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The Ascension
Sermon preached in Street Mission Church on the Sunday after Ascension Day, 20 May 2007.
Are we just a wee bit embarrassed about celebrating the Ascension of our Lord Jesus into heaven?
I mean, if you were to tell a non-believing friend: "I went to church to celebrate the day that Jesus rose up into the air until he was lost to sight in a cloud, and he's never been seen since because he's in heaven" - might your friend not say "Oh yes?" and go away even more convinced that you may be a very wonderful person, but some of the things you believe are just fairy tales. You seem to believe in a nursery view of the universe, where a NASA rocket wouldn't go into space, but would go up through layers of cloud and find itself in heaven. "You need to grow up," your friend might say.
Maybe your friend is right. Maybe we do need to grow up, and question some of the ways we were brought up to think of God, and come to a more adult way of thinking. Let's think about that for a couple of minutes.
Growing up is really hard. We watch teenagers struggle with their hormones. And we watch them struggle while different influences pull them now one way, now another. Their parents expect them to be good and fit in. Their friends expect them to become part of a teen culture that is specially designed to keep adults out. Advertisers of course want them to become spendaholics, dedicated followers of fashion.
The wonder is that after some years of struggle, most of them come out the other side of adolescence with a pretty balanced view of the world, and a passible relationship with their parents.
Some don't, unfortunately. Some continue a kind of teenage rebellion into their twenties or even into their forties. They are the misfits who feel society is against them. They don't feel any responsibility.
But there are others who don't manage to come through successfully, because they have never had the courage to break free of their childish ties to their parents. They remain immature. Private Eye had a cartoon the other week showing a group of hoodies standing outside a front door, obviously calling for their mate to come with them on a night on the town. The other youngster is standing in the doorway and saying: "I shan't be coming out. I'd prefer to have a quiet supper and a small glass of wine with my parents." What is our reaction supposed to be? Is it healthy? Is it what a normal young man will do?
Difficult. How does anyone come to an adult relationship with their parents if they have never broken loose?
We could pursue that line of thought, but what I want to do is look at the equivalent in Christian faith. What does it mean to grow up in our Christian faith?
Could it be that we need to go through a similar painful process? Could it be that some Christians are like the misfits - rebel against the faith they were taught as children, and never find a mature faith? Could it be that others never question the faith of their parents and so are like the rather sad people who stay tied to their mother's apron strings, unable to face the world in an adult way?
I think we can see all too many of the first type - people who have rebelled against the faith they were taught as children, and have come to believe nothing. They feel they are very grown-up because they have thrown over the faith of their childhood. Perhaps rather they are stuck in teen-age rebellion.
But can we not see also all too many of the second type, too? Is it possible that we may even see one of these in our mirror? People who have got stuck with an understanding of the faith that was very good for a child, but really doesn't suit an adult? "Hush! We mustn't question these things. We must just accept them."
If a majority of people in a church thought that way, then would it be any wonder if bright, clever young people rejected the whole Christian faith?
I think that the home groups that are being planned even as we speak will help to ensure that we all grow in understanding and become mature in our faith - but only if we learn to be honest and open with each other.
Now if you are thinking: "David is trying to wean me off my Bible faith, and onto some strange modern way of thinking," let me hasten to say that what I am saying is what the Bible says. Here's a small selection of what the Bible saying about growing up and being mature in our faith:
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 2 Peter
We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing. 2 Thessalonians 1:2-4
until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:12-14
All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Philippians 3:14-16
Of course we must remain like children in trust. But that doesn't mean we have to think in an immature way. C.S. Lewis rejected the old saying: "Be good sweet maid, and let who will be clever." He said it should be "Be good, sweet maid, and be as clever as you can."
So let's see how the Bible itself invites us to grow, in understanding the meaning of the Ascension of Jesus.
If we look carefully at how the Bible describes the Ascension, we shall find a curious thing. No two accounts are quite the same. Let's look at the Gospels. St Matthew:
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Where's the Ascension? Did I miss it? Was my mind wandering when St Matthew describes it? No, it's not there.
St Mark? The end of St Mark's Gospel is lost. It breaks off as the women come away from the tomb on Easter morning, so, no Ascension. (though an added ending says:
After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven, and sat at the right hand of God.
But no description of how it happened.)
St Luke. Ah! At last! St Luke delivers the goods - twice. First, in his Gospel:
When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.
That's more like it. But it's a bit vague. He left them and was taken up into heaven. He could have just walked away. But then, in Acts:
After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."
That's the picture that is fixed in our imaginations, St Luke's account in Acts. But it's strange that no other writer gives the same account. So different from the suffering and death of Jesus, where all 4 Gospels, whatever their small differences, give basically the same vivid picture of what happened.
Let's look, finally, at St John. Where does this Gospel end? By the lakeside, with a conversation after a picnic breakfast. You might think that St John has no Ascension. But he does.
Do you remember that wonderful garden scene in St John (chapter 20), where Mary Magdalene meets the risen Jesus? She tries to grasp him, but he says:
"Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "
Mary mustn't hold Jesus, because he had not returned to the Father. He hadn't yet ascended, to use St Luke's way of putting it. But a week later Jesus was asking Thomas to touch his hands and his side, feel the wounds in them. Is St John telling us that Jesus had returned to the Father in the time between? If he is, that's a rather different 'take' on what happened. Not 40 days after Easter, but maybe on Easter Day, maybe a day or two later.
Is St John gently telling us, "You don't have to stick to a way of describing what happened that children can picture. You can let go of the outer appearance and go deeper, to understand how the Lord Jesus is with you now, and is with his Father now."
But there's something else in St John's Gospel that seems to be speaking about the Ascension. It's the chapter we heard part of as our Gospel reading, chapter 17.
You may have heard John 17 described as the High Priestly Prayer. The whole chapter, all 26 verses, is a prayer. Jesus is speaking with his Father, praying for his disciples present and future. He's acting as go-between, between his disciples and the Father. That's a priest's work, to be a go-between. That's why many people call this the High Priestly Prayer.
But there's something else that dawns on us as we read this chapter. It reads just as if Jesus was praying it as he was ascending into heaven. Let me show you what I mean.
Verse 11:
They (my disciples) are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name
Verse 12:
While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. ... I am coming to you now.
You can almost picture Jesus, high above the earth, looking down with love on his friends, saying "While I was with them I protected them." And as he rises higher still, the view widens, to take in all believers to the most distant future:
"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you."
So St John's take on the Ascension leads us into different ways of thinking.
St Luke has such a wonderful way of putting the great truths into pictures, that there's an old Christian tradition that says he was an artist, a painter. Like the little girl the Rector told us about who was painting God, and who told her mother "They'll know what God looks like when I've finished my painting," so St Luke finds vivid pictures to bring great truths home to us and fix them for ever in our imagination.
St John's way is different. But when you analyse it, he is telling us the same wonderful truths.
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Jesus is alive now, yes, but we can't pin him down any more. We may recognise him at a picnic by a lake, or while we are sharing a meal with friends in a locked room. We can't control how or when he becomes real to us, but we know he is there.
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Jesus has been glorified by his Father. As he says in the High Priestly Prayer,
"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world."
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Jesus ever lives to pray for us. We see it in that High Priestly Prayer, John 17. As the Epistle to the Hebrews says:
"Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens."
If we were a group of early Christians who had only St John's Gospel - and I'm sure there were groups like that around Ephesus in the early days - we wouldn't know about mountaintops or bright clouds or going up like a space-ship; but we would know the truths that really mattered to us.
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We would know that in our daily work, or on a journey, or wherever, we might suddenly be aware of the presence of Jesus. Saul of Tarsus found that. I don't know about you, but I've found it true still.
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We would know that a life of faith and love, even though it may end in pain and death, really ends in glory. The excruciating death of the Lord Jesus not only led to glory, but even was glory. So those of us who face increasing pain, and those of us in other parts of the world who face cruel persecution, like the the 500-strong Christian community in a Pakistan border town who have been ordered to convert to Islam by this week or face death, can even so share in the glory that belongs to Christ.
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And, if we had only St John's Gospel, we would still know that however weak and struggling we may be, we have a powerful advocate, someone a thousand times more effective that the late George Carman, to represent us, not before a British jury but before the King and Judge of the universe. That traditional picture of Jesus sitting down at the Father's right hand and pleading for us tells us the same truth. But St John is suggesting that even without the pictures, it is so.
As these great truths become part of us, as we live with them and grow with them, we shall have the confidence to live as mature people, mature Christians, growing men and women. We shall be able to explain the meaning of the Ascension - and the other great facts of the faith - to our friend in different ways. As the Bible puts it:
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, .... But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.
To him be the glory for ever. Amen.
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Thursday 20th of November 2008
