"What's It Got To Do With Us?" given May 13

Retired Bishop William Willimon tells of driving by a church on Mother‘s Day. That particular church building had a little billboard out front where the pastor was accustomed to putting up moralistic slogans. The board read: "Virtues are learned at mother's knee. Vices at some other joint."

That’s a cute saying-- and true. And it’s even more true our mothers deserve a lot more thanks from us than just a saying on a bulletin board, a Hallmark card and a meal out one Sunday afternoon a year. (By the way, if you’re interested, the next week the bulletin board read: "Killing time makes you a murderer of opportunity." That’s true as well.)

But, Willimon wonders, what if some unchurched person driving by were to read those little aphorisms and came to the conclusion that they were all there really is to the Christian faith?

There is something in the modern church that makes us seem almost intent on reducing the Christian faith to the lowest common denominator. There’s a risk in that of course. And the risk is that we might take the great vision of Jesus and boil it down to something mundane and subjective.

We love to sing sweet soft songs like, “I Come to the Garden Alone” or “There’s Something About That Name“ And those sentiments can be real and powerful. Maybe to some they may seem a bit overly sentimental and hokey-- with a perhaps overly cozy vision of gentle Jesus meek and mild, tucked safely away, and innocuously, in our individual hearts. Nevertheless that aspect of faith is true and meaningful for many.

But aren’t they only half the story of Christianity? As well as a personal Savior, we cannot forget that our Good Savior Jesus is also Risen and Ascended-- the Cosmic Christ-- Redeemer of the world and all humanity. As well as a God who is immanent and immediate in our lives, we cannot forget that our God is also a God who transcends the bounds of human knowledge and experience and imagination.

Our God is Creator of the world, the stars and planets, Ruler of the multi-verses. In order for us to be true to that same God, true to the core of Christianity, there must also be something cosmic and universal in our testimony of faith.

In our Scripture today we read Luke’s two accounts of Jesus' Ascension into heaven. Forty days after Easter, after the Risen Christ had appeared to His disciples and comforted them, He rose, again. This time not from the dead, but from the earth, into heaven.

In the 47^th Psalm we read that “God has gone up with a shout.” In Jesus Christ our God has gone up-- yes. But not to desert suffering humanity. Not leaving us to our own worst devices. Not to flee this earth. Our God in Christ has gone up to begin in heaven what is yet to be accomplished on earth. Our Lord Jesus has gone up, not to forsake us, but to continue to redeem us. The Doctrine of the Ascension asserts that He has gone up to take charge, to rule, to put all things under His feet.

What can make of such a bold statement? What are we to make of such a very strange story as our Gospel reading for this morning? All that Luke-- that the church is trying to say here is that there is something big going on-- something wondrous, something too grand to be limited to our earthbound categories-- something cosmic is afoot.

The same Jesus of Nazareth - carpenter's son, teacher, crucified and suffering One - that same Jesus has now gone up to sit at the right hand of the Almighty Creator. This same Jesus - who was rejected by the establishment, crucified by Caesar, dead and buried - to this suffering One, God said, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool" (Ps 110:1). This same Cosmic Christ now rules alongside and in the Creator: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me," He says (Mt 28:18).

It’s really too bad we have such trouble understanding that fact-- much less believing it. The cosmology of the Ascension bemuses the modern mind. Our puny, self-centered "modern minds" no longer ask questions for which cosmic, universal answers are needed. We don't worry too much anymore about the big picture. Rather, we content ourselves with the cultivation of our own little gardens, hunker down, trying to take care of our own little corner of the world.

If we happen to be doing okay at the moment, we don't worry too much about the rest of creation. We exist in a flattened, ranch style, one dimensional universe. In our world, nothing goes up but rockets and the cost of living and unemployment statistics. Jesus stays in place.

Here, feet squarely planted in solidarity with us - next door, arm in arm with our values, our needs, our limits, our world view. We have tried to make God into the political liberator, or the liberal noble example of highest humanity, or the amenable, polyester-suited panelist on the TV Christian talk show, or even the televangelist-- but not the Ascended One. It's all been flattened out now, whittled to our scale, a pancake worldview as uneventful as a Central Illinois landscape. So far as we know our God no longer goes up-- or anywhere else.

We are people with small, everyday, subjective concerns, and so it’s little wonder that many of us are willing to ignore celebrating the Ascension. It doesn't fit anymore; it's not mentioned that often in the New Testament; it falls on a Thursday. Who needs it? What’s it got to do with me, in my world? .

God in Christ Jesus has gone up with a shout. But as our Savior promised in the Upper Room, we have not been left orphans on this world. The Holy Spirit, the surpassing greatness of God's power is communicated directly to the hearts of believers like us! The One who is seated above every authority and dominion in every age is bodily present in the lowly group of people known as the Church! This is experience we call faith: the recognition that the God which no one can grasp actually resides in the inner recesses of the human soul. One preacher put it this way:

“From the fiery explosions at the edges of the universe to the breath of life blowing upon the damp clay of the earth, we reach for the mystery of God only to discover that we are held. From the day that the Lord ascended into the gray mists atop a mountain to the crimson fire and driving wind of Pentecost, we disciples strain to see a vision of the God only to be blinded by the brightness of God. “

What does that have to do with me and my life? Everything! Because it means that this Jesus we follow was more than a prophet, more than a great teacher of ethics, more than a visionary religious leader. It means that as well as defeating death in His Resurrection, Jesus our Savior has in His Ascension, broken all the barriers that would limit or bind human life on this planet.

It means that Jesus can be that friend we sing about in the song--to all of us. It means that the Cosmic Christ can weep beside me in my times of deepest grief. He can celebrate with me in my times of greatest joy.

And it means He can and He will-- stand alongside you-- and you-- and you-- in your times of need and joy-- even at the same moment as He is standing beside me. It means that no matter what slings and arrows of outrageous fortune may strike us—we do not stand up to them alone. We have a Comforter, a Counselor, a Savior who will walk with us-- and allow us to stand tall.

This illogical, seemingly self-contradictory Doctrine of the Ascension is not necessarily the easiest spiritual fare for a sunny, calm, ordered Sunday in May. Its message is not that of escapist nostalgia or refined academic dispute, but of defiant, clinch-fisted Apocalypticism. It's a faith for the last days, the darkest days, the days caught between the heel of the oppressor and the chant of the lynch mob.

The One who came and stood beside us, who suffered because of us and for us, who felt the heel of Caesar, the fickleness of the crowd, and the cowardice of disciples, this One has gone up. He is God, not just for the church, not just within my heart, but for the whole world-- for all of creation. Nothing shall be beyond His lordship.

The Ascension is not a Divine escape from this world-- we do not worship a distant Clockmaker/God dwelling in a seventh heaven far removed from us and from our earthly concerns. Our God has gone up with a shout and reigns. So it is time for us to stop gazing up into heaven and start looking on earth for evidence of His rule. The truth is, no matter who is in the White House or what the newspapers say, Christ is Pantocrator-- the Cosmic Christ, Redeemer and now Ruler of all of Creation. He holds the whole cosmos in His expansive embrace.

Our God has gone up with a shout, and we have something to say to life in the valley. To the mother weeping for her starving child, to the person with terminal illness, to the unemployed, the suffering, the victim of terror or violence we can proclaim with joy and hope, God has gone up. Let us say to them what He has said to us, "I am ascending to my Father/Mother in heaven and your Father/Mother in heven, to my God and your God" (Jn 20:17). .

The angels of the Ascension query us, "Why do you stand gazing into heaven?" Jesus promised power and Holy Spirit for us to stay engaged here in the earth. Jesus stands beside us now-- all of us-- that everywhere and everyone may reach out and respond to him, receive a portion of His Spirit, --the teaching and practice of His lifetime as our Rabbi. Just as Elisha received the double share of Elijah's spirit, so Jesus promised that we should do "greater things" than He, because He goes to the Creator.

The Ascension is the great answer for the great questions of existence-- war, injustice, oppression, and faith. Because Our God has gone up, we're compelled toward cosmic, worldwide, multinational, universal concerns. Why? Because even these must be subject to His rule.

The problem is that we have over-sentimentalized that radical hope. We have been too fearful to hear that promise and accept it‘s challenge. We boldly sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” but we are too timid to also proclaim with our lives and our involvement “Hope of the World, Thou Christ of Great Compassion”

As a result, over the centuries, Christian churches have too often became observation platforms for watching the heavens. And we have gotten better and better at imaging the life after death in heavenly realms, and booking passage there unto than at anticipating and participating in and celebrating the coming of God’s Earthly Rule-- the New Jerusalem. That is the Holy Realm that you and I have a mission from Rabbi Jesus to help build-- that His prayer might be realized to make all humankind One-- one community, one synagogue, one gathering, one Temple.

The disciples responded to Jesus,

"Is it now that you will restore our sovereignty as a people? Will you give us back our dignity as a nation, take away the oppression of the Empire?"

Jesus did not say to them 'You have mistaken my mission entirely, you should be thinking about the next world, Somewhere Over the Rainbow .' or ‘Pie in the Sky When You Die’. Instead, Jesus responded to their most ardent hopes, telling them-- and us--

"We can't know for certain of such things as when or where, but we know HOW -- you will get power only if you stay engaged, if your religion is bound to the earthly city, where you are to achieve it, and then you'll be able to witness to

me and to my agenda for humankind everywhere, sharing my news in Judea and

Samaria, in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, and Lindenhurst and Gurnee, in Iran and Iraq, and to the end of the ages.

The same spiritual power of God that had been at work in Jesus had now passed to the assembled community of men and women who followed him from Galilee to Jerusalem, had witnessed to His Resurrection, and now formed a visible community of faith awaiting His return. The church remains that visible, still awaiting community of believers to this day.

What does that have to do with us and with our concerns? It means we don’t have to keep living our lives in despair and empty hope. It means that you and I can have courage to stand up against what is wrong-- knowing that there is an absolute right in the cosmos-- and that it will triumph.

It means that we can live in integrity-- knowing there are absolute values in the cosmos. It means that we can pray for and struggle for and live for peace---knowing that peace and right are stronger than wrong and justice will in the end triumph-- no matter how long it takes.

It means that we can go on working and witnessing against injustice wherever we encounter it-- knowing that there is-- there will be Divine Justice. And that it will somehow, someday, on some plane of existence, right all the intolerable wrongs and make sense of all the senseless tragedies we see around us and shake our heads about in sadness and puzzlement.

The story of the Ascension has a missionary thrust which you and I cannot ignore. When empowered as promised by Christ-- they-- we-- were and are called to become His witnesses to the world. Our God in Christ Jesus has gone up with a shout. And that means empowered by His Spirit, encouraged by the radical promise of His Resurrection and Ascension, you and I can live lives of meaning and purpose and joy as we carry on His Mission here, in His world.