June 1, 2014 – Acts 1:6-14
Acts 1:6-14
An Eye on Heaven, An Eye on Earth
Seventh Sunday of Easter – June 1, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Today, in the first reading from Acts, we have the strange story of Jesus’ Ascension.
In Luke’s telling of the story in Acts, this happens 40 days after Easter Sunday morning.
Jesus’ resurrection body ascends to heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father.
So now Jesus is no longer present in the same way he was to, say, Mary Magdalene on
Easter Sunday morning.
This event is a very celebrated event in the church’s tradition,
even though it is not often kept by Lutherans.
In many, if not all, the paintings of the Ascension, the disciples gawk heavenward,
mouths gaping, as they watch Jesus’ feet ascend through the clouds,
like the picture I sent round on the e-mail list this week,
or the little graphic on the worship folder today.
So a couple of angels come and ask the disciples a pointed question:
“Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
Well, they could be forgiven for looking up toward heaven.
I mean, Jesus was everything to them.
And here he was, going away.
Didn’t they just get him back from death when they thought they’d lost him forever?
So where was he going now?
I’ve told you before about the mosaic on the chapel wall of the Augusta Victoria Hospital
in Jerusalem.
This hospital, run by the Lutheran World Federation and supported by our own
Canadian Lutheran World Relief, is situated on the Mount of Olives very close to
where Jesus was supposed to have ascended into heaven.
Yet, in the mosaic, the angels are not gazing up at the ascending Jesus.
They are gazing out at us.
And they turn our gaze not up to heaven, but out toward the world,
as if they are saying,
“Don’t spend your time gazing into the clouds waiting for Jesus to return to fix everything.
Turn your gaze to the world where there are those in need of your love right now.”
Not a bad mosaic for a hospital dedicated to providing medical services to
Palestinians and to all, if necessary, free of charge.
Still, this story can be a little unnerving.
Surely it spoke to the experience of the disciples who surely wondered
while they were figuring out what on earth to do: “Where is Jesus?”
Surely it spoke to the experience of the early church who wondered in the midst of persecution,
“Where is Jesus?”
Surely it speaks to our experience today who wonder frequently, “Where is Jesus?”
If you count 40 days from Easter, you always land on a Thursday,
And that is always called Ascension Day in our church calendar.
This year it fell on the Thursday of this past week, May 29th.
May 29th was a long, hard day for me, let me tell you.
I visited several of our members who are very very sick.
One is recovering from a very difficult surgery and is not doing well.
One has just received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer at the age of 69, totally out of the blue.
One has been struggling with cancer for several years and the last few weeks have been difficult.
All this, in the midst of personal stresses.
Ascension Day had me wondering, “Where is Jesus?”
Ascension Day had me looking to heaven, let me tell you,
and praying to the one Luke tells us is at the right hand of God.
But that seems pretty far away.
You keep looking up, waiting for Jesus to come and do something.
And then you hear the angels rebuking you, “Why are you looking up toward heaven?”
And the mosaic at Augusta Victoria Hospital directs you back down to earth,
where these beautiful people need prayer, and gentleness, and mercy, and presence.
And that is okay, let me tell you.
But still.
You long to look up every now and again.
And you wonder, with the disciples, “Where is Jesus?”
The story, I am sure, is not about explaining why Jesus is absent.
Of that, I am sure.
Over and over in the Gospels the promise is that Jesus is not abandoning us,
is not going away from us.
“I will be with you always, to the end of the age,” says Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel,
and that can stand for all.
This story of the Ascension can appear to remove Jesus from the story of the world.
This story of the Ascension can make it appear as if Jesus is abandoning us.
But I’m sure that is to misunderstand Luke’s intentions here.
Rather, this Ascension is good news: this Ascension is the Gospel today.
This Ascension means that now there is nothing and no one and no situation that is
not under Jesus’ lordship.
Tyrannical rulers are under Jesus’ lordship: ultimately it is Jesus’ justice that will prevail.
The nations are under Jesus’ lordship: ultimately it is Jesus’ peace that will reign.
The hungry, the sick, the despairing, the addicted, the mentally ill, the lonely,
the abandoned: everyone who knows suffering of any kind is under Jesus’ lordship
and that is a good place to be because finally it is Jesus’ healing that will have
the last word.
New Testament professor Matt Skinner writes, Acts insists . . . that Jesus departs from his
earthly followers so that he might exercise his authority and influence over
all things, all places, and all powers.
For he will now be present throughout all creation, in every nook and cranny.
He is lord in the hospital rooms and he is lord in the psychiatric wards.
He is lord in the living rooms and he is lord in the board rooms,
He is lord in life and he is lord in death.
And he is lord above all in the church, where his lordship in love and mercy and grace
is recognized and celebrated and imitated.
His love and his life and his justice will have the last word.
And it’s through us, Luke insists, it is through the church that his story on earth continues.
Jesus’ very last words on earth today are given to us, and they are full of power and import:
You will be my witnesses, my agents, my earthly body from now on to the very ends of the earth.
I will send you the power and the energy you need to love bless and heal this whole world and
every person in it.
For me, on Thursday, that meant trusting that wherever I went, Jesus was there.
I placed my hand on the forehead of a woman so sick she could barely open her eyes and speak,
and I blessed her, and entrusted her to the care of Jesus.
I had very intimate conversation with a woman shocked and unsure of what to do in the face of
this sudden diagnosis of pancreatic cancer: we prayed that every day she would have
the eyes to see and to give thanks for every gift that came her way, and
we prayed that every day she would have
the power to love to the very end.
And with a man and his wife who have been living with his cancer,
we read the story of the Ascension – and then we shared communion.
And we heard the words, “This is my body, given for you. This is my blood, shed for you.”
And we didn’t need to wonder where Jesus was anymore.
Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there.
There in the hospital, there with the sick, there with the dying,
there with the pastor with his own problems.
Christ is present in the bread and wine, says Luther,
because Christ is present in my cabbage soup.
In light of the Ascension there is now no place Jesus cannot be.
And there is no place he is not now the lord of love and mercy and grace.
And we are his witnesses, his agents, his body.
We have the power to reveal him in all his wondrousness and grace – or not.
After we read the story of the Ascension and before we shared communion on Ascension Day,
the three of us reflected on the meaning of the mosaic at Augusta Victoria Hospital.
And we decided that, unlike the angels, we would cut the disciples some slack.
Surely it is okay to keep one eye on heaven, and one eye on earth.
Surely, as one of our Prayers after Communion has it, we are at one and the same time,
Citizens of the commonwealth of heaven and inhabitants of the earth.
Surely we carry out our earthly work in the context of the ascended Lord’s neverceasing work.
Surely we undergo our own struggles and suffering in the context of a much larger hope than
any one of us could ever muster.
The hope that, as Julian of Norwich said long ago, All will be well, and all will be well,
and all manner of all things will be well. And we shall see it.
Surely we are to keep one eye on heaven, and one eye on earth.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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