Today we celebrate the ascension of Jesus Christ. It’s not an easy concept. The poor disciples have been through world-shattering change. Jesus – their mentor, teacher, friend has been brutally killed, but even more amazing has come back to life – physically, but in a different form. Their world-view has been turned on its ear. They’re not sure what’s coming, but they must be scared – and excited – to find out.

Ascension, A

May 4, 2008

Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 1:15-23, Luke 24:44-53

 

Today we celebrate the ascension of Jesus Christ.  It’s not an easy concept.  The poor disciples have been through world-shattering change. Jesus – their mentor, teacher, friend has been brutally killed, but even more amazing has come back to life – physically, but in a different form.  Their world-view has been turned on its ear.  They’re not sure what’s coming, but they must be scared – and excited – to find out.

 

When was the last time you got excited about God?  About your relationship with Jesus?  I don’t mean just kinda nice to be a Christian-as-opposed-to-anything-else kinda nice, but really, really excited.  So excited that you wanted – needed – to share the excitement with the people you loved?  To share with everyone?

 

That is what happened to the disciples.  They now saw God – and Jesus - and the world in a whole new light and it was such great news that they had to tell everyone –

          First the people they loved – those in Jerusalem – the Jews –

And then everyone else – especially when their family – the family of the

Jewish people had so much trouble hearing them.

 

Think about how you react when you’ve just seen a really, really great movie – or heard a new piece of music – or read a really great book –

you want to share it –

let everyone in on the secret treasure that you’ve found.

 

That is how I believe that these people – the men and women who had been following Jesus felt.  They saw God – they saw their own reality in a brand new way – in a brand new light.  All the words that Jesus had used now made sense.  They realized – they saw – felt – believed that there was more to this universe than they had thought before.  Their old way of thinking had been limited – boxed in – because they had believed that what they knew – what they could taste – see – feel – hear was all there was.  They now had a glimpse of the other – another dimension – another sense of time. 

 

I imagine that it was a bit like when it was discovered that the world was round.  Or that the Earth revolved around the Sun.  Absolutely everyone had to change the way they thought about the world in which they lived.  Absolutely everyone had to see themselves in a whole new relationship with their world. 

The realization of the disciples was even more astounding – was even more earth-shattering.

 

We live in 3 dimensions and with a linear – ever-forward-moving sense of time.  We can’t go back.  We can’t get outside of the ever-present, ever-moving dimension of time.  

 

But God can….

 

Just because this linear, forward movement of time is all that we can grasp – because its all that we now know – all that we’ve experienced – does not mean that this is the only way it can be.

 

Space can be the same way.  We know 3 dimensions – height – width – depth – and within these 3 dimensions we have an amazing, glorious, miraculous world of 3 dimensions.  It’s hard to ignore the yearly miracle of spring – when life explodes in a joyous song of praise and beauty to our God and Creator.

 

We try to explain what happens each spring in terms of science – but all the explanations in the world still can’t equal the beauty – and the promise that each and every spring shows us.  Explanations are not equal to the events themselves and explanations cannot take away the miracle that spring brings to us.  Explanations are grey shadows compared to the varied and vivid green on the trees – the seeming endless profusion of shapes and sizes and colors that first creeps and then explodes in the world around us.  Surrounded by new and wondrous, and beautiful life – when the warm breeze touches our faces – and we can feel the heat of the sun on our shoulders – it makes me want to dance and sing to the glories that God has given us.

 

But we get busy – wrapped up in our offices – classrooms – cubicles – our man-made world – and only take small notice of the yearly miracle that is unfolding before us.  Spring, with all its wonder becomes one-more-spring-in-a-succession-of-ongoing-and-repetetive-seasons.  We get so focused that we lose sight that what we know may not be all there is.  If the 3 dimensions that we know are all there is ---

 

Then where was God before the universe was created?

And where did Jesus go when he ascended into heaven?

 

You see, I believe, that somewhere after the crucifixion – somewhere during the resurrection visits and the ascension – the followers of Jesus saw, felt, became aware of the realization that was MORE – more than this world – more than what they could touch, taste, smell, see, hear.  This new reality could be seen in and with all the things of this world, but it was all this – and more.

 

Jesus could be in the Father – and the disciples could be in Jesus – and therefore the disciples could be in the Father, just as Jesus and the Father were in them.  God was here in the midst of them – and in the midst of us – and the disciples were excited.  These bumbling, narrow-sighted disciples – who had so consistently not gotten it for 3 years of following Jesus – finally saw – or felt – but experienced that there was more – more than just what we know and can prove here and now.

 

And the poor, very, very human disciples were stuck trying to explain the unexplainable.  So Luke tells the story – trying to explain the connection between the 3 dimensions that we know and a whole other dimension that expands space and time.  A dimension where Jesus and God operate – Luke tries to explain this new reality by having Jesus ascend into heaven on a cloud.  This is an explanation that is not nearly adequate, but it is Luke’s way of trying to explain the unexplainable.

 

John in his gospel tries to give us a sense of this new dimension – by using words to paint a picture of this new reality – words that often read like poetry to explain a concept – a new reality – that we have trouble wrapping our heads around.

 

When we look at our relationship with God with the possibility of a different dimension it helps explain terms like:

          God’s in-breaking into the world – or

          To see with the eyes of the heart.

 

But when we finally see it, when we finally get it, when we also can see the amazing truth of it all -  God’s presence among us –  among us, in us – here with us now – in ways we can feel but not prove.  When we know the truth and gift of God’s presence, then we have to share – we have to tell our family – our friends – people on the elevator – because this is news that is just too, too good not to share!!