University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

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A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Ascension Sunday        May 24, 2009

            I share with you two brief words today to preface what follows. The first regards the title of today’s sermon.  We have to put a title on the sign board by Tuesday.  Sometimes that works well, sometimes not. Had I had a little more time this week, I would have changed the last word from “keep” to “make.”  There’s a difference, I know. 

            The second is to tell you that today’s sermon borrows substantially from the work of two wonderful women scholars and preachers: from Barbara Brown Taylor, who teaches spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary, and from Beverly Roberts Gaventa, who teaches New Testament studies at Princeton Theological Seminary.  It is hard for me to imagine how impoverished the church would be in our day without the strong presence of such gifted women in its pulpits and classrooms. Awareness of the prohibition that kept those gifts from the church for so long also makes me even more determined to pray and work for that day when the voices of others now excluded from ministry will be included.

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            At King’s College in Cambridge, England, there is in the beloved chapel a stained-glass window.  Well, actually, there are many stained-glass windows in that chapel, but this morning I have in mind one, in particular, which Tom Brown brought to my attention this week.  It is the Ascension window, located near the organ on the south side of the chapel. Usually, Ascension windows are stately, magisterial – Jesus with wings and halo accompanied by a band of angels… but the King’s College window is, well, almost a bit whimsical. It depicts a little group of shocked disciples at the bottom of the window staring up to the very top, to a fluffy white cloud, from which protrude a pair of pinky-white feet with a bit of red robe around them. That's all you can see of Jesus in the window. Just his feet.[1]

In that stately space, the scene is almost laughable. It is funny, after all... given the comparison with other ascension windows.   It is also odd to think of… particularly in these days when our cosmology has long discarded the three-story universe. I’m not sure I have thought much at all across the years about what the ascension of Jesus means. Yet, we still speak of the ascension with some frequency.  “The third day, he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven.” So we say every time we repeat the Apostles’ Creed. “He ascended into heaven.”   It’s a hard picture to get into our heads (especially on a day when the only picture in our heads is those dangling feet!).  Barbara Brown Taylor says,

Almost everything else that happened to Jesus makes sense in terms of my own life. He was born to a human mother; so was I. He ate and drank and slept at night; so do I. He loved people and got angry with people and forgave people; so have I.  He wept; me, too.  He died; I will die, too. He rose from the dead; I even know something about that. I have had some Easter mornings of my own – joy found in the midst of sorrow, life in the midst of death.

But ascending into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God?  That is where Jesus and I part company. That is where he leaves me in the dust. My only experience of the ascension is from the ground, my neck cranked back as far as it will go, my mouth wide open, my face shielded from the sun by the cloud that is bearing my Lord away.[2]

            It is an odd scene.  What are we to make of it?  Well, it might be helpful to remember the context of the story.  Luke says that our risen Lord gathered his disciples after Easter to prepare them for their future without him.  There was a crisis to be overcome – the crisis of their discipleship and what they would do when they could no longer see or hear Jesus or draw strength from his physical presence among them.[3] The time of instruction went on for forty days, Luke says, and then Jesus made a promise to them. He said, “Wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father.” The promise, he said, was the power of the Spirit.  Their job was to wait for that power… to wait for God to act according to the promise. It’s not the ascension that is at the center of this story, as intriguing as it is, but rather the promise that remains with the disciples… and the promised power that eventually will propel the church and ensure the progress of the Gospel. 

            The truth, says Acts scholar Beverly Gaventa, is that in both the Gospel that was his first volume and here in Acts Luke is focused on the promises of God. [4]  There is the promise made to Zechariah and Elizabeth of a son in the midst of Elizabeth’s barrenness, a son named John who would turn many to the Lord.  There is Gabriel’s disturbing, yet remarkable promise to Elizabeth’s kinswoman Mary that she, too, would bear a son, Jesus, who would also be the Son of the Most High.  There is the promise of the angels to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks in the pastures above Bethlehem. There is the word of promise at Jesus’ baptism, the declaration of God’s pleasure over this One. There is the Word of promise that Jesus speaks at the beginning of his ministry, when he cites the prophet Isaiah to point to his own mission and to say that he has come to “bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

            And now, in his second volume, Luke begins again with a reminder of the promises of God, and the rest of the book details the fulfillment of those promises. Despite all that prior history of promise, the disciples do not grasp what it is that Jesus is saying to them.  Clearly, they don’t quite understand. That fact becomes clear just after the ascension itself.  Despite having heard Jesus’ instructions, after witnessing Jesus’ ascent into the clouds, they just stand there staring into heaven, mouths agape. It is only when they are prompted by the two angelic visitors that they move from the spot.[5] Taylor says that in the wake of that prompting, something remarkable happens: they all stop looking into the sky and look at each other instead.

On the surface, it was not a great moment: eleven abandoned disciples with nothing to show for all their following. But in the days and years to come it would become very apparent what had happened to them.  With nothing but a promise and a prayer, those eleven people consented to become the church, and nothing was ever the same again, beginning with them.  The followers became leaders, the listeners became preachers, the converts became missionaries, the healed became healers.  The disciples became apostles, witnesses of the risen Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit, and nothing was ever the same again.[6]  

            It began to turn, I think, when they returned to Jerusalem, all of them. In those days, said Luke, all of them “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”  Gaventa notes:

If [this] closing scene [in our passage]…makes no reference to God’s promises, it does demonstrate that the apostles have learned their lesson.  Instead of … waiting impatiently for his dramatic return, they finally do as they were told in the first place.  They wait.  Something good may come from them yet.

Their waiting is not passive.  The apostles gather with women who had followed Jesus.  They engage in prayer.  Soon they will seek a replacement for Judas.  And they wait for the promises to be fulfilled. Pentecost fulfills the promise of the Holy Spirit. Events in Jerusalem initiate the promise of the witness…. [Then surprising things begin to happen.  They begin to say things that sound like him, and they begin to do things they have never seen anyone but him do before.  They become brave and capable and wise.  Whenever two or three of them get together it is always as if there is someone else in the room with them – a strong, abiding presence… as available to them as bread and wine, as familiar to them as each other’s faces. It is almost as if he had not ascended, but exploded, so that all the holiness that was once concentrated in him alone flew everywhere, flew far and wide, so that the seeds of heaven were sown in all the fields of the earth.][7]

What the apostles – and [we] – learn [through it all] is that God’s promises can be trusted. Those promises are often fulfilled in unexpected ways [and are sometimes met with great resistance].  That the hostile Paul would become an instrument in fulfilling God’s promises is not at first welcome news.  Peter could scarcely imagine that the promise of a witness “to the ends of the earth” would lead him to baptize the household of the gentile Cornelius. God’s promises can be trusted, even if God fulfills those promises in astonishing, [and sometimes] even offensive ways.[8]

            All of us make promises – good promises, promises that are full of good intentions. A parent tells a child still shaken from a nightmare that she won’t ever let anything harm the child, not imagining all the traumas or tragedies that child may have to face across the years.  A young couple stands before a congregation of family and friends and say to one another that together they will persevere through sickness and health, in plenty and in want…not able to perceive the stresses that a serious illness or a lost job, much less the day-to-day demands of togetherness, will impose on their promises. Dear friends who have managed a lot together promise that they will always “be there” for each other, without calculating the toll the years and divergent paths will take on their friendship.  An elder-elect stands before the Church and declares her assent to the ordination question that asks, “Do you promise to further the peace, unity and purity of the church?” not yet understanding the fragility of the precarious balance she has promised to secure. Changing circumstances and demands, like our own frailties and faults, sometimes place even the best promises we make beyond our grasp.[9]

The fact that God keeps promises does not make our own promises more reliable. Neither does God’s trustworthiness make our failures less painful to [to us] or to others. What God’s trustworthiness does mean is that our broken promises are not the last word about us.  God promises that something good may come from us yet.[10]

            So…about the ascension: don’t just stand there looking up.  Look around.  Consider the promise of God you see at work in those around you, empowering the church even now.  Consider the gifts God has given to God’s people across the centuries and even today, and the promise such gifts portend for the future of Christ’s church.  In waiting…in prayer… may we yet be open to the Spirit… and to the spirit’s remarkable, and sometimes disturbing power to open doors that have long been shut.