Ascension Day Sermon

THE TIME BETWEEN Acts 1:6-14 Easter 7A June 5, 2011
Last Thursday was Ascension Day, exactly 40 days after our celebration of Easter and 10 days before our celebration of Pentecost, which will be next Sunday by the way. Ascension Day marks the events we just read about in our first reading from Acts 1. As verse 9 says, “as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” And they never saw him in the flesh again. As we say in the creed, “he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
But before he left, he promised his disciples that the third member of the trinity, the Holy Spirit, would soon come to them. In John 14:16 he had promised them, “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth….” And so on Ascension Day he was taken out of their sight. On Pentecost Sunday the Spirit of truth came upon them in all his fullness. But for the moment they were in the time between. The time between when Jesus bodily left them and the time when the Holy Spirit came to them. And what were they to do during this time? First of all they were to wait. Acts 1:4 says that “he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”
It must have been hard for them to wait to see what God was going to do next, as it is for all of us who are in one of those times between. It is tempting to want to “jump the gun” but Jesus knew they were not quite ready to begin witnessing about him. The time was not quite right for them. So they were simply to wait.
But they didn’t sit around a table playing cards as they waited. Acts 1:14 says, “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” This is an important thing to note. They were engaged in prayer before they were engaged in preaching. They were spending time with the Lord before they spent time evangelizing the city. They were certainly an example of patience and prayer, waiting for the time to be right before beginning the project Jesus had for them. That project, by the way, is spelled out in Acts 1:8, “But 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.” That’s a tall order – a very big job, and some of them might have thought, “we’d better get cracking” but Jesus told them to wait and they knew enough to pray. God had this all planned out. When Pentecost came and the city was filled with pilgrims from all over the world, the time would be right, and they would go out and preach in the power of the Spirit.
Is there something for us to learn here? Is there a time to wait and pray before we begin a big task or make a big decision? Do we recognize the value of that “time between” when a promise is made and an activity begins? We might ask ourselves if we are in a “time between” like the disciples were those ten days between the Ascension Day and Pentecost Day.
Well, there is one sense in which we are all in a “time between.” We are all living in the time between the first coming of Jesus as the “Man from Galilee” and his second coming as judge and lord of all. In Acts 1:11, it says that two men in white robes spoke. We can infer that they were angels, or messengers, from God himself. In any case, here is what they said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand 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 into heaven.” So we are all living in the “time between” when he was taken up into heaven and the time when he will come back from heaven.
And when will that glorious second coming be? It is not for us to know. You don’t know. I don’t know. No one on the earth knows. There are many passages in the Bible that speak about this, saying he will come like a thief in the night – that is unexpectedly – that as in the days of Noah people will be going about their daily business right up to the moment he appears. But for today let me just quote from today’s reading from Acts 1:7 where Jesus said, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”
This past month we all saw what happens when people try to find out what the Lord has chosen to keep hidden from us. A California radio preacher named Harold Camping announced that he had decoded the Bible and discovered that the end of the world would come on May 21 – at 6:00 p.m. no less. But of course, it did not happen. He thought he had discovered what the Bible plainly teaches no man is to know. The Bible is not a code book with hidden messages that no one in the 20 centuries before us had been able to find. Jesus said, “it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.”
There were two sad results of what this radio preacher said. One is that a number of people quit their jobs or sold their homes, thinking that there was no point to planning for anything after May 21. One news report about one of these people reads like this:
On Sunday, a dejected Ramsey [follower of Camping] said he faces a "mixed bag."
He has to find a new job. So does his mother. His 19-year-old brother, who had quit high school the year prior ("It's pointless to graduate," the brother had said), is thinking of re-enrolling or finding employment.
What a sad situation this is.
But this prediction also led many pundits and comedians to lampoon Christians who believed in the end of the world in May 2011 and thus, by implication, to diminish the reputation of all Christians. We do believe that Christ will come again. Read Matthew 25 or Philippians 2 – or even today’s Acts 1 reading. We do believe that there will be a judgement day. But events like what happened in May cast a shadow over it all – at least in the eyes of the secular world. We do live in the time between Christ’s first appearing and his second.
The emphasis we should have on this time is going about doing good where we can and giving witness to our faith in Jesus Christ. When those two men in white robes appeared to Jesus’ disciples after he ascended into heaven their first words were, “why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” The clear implication is that now it is time to get to work. For those disciples, plus St. Mary and the other women, it was to begin with this ten day period of prayer, and then on Pentecost Sunday to go out into the streets and preach the gospel in many languages, and finally move out to the places where those languages are spoken with the good news of God’s love in Christ Jesus.
Christ has ascended into heaven, but we have his work to do here on earth. The physical body of Christ may have gone up into heaven, but the Body of Christ - that is the church – is here and has his work to do today. Despite what those disciples lost, they have so much still, and so much yet to do.
I would like to conlude today by reading something I came across on the “Living Lutheran” website about people who are living in the time between, but have a sense of purpose and of perseverance. One of the building that was destroyed in the tornado that hit Joplin, Missour on May 22 was one of our ELCA congregations, Peace Lutheran Church. This is what their pastor has written:
The Monday morning after the storm, as a number of us were walking through the rubble of the church building, we wondered: “Where are we going to hold worship on next Sunday (May 29)?”
We decided to meet in the parking lot to let the world know what the people of Joplin already know: We are still a congregation.
God is, and will always be, with us.
The service was chaotic, and it was spiritual. A number of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations — local and national — came. I was wired up to six different stations. I don’t even know who they all were, although I knew ABC, NBC and CNN were now part of my body.
The rains had finally left, so the weather was beautiful except for the 35-mile-an-hour winds.
But most importantly, God was there. You could just feel it among the 100 people who attended worship that Sunday morning.
The service itself, along with music (we had a flutist and a keyboard loaned to us, which was hooked up to battery), the prayers, the sermon and Holy Communion gave people a chance to celebrate and weep over lost homes, lost jobs, lost friends and families.
God was there.
Peace Lutheran Church of Joplin, Missouri is in a time between – between when they worshipped in the building that was destoryed by the tornado and the time when they will worship in whatever building they erect in the future. Through this experience they learned what the disciples learned when Jesus ascended into heaven. No matter what they lost, God is still here. And I want to tell you, that no matter what you may have lost in your life, God is still here. AMEN.