief and disorientation, could only be conscious of him.  

The Ascension, then, is that moment when the light itself recedes into the background, so that Jesus becomes the one through whom we see the rest of the world.  

Williams writes, “He is the light we see by; we see the world in a new way because we see it through him, see it with his eyes.” 

This is what Jesus was preparing the disciples for.  This is why he taught and reassured and blessed them — so he could get out of the way and watch their love, his love, spread all over the world. 

With these new eyes, the disciples see, we can see, the world as a place where Jesus has promised to be and where we are committed to be as followers of Jesus.  The Ascension then, is not so much about Jesus going up to heaven but about him making room for the disciples’ vision of love for the world.

So, the disciples should be set, right?  They’ve got understanding, a bang-up message, a can’t lose audience, the blessings of Jesus, and that Jesus light to see by.  Theophilus or the friends of God in Luke’s community, should have the tools to get this Christian living really underway. 

But… then Luke tells the story again.  He repeats himself.  Somebody didn’t eat their green beans.  Something isn’t going quite according to plan.  The lovers of God in Luke’s community need a pep talk.  They need clarity.  They need understanding.  Chances are they didn’t all get a concussion.  Whatever the case, Luke gives it to them again.

This time they get their instructions through the Holy Spirit.  Now, keep in mind the Holy Spirit doesn’t technically come until next week at Pentecost (another can’t miss service at MUCC), but remember Luke is telling this to his community members in hindsight, so things have a tendency to mush together a bit, and usually for a good reason. 

Perhaps it was his way of telling them these were instructions from God, that they came in and with the power of God, or that they weren’t simply another teaching—they were meant to inspire, to breathe God’s breath into the disciples.

This time Luke tells his community that Jesus is alive again and he has given his disciples “convincing proof.”  Not only that, Luke says, but did I mention he stayed for 40 days? That’s Biblical code for a LONG time. 

This is the real thing, friends, Luke is saying.  Jesus has overcome death, he is alive, and he has made a substantial and lasting commitment to be with us.   This movement, this Good News doesn’t end with the cross, Luke tells his friends and us. Sure, the disciples must have been devastated with Jesus’ loss.  They obviously needed the comfort of his presence. 

Perhaps Luke’s community had also experienced setbacks.  Maybe they had lost focus.  But Jesus overcame death and returned to those who loved him, Luke is repeating here.  What can you not overcome with the power of Jesus’ love and the promise of his sustaining presence?

In Acts, the disciples and the lovers of God in Luke’s community need some more teaching on what exactly Jesus was talking about in terms of the kingdom.  They’re wrapped up in a grab for political power, which isn’t surprising considering their circumstances under Roman rule, but it’s as if they’ve missed Jesus’ whole point. 

So Luke repeats himself.  “This is not what you should be worried about,” Luke has Jesus say.  “Let God hold the world, its nations and powers.  Your job is to receive the power of the Holy Spirit and then go out and share what you have seen and heard and experienced.  Tell my people how your lives have changed and change theirs too.  Then you will see our world, its nations and powers begin to change.  That is kind of power that really matters.”
 
Author Sara Miles calls this power the power to be Jesus for the world.  It’s the power to feed the hungry, to heal the sick, and to raise the dead.  If those seem like tasks our more conservative Christian sisters and brothers might feel more comfortable taking on because of the miraculous nature of the acts, think about Luke House, the Road Home, the HEALTH initiative Cate Ranheim came to talk to us about a few weeks ago, think about writing your representatives encouraging them to expand healthcare coverage and make policy that creates peace and justice, think about living more simply so you can help someone else simply eat or have a home or pay their electric bill. 

These are miraculous acts.  These are powerful acts.  These are the acts of Jesus in our world, and you, Theophilus, friend of God, have the power to do them, repeats Luke.

So what else does Luke repeat?  Well, he has Jesus remind the disciples and all lovers of God that their job is to witness to the ends of the earth.  Just that.  Don’t forget your audience, he says.  Just pick somebody out, you can’t go wrong.
 
And then Jesus gets out of the way again.  He removes himself so that their eyes can adjust to the new light, the new reality that is theirs to create and nurture in love and the power of God through the Holy Spirit.
 
Phew!  Luke has told his story twice now.  He’s repeated himself, clarified, emphasized, and sharpened understanding.  Problems solved, right?  Everybody’s eaten their green beans and is ready to witness to the ends of the earth, right? 

Wrong. 

There are the disciples, their mouths agape, staring into the sky, looking for Jesus in the wrong place.  You know Luke must have sighed a big one at this point.  Something wasn’t clicking for the disciples or the beloved of God in his community.  So Luke pulls out the big guns, or, rather, the white robes.  We can assume these are angels.  Luke likes his angels.
 
“Why are you still standing there looking up toward heaven?” They say.  “Jesus will come again in the way you saw him go.” 

Now, upon first hearing, that sounds a little mean, because the text says that Jesus was lifted up in a cloud.  So, one might assume they could look to the heavens to find him.  But the angel is in the details for Luke. 

Listen to how the angels address the disciples -- “Men of Galilee.” In other words, the angel recalls for the disciples who they are and reminds them of the years they have spent on the road with Jesus ministering throughout Galilee.  The angel brings to mind the dust of the road, the sound of the crowds, and the gentle, healing touch of Jesus. 

Galilee was where Jesus healed the blind man.  The recollection of its name and Jesus’ work there has the potential to give the disciples sight as well. 
“He will come again in the way he came before,” they say. 

He came in Galilee.  He came healing, teaching, liberating, welcoming, breaking down barriers, raising the dead, living and loving radically, and overturning the powers that be. 

Mary, his mother sang out before she could even feel his movement in her body, “God has looked upon me in my lowly estate and called me beloved and blessed.  God has shown mercy to the downtrodden and scattered the proud.  God has brought the powerful down from their thrones, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away hungry.”

“He will come again in the way he came before,” they say.  Remember Jesus’ first public teaching and act of ministry?  In the synagogue he says to those gathered, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

“He will come again in the way he came before,” they say.  Remember when the crowd gathered around Jesus in Luke’s Gospel?  “He came down with them… with a great crowd of his disciples and great multitude of people [from far and wide].  They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.  And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.  Then he looked up at his disciples and said, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.  Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
He will come again in the way he came before—in the healing, teaching, liberating, welcoming, breaking down barriers, raising the dead, living and loving radically, overturning the powers that be that will happen because his disciples, those who love him, those who have received his power from the Holy Spirit close their mouths, stop looking to the heavens, and go to be Jesus for the world.

That is what Luke is getting at with this repetition.  That is why he gives us the Ascension story twice. 

Jesus goes so that we can stay and thrive and witness and love each other.

Jesus goes so that we can feed the hungry, heal the sick, and raise the dead—so that we can participate in God’s loving and life-giving re-creation of the world.  This going is a gift, an invitation to be co-creators with God of the kind of love that transforms the world.

This Ascension happens so that the disciples’, the lovers’ of God in Luke’s community, and our own eyes can adjust to the light of Jesus through which we can now see the world. 

The Ascension is a call to mission to go and do likewise, to be Jesus in the world.  It tells us that the resurrection is not the end of the story, as much as we like Easter and chocolate eggs, because that leaves our eyes on Jesus.  It tells us to stop staring at the heavens, to close our mouths, and open our eyes to the world and the work of love God has for us.
 
Paul knows this in his letter to the Ephesians that we heard read as a part of our opening prayer.  He knows that all disciples need reminding, so he repeats for the Ephesians and for us that we should look for Jesus to come through our own lives in the ways that he came before.  This, he says, is going to be a life-long project. 

Being Jesus for the world takes commitment and time.  It means being shaped and fashioned by the Holy Spirit over years.  It means there is a participatory, communal flavor to this Jesus life that, over time, enlightens the eyes of the heart to see that Jesus light in those we encounter, relate to, love, and serve. 

This, he says, is not esoteric knowledge that can be gained in intellectual study.  It must be learned and lived with God’s people and expressed in relationships that feed the hungry, heal the sick, and raise the dead.  It happens when we are Jesus for each other and for the world. 

That, Paul is saying, is the antidote to gaping at the heavens, looking for the One who is not there, because he is in our hands and hearts that we offer to each other. 

This is the power of the Holy Spirit that Luke says has come and is coming.

This is, as Paul says, the “immeasurable greatness of his power for those of us who believe. “

This is, as Rowan Williams says, the Jesus light we can truly see by. 

In it, we see the world, each other, and ourselves in a new way because we see it through him, see it with his eyes.
 
May this be the glorious Jesus light that illumines our paths…may this be the glorious Jesus light that illumines our paths…say it with me… repeatedly.  Amen.