Sermons

The Ascension of Our Lord

Thursday 17 May at 7.30pm

Lesley Ashton

As he was blessing them, he departed from them and was taken up into heaven.

We are coming to the end of our Easter season and today marks the last resurrection appearance. The risen Jesus has come amongst his disciples, again explaining the scriptures to them and telling them about the job left for them to do, to bear witness of all he has shared with them. And he cautions them also to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit that will enable them to carry out all he has asked. In 10 days time we will celebrate this self-giving of God at Pentecost.

This last appearance marks the parting of the ways, as Christ leaves earth to return to his Father in glory

Before he ascends into heaven Christ blesses the disciples and it is as he is blessing them that he departed from them and was taken up into heaven. Jesus who came to the world in great humility, from God and entered into our humanity, God with us, Now, as the resurrected Christ he returns to the glory of his Father in heaven.

Humanity has been taken up into heaven and the way to glory has been made open to us through Christ's ascension.

Luke tells us that the disciples are filled with great joy and spend all their time in the temple, giving thanks to God. These are the same disciples who after Christ's crucifixion were afraid and who hid, these are the disciples who did not recognise him on the road, these are the disciples who were terrified when he stood among them, thinking they had seen a ghost.

BUT their response to the departure of Christ is not one of fear or of bereavement or of great or painful loss but one of joy and thankfulness. Remember that Pentecost is still to come, this joy and thankfulness is linked with departure.

It seems that suddenly the penny has dropped and that the disciples have begun to recognise some of what Jesus had been trying, so hard to explain to them.

Or was it the blessing he gave as he raised his hand over them. Or had they now got a sense now of their futures, an awareness of their calling, Or had they at last seen how thin the line is that divides earth and heaven for those who trust in the risen Christ. We don't really know, but somehow through the grace of God they were being transformed from followers of Christ to those who could also bear witness to all he had been and done, of all that he was and still is.

It feels quite amazing that it is within the strangeness and the mystery of the Ascension, at a time of leave taking and departure, that the grace of God pours into their hearts and opens their eyes. Perhaps it was Christ entering into the glory of heaven opening to all humanity the gate of glory that transformed their understanding; perhaps in that moment everything simply fell into place as they touched the hem of heaven.

For the paradox of the Ascension of Christ is that in His going away Christ going away from us he comes closer to us. He is no longer on earth but because of his Ascension we have been brought closer to God. Human kind is now given the gift of heaven.

And we too are occasionally and often unexpectedly given a glimpse of that place where heaven and earth meet. These gifts of grace come often when we are at our most vulnerable, or our most fearful, when we have run out of our own energy and our own answers, when we are clinging on to our faith with our fingertips but cling we do because we can do no other. They can come when we abandon self and look only to God to be all that we want or need. Sometimes they touch us as we receive a blessing from another or we when seek to be a blessing to others.

These moments of grace are when we walk on holy ground, there is none of us in their making, and they are sheer gift. And like the disciples we are simply filled with joy and thankfulness

They give us a sense of God so present that we know we have had a foretaste of heaven, we have a sense of that thin place between life and death and fear looses its grip.

As we mark the Ascension of Christ each year, we are reminded that we are not abandoned but that heaven is opened up to humankind, we are invited to anticipate the gift of the Holy Spirit and be made ready again to share the good news of Jesus Christ, risen, ascended glorified. Amen

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay