Sermons & Blogs

If you listen carefully, you might be able to hear the voices of the disciples, remembering Jesus, their savior and their friend. 

I still remember the first time I saw Jesus—I was at work, filling out tax forms and shuffling papers, and all of a sudden, there was Jesus, inviting me to follow him.  I just got up from my desk and went; you know, I’m still kind of amazed I did that. 

Do you remember that time when we were all in the temple and he was teaching, and those guys, those priests and scribes, wanted to ask Jesus where his authority came from.  I always wanted Jesus to be sarcastic, just once, and say, “I was educated at Yale Divinity School.  What about you?”  But no, instead Jesus just asked them another question: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven or was it of human origin?”  All their degrees and status couldn’t help them then—they didn’t have an answer.  So Jesus got to respond, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”  Oh, how I love a good verbal smackdown. 

What about the time we were sailing across the lake and that big wind kicked up and started swamping the boat, and there’s Jesus!  Sleeping soundly!  But as soon as we woke him up, he ordered that wind to calm down, and it did.  I mean, I really thought I was going to die that night. 

Hey, remember that crippled woman that we met in the synagogue?  It was painful just to look at her, her spine bent so out of shape, moving so slowly, coming over to where we were just to hear some of Jesus’s teaching.  And then he healed her!  On the Sabbath, in front of everybody!  She stood straight up, so amazed!  Can you imagine, after years of only being able to see people’s backs and their waists—now she could look at anyone in the eye!  And she sure did give a dirty look to the synagogue leader who got so upset that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath.  But he totally had it coming.  Jesus had such a good sense of timing.

It seems like a good time to recall the stories, now that Jesus has ascended, away from the earth.  We were there for the big public sermons, the late-night discussions over the campfire, that long night of prayer in the garden, the arrest, the sham trial, the terrible beatings and the brutal crucifixion.  We gathered together, scared out of our minds, wondering what would happen next, when some of the women went out to take spices to the tomb—most of us were afraid to venture out.  They weren’t even gone very long before they came back, telling us they’d seen the tomb open and a couple of men in these bright jumpsuits or something, telling them that Jesus had risen from the dead.  We hardly believed it until we saw Jesus for ourselves.  He even ate with us again.  Were we waking from some kind of awful dream?  Before we know it, there he goes again, carried up into the sky.  We are witnesses of these things.  But this time, is Jesus gone for good? 

It’s a reasonable question to ask.  All of the gospel accounts tell the story of Jesus’s death, some of the gospels refer to post-resurrection appearances that Jesus made among his disciples.  Luke’s gospel begins and ends in the temple.  As the gospel story draws to a close, the disciples are in the temple in Jerusalem, praising God and waiting for the next big event, as Jesus promised.  Something about “being clothed with power from on high.”  Maybe they’re not sure what that means, but whatever it is, they don’t want to miss it.  Luke’s story continues in the book of Acts, the sequel to Luke’s gospel, which says that Jesus appeared during 40 days before he ascended into heaven. 

It’s a strange time, those 40 days—40 signifying completion, referencing the rain that fell for 40 days and 40 nights to flood the earth while Noah and his family were saved.  We remember 40 as the number of years that the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land.  And 40 is also the number of days in which Jesus fasted and prayed and was tempted by Satan in the wilderness.  So on the 40^th day after the resurrection, 40 days after Easter, we gather here to celebrate the Ascension.  It’s not often, of course, that we gather for worship on a Thursday night. 

Reverend Delmer Chilton, an assistant to the bishop of the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA, says that “it was important that when [Jesus] went to ‘sit at the right hand of the father,’ people knew that he was really gone this time. Gone and not coming back until he came back for good, came back to ‘judge the living and the dead.’ If he had just disappeared again, well there would have been more Jesuses seen in Jerusalem than Elvises in Las Vegas. It’s difficult to get busy with the important business of loving the Christ in your neighbor if you are constantly on the lookout for another resurrection appearance.” 

For the disciples, the world was changing before their eyes.  The teacher they had come to love had been killed, resurrected, and had ascended to heaven.  It might have been easy to get stuck in the past, remembering the good ol’ days when Jesus was with them.  And how could they go back to those days, now that Jesus is gone? 

The answer is that they couldn’t go back; there was no going back—only acting in faith and trusting the testimony of Jesus himself, waiting to be clothed with power from on high.  The disciples were left behind, but they were not abandoned.  They worshipped, they praised God, they probably told the old stories, too, but they got on with the business of telling the good news of Jesus.  And it was while they were gathered together that the Holy Spirit arrived, in grand and unmistakable fashion, bestowing the power to speak new languages, to heal in the name of Jesus, to provide words for preaching to the mouths of those ordinary folks who, like Peter, probably had little training in public speaking and a background as a physical laborer on top of that.  This was what they were waiting for, the power that Jesus had promised, giving them boldness to go out to places they’d never been, giving them grace to learn to accept Gentiles and people they never dreamed they’d encounter, and giving them hope in the gospel which kept them going. 

What might have happened if those disciples had stayed put?  What if they had remained forlorn, constantly going back to the place where they last saw Jesus, eyes trained on the horizon, looking again and again for Jesus’s return?  Without the promise of Jesus and without the promise of the Holy Spirit, perhaps that would have been exactly what happened, and the story would never have been told, and we wouldn’t know Jesus, and we wouldn’t be sitting here today. 

But that’s not what happened.  People of faith believed what Jesus said, and they told other people too.  And the Holy Spirit convinced us as well.  Luke goes on through the book of Acts recounting the amazing stories of transformation, repentance and conversions, miraculous healings, encounters with strangers who somehow also know about Jesus.  Jesus says to his disciples, “You are witnesses of these things.”

This message is for us today.  We live in a culture where the church has become suspect, if not downright irrelevant.  Within congregations, our numbers are dwindling, we’re getting older.  It’s tempting to recall the days when our Sunday School classes were overflowing, when we had more volunteers than we knew what to do with, when we weren’t stressed out about budgets.  Were those the good old days?  Or are there some of us who dare to believe that there are wonders yet to be witnessed, that the best days are yet to come? 

Martin Luther said “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that you could stake your life on it a thousand times.”  For those of us with our eyes open, we are bold to seek Christ in the world now, in our neighbors, among the poor and needy, among the most vulnerable members of society.  We are bold to listen for the direction of the Holy Spirit, who continues to guide and direct and empower the faithful.  We continue to praise God, to gather for worship, just as the disciples did, knowing that our delight and our joy is in blessing God. 

And we keep the ancient testimonies of our ancestors.  In worship, we regularly recite the words of the Apostles’ Creed, where we confess our faith in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord.  Among the details of what we confess about Jesus is that strange sentence about how after he “was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.”  Or, “he descended into hell.”  I have wondered about that phrase, since the gospels don’t really mention Jesus going to hell. 

Even the official confessions of the Lutheran church don’t say much.  The committee that created the Formula of Concord, one of the teaching documents of the Lutheran church, wrote this: “Among some theologians committed to the Augsburg Confession there has been some dispute regarding this article: when and in what manner the Lord Christ descended into hell, according to our simple Christian creed, and whether it took place before or after his death.  Also, whether he descended only in his soul, or only in his deity, or with body and soul, bodily and spiritually.”  So apparently the question of Jesus in hell is nothing new.  But the resolution in the Formula of Concord goes like this: “It is enough that we know that Christ descended into hell and destroyed hell for all believers and that he redeemed them from the power of death, the devil, and the eternal damnation of hellish retribution.  How that happened we should save for the next world, where not only this matter but many others, which here we have simply believed and cannot comprehend with our blind reason, will be revealed.” 

But of course we know Jesus didn’t remain in hell—“on the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father.”  Luther said Jesus is at the right hand of God, and the right hand of God is everywhere.  Is it a comfort to know that we are not abandoned, that we cannot escape God’s grace, that God’s will is done?  We still gather to tell the stories of Jesus, the ancient testimonies and witnesses, but these we join with our own stories of faith, the miracles of healing that we see going on around us all the time, the work of the Holy Spirit that continues in our world even now.  Let us trust in God’s promises in Jesus Christ and stay here in the city until we are clothed with power from on high, and until we see Jesus Christ keep his promise to come again.  Amen.