The Ascension

I am going to cheat a little today and instead of basing my sermon on the account of the Ascension we have just heard, from Luke, I am going to take you to one line from the same story, in Matthew’s gospel.  Why?  Because this has been ringing in my head for a week and sometimes that is the Holy Spirit promptings. 

Let me just read you two verses from Matthew’s account starting at Chapter 28 v. 16. 

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some of them doubted. 

“But some of them doubted.”  

Ascension Day is a major festival in the Christian Calendar.  It ranks alongside Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Day, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday as one of the feast days we should mark.  Yet few people come.  Why is this?  Do we doubt?  If so, what do we doubt?  The Resurrection or the Ascension itself.  In our culture people do not rise up into the sky and we sophisticates know that heaven is not ‘up there.’  (Even though we often find ourselves looking heavenward, when mentioning God.) 

I have to admit, I find this a difficult one, too. 

Perhaps the difficulty starts, as I think it so often does with what I can only call ‘over-knowledge’ of our bible stories.  We have heard them so many times that we think we know them and we think we know what they mean, so we have closed down on them.  We are seldom surprised – I want to say “gob-smacked” by them.  We hear them in church and we let them trail over us but not penetrate us.   

I have to admit, I do this, too. 

Perhaps the difficulty starts because we have ‘tamed’ the resurrection.  Unable to fathom so great a mystery, we sort of repackage it into something we can handle.  But if we investigate the Resurrection stories more fully, a very interesting fact emerges, which often passes us by, if we read the stories superficially.  Again and again in the resurrection stories, Jesus’ friends and followers do not at first recognise him when he appears to them. 

• Mary Magdalene does not recognise Jesus at the tomb. 

• The disciples on the road to Emmaus do not recognise Jesus all the time they are walking and talking with him 

• In Luke’s gospel, chapter 24, v 41, the disciples in the upper room do not all appear to recognise him. 

  
  

I have a video about the life of Jesus and when it comes to the resurrection appearances, you do not see the actor who has played Jesus all the way through the film up to that point appear, initially, as the resurrected Christ.  In each appearance there is a different actor who, over the course of the scene, morphs into the original Jesus.  The director is telling us that it took time for the disciples who knew Jesus so well, who had travelled with him, ate with him, talked for hours together with him; it took time for these friends and disciples to recognise the risen Christ. 

This is pretty disturbing.  The question arises, suppose it wasn’t Jesus?  What was going on?  “But some doubted.” 

I had a vivid experience a few years ago, which really helped me get to grips with this difficulty of not recognising Jesus.  My brother went out to Australia when he was seventeen under an Australian government scheme, to become a farmer.   I had not seen him for thirty plus years.  Now he was coming home for a holiday.  The whole family turned out to meet him at Heathrow and we were all so excited.   

I did not recognise the man who walked through the barrier.  I really did not recognise him.  Had we not all been on the lookout for him, he could have walked right passed me and I would have been none the wiser.  Even when I realised it was my brother, I didn’t recognise him.  His outdoor life in the Australian sun had leathered his skin so it appeared mask-like and a scar from an accident near an eye had changed him so much that he no longer looked like my brother.  I felt huge disappointment – a real sense of loss.  The brother whom I had missed all these years; the brother who I was longing to meet again, had disappeared and in his place was a stranger. 

Because the family were going off to their separate homes, one group taking my brother and his wife with them, we all decided to have a coffee together first.  And it was there, in a Heathrow coffee lounge, that I had my Emmaus moment.  Someone said something and my brother laughed and there he was – in his laughter which crinkled up and filled his blue eyes.  There was my brother, all the time. 

• The Risen Christ had taken on the sin and suffering of the world on the Cross and still carried the marks of it in his body.

• The Risen Christ had “descended into hell” – whatever we mean by that.  But those words are in the 8^th Century Apostles Creed which is said in every service of morning and evening prayer and at baptisms.   

• The Risen Christ had a body which could pass through walls and doors but at the same time, breathe in and out, make a fire on a beach, cook fish and eat with his friends.   

  
  

The Risen Christ was not like Lazarus, brought back to his old body, his old life.  This was an entirely new physical life.  Never seen before or since on this earth. 

Jesus had become the Christ through his death and resurrection.  Of course he was different.  This was the powerful resurrection experience that the followers of Jesus were witness to – and which gave them the final inspiration to give up their whole lives to witness to and to die for Christ. 

But even so, this powerful, resurrected Jesus had to leave the earth.  The Christ could not stay with his beloved disciples in bodily form.  Jesus, in bodily form could only ever be in one place.  But Jesus did not leave his disciples, like “orphans” as we know.  The embodied Jesus left so that the Holy Spirit, who can be, who is in every place and in every person, could come. 

On top of that mountain, Jesus gave his final instruction to his disciples.  Go out into the world and make disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The disciples now had fire in their belly to go out and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.  And very soon they would receive the power of Jesus in the Holy Spirit and the world would be changed forever.