June 1, 2025 – Ascension
Genesis 5.21-24
II Kings 2.9-12
Acts 1.6-11
Don’t Look Up
Ascension
I’m going to do something this morning I rarely do. I reworked a sermon I’ve already preached for you, and I will wager none of you will remember the original. I say that because I barely remember it myself. It was during the sermon for Ascension Sunday in May 2020, ten weeks into the pandemic. I barely remember it because so much of that time we spent together online remains a fog, almost a dream. As I looked at my notes, I said to myself, “I think I remember this, but only vaguely.” What I do remember is standing in my backyard with my notes and iPad on my music stand, and Circe listening at my feet. But if you do remember it, let me know and I’ll give you a prize. Let’s see if we can get a little divine help for this one, shall we? Let’s pray.
Monday was Memorial Day. Memorial Day, like Presidents’ Day, Martin Luther King Day, Labor Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day, is always on a Monday, regardless of what day it belongs on the calendar. In the church, we have moveable holidays as well, though many of the major ones, like Easter and Palm Sunday, Trinity, and our annual Christmas Cantata, fall on Sunday. But there is one stubborn little church holiday that always, always falls on Thursday. Did it again just three days ago. Any guesses to what that was? Yes, the feast of the Ascension, which marks the day Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after the resurrection, as we heard in the book of Acts. And since the resurrection is always celebrated on Sunday, Ascension Day, forty days following Easter is always, always on Thursday.
If Ascension falls on an unusual day, it also observes an unusual event. There are only three instances in the Bible of people ascending directly into heaven at the end of their lives, and we heard all three this morning. In Genesis we read about Enoch, father of Methuselah. In spite of the fact that Enoch’s entire story is told in the brief seven verses I read, his heritage looms large over Israel: in the Apocrypha he has an entire book named for him, the book of Enoch. As his story concludes, we read, “Enoch walked with God, and then was no more, because God took him.” We take this to mean Enoch went directly to heaven. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
You have heard of the prophet Elijah, whose story is told in the books of I and II Kings. Elijah too ascended directly into the heavens, and we heard a tale this morning worthy of Cecil B. DeMille: “As [Elijah and Elisha] continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.” And when it was all over, Elisha, Elijah’s hand-picked successor, stood alone, with the prophet’s mantle in his hands.
So an ascension is a rare occurrence. But for all of this, the way that Luke tells it anyway, Jesus’ ascension is not the important part of the story. What is important is what happens just before and then just following the ascension itself. The first is in the disciples’ question at the beginning of the story, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” The second is in Jesus’ reply.
The question at the beginning gives voice to a misunderstanding about Jesus’ ministry: Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? In spite of all he said and did, a good deal of the perception of Jesus’ Messiahship was that he was sent by God to be an earthly ruler. The hope that surrounded him was the hope that he would re-establish Israel’s position as a nation of great strength and political clout. People still longed for the days of an empire-gone-by, when regents like David and Solomon ruled the land, and they hoped that Jesus would restore the old status quo. “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel,” might well be retranslated as “Can we finally go back to the days and the ways things used to be?” The promise of the kingdom of God was, for many of them, of an earthly kingdom. Their hope was that Jesus would Make Israel Great Again.
Which explains why they did not understand his reply: “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.” Jesus’ promise of power was not in mortal kingdoms or princes or empires, but rather in the power of God’s spirit in the foundation and formation of the church. This is where the power resides, Jesus is telling them, real power, and it is where you will do your best work.
Still, they were reluctant to let Jesus go. Maybe they didn’t trust themselves. Maybe they didn’t trust the Spirit. Regardless, as Jesus ascended into heaven, they stood stymied, staring up at him, trying their best to keep him in sight even as he disappeared. Sally Marston, our Parish Admin, was telling me the other day about a church she visited in Europe years ago that depicted the Ascension with a sculpture of Jesus’ feet, and only his feet, dangling from the church’s ceiling, as though he were still in the process of rising. Yes, it is more than a little weird, but it is a wonderfully ironic commentary on the disciples’ and the church’s reluctance to let Jesus go. We want to keep him here, to hang on to him for dear life, to claim him for our own design so that he can restore and return us to the way things used to be. But this is not the way things work.
Here is how they work: as the disciples strained both their necks and their vision, squinting desperately to keep Jesus in sight, two figures stood beside them, watching them, I imagine, with mild amusement. “Men of Galilee,” they wanted to know, “why are you standing looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go.” And it was probably then that the disciples remembered Jesus’ answer when they were asking about restoring the kingdom of Israel to power: “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.” It was the Holy Spirit that would gather them into what you and I call the church, and they were being called to share their witness from that little hilltop in Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. If they stayed there looking for him for the rest of their lives, they would never find the ascended Jesus. They would only find him by engaging in the work he began, not of creating kingdom or empire, but of ministering among the lost, the lonely, and the least of these my brothers and sisters.
Don’t Look Up is a movie from 2021 starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep. Did any of you see it? It was a satiric comedy about two astronomers who discovered a giant comet on a collision course with the earth, but their warnings of imminent doom are ignored by a populace and government who refuse to believe the irrefutable scientific evidence of impending disaster. As part of their campaign to put their citizens’ minds at ease, even as the comet become visible to the naked eye, the government addresses the problem of mass annihilation with a catchy slogan: “Don’t Look Up.” What you don’t see can’t hurt you, right? The film is of course a tongue-in-cheek look at attitudes toward the Covid-19 pandemic, when many folks refused to take it seriously. I think the film’s title though could also serve as a lesson from this morning’s ascension story. As long as Jesus’ followers were going to stand on that hill looking skyward, hoping against hope for his return, nothing was going to happen. And it won’t unless and until they come back down into the streets and villages and towns and bring the witness and ministry of Jesus to the people who need them the most.
It was a message that needed to be heard in those early days before the church even began. It was a message that needed to be heard in 2020’s heart of the pandemic. It is a message we still need to hear today. Life is not going to go back to the good old days and the way things used to be. Life is moving ever forward, and Jesus will only be found when you and I come down from our little hill into the streets and villages and towns and bring the witness and ministry of Jesus to the people who need them the most.