Ascension Day May 17, 2026
St. Andrew’s Woodhaven
The Rev. Rod Sprange
I have preached on Ascension day in various churches about six times in ten years. I think Rectors tend to assign it to Honorary Assistants and occasional preachers so they are clear to have all the fun on the Day of Pentecost.  Just a theory. 
Ascension Day is a critically important day in the church year, but has sadly been somewhat neglected by the church being followed so closely by Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. But it marks a huge turning point in the history of creation.  It marks the day when Jesus the Christ, fully human and fully divine, ascended to his rightful place as the lord of all creation.  A divinity that has experienced life as a human.  One who has suffered from hatred, from being misunderstood, who has experienced the loss of a dear friend, experienced betrayal, disappointment, physical torture and agonizing abandonment in death.  He is one we can be assured has the greatest empathy and love for each of us.  And by his ascension he is there for us all whenever we call upon his name.  
There is deep mystery in this story of the ascension, and a temptation (to which many have succumbed) to try and demystify it.  I think that is a problem that has developed in this so called age of enlightenment.  In thinking about that problem I remembered one of my favourite movies, ‘Keeping Mum’.  ‘Keeping Mum’ is a dark British comedy.  One of the characters is a vicar in the village of Little Wallop.  The vicar is played by Rowan Atkinson, of Mr. Been fame.  This unfortunate priest has lost his way.  He doesn’t have a clue about what’s happening with his family, and has lost touch with his congregation.  His sermons have become theoretical and dull.  His and his families life is turned upside down by the arrival of a character played by Maggie Smith, who turns out to be his wife’s birth mother.  She introduces her son-in-law to the possibility of humour in preaching.  This totally changes his relationship with the congregation. One Sunday he tells his first joke.  He says “people ask me why priests always answer a question with a question. I say, well, why shouldn’t they”.   But the line in the movie that came to mind when preparing this sermon was his punchline in a speech he was asked to give to a large meeting of clergy.  The subject was  ‘God’s Mysterious Ways’.  At the end of the speech he said  “I think God’s response to all this questioning of mystery is “I am mysterious folks, live with it”.   
In Luke the disciples experienced something unique that day that was impossible to clearly describe.  There are times when our language is inadequate to relate what we have experienced.  As an example can you describe to someone else what you mean when you say something is red.  You can only point to something else that is red and say it was like that, but if they are colour blind, that won’t help, and when the experience is unique you have nothing else to compare it to. 
I like the way a theologian, William Barclay put it, he wrote,  “The ascension must always remain a mystery, for it attempts to put into words what is beyond words and to describe what is beyond description. But that something should happen was essential”.   What Barclay was getting at was that the Risen Christ could not just keep on appearing to people and those appearances just fizzle out.  He was not a resuscitated person brought back to life, as we know it who would later die again, like Lazarus.  He was the resurrected Christ, the first born of God’s new creation, death had been destroyed in him.
But there is another issue.  As long as Jesus remained he could only be in one place at a time.  And the Risen Christ had to be available to everyone- everywhere-always.  That would be accomplished with the gift of the Holy Spirit, which could only happen after Jesus’s ascension. 
One of the problems of language is that the same word or phrase can mean something different to different people.  Its one of the problems with preaching, we may say something and mean one thing, other people may hear those words and get a different meaning from them.  Many of us have had the experience of a congregant saying “you said such and such on Sunday”.  And we know we didn’t, and have our text to prove it.    
Take the word ascended - He ascended into Heaven.  At first glance it sounds like a physical rising up into the sky - but to where?  Heaven doesn’t exist somewhere up there floating in the universe.  Remember, God’s realm was before creation.  
I believe that the real meaning of him ascending is rather like when we say Prince Charles ascended to the throne and became King.  It’s in the same vein as climbing the corporate ladder, there isn’t a physical ladder that people climb, (although we do often put the executive offices on a higher floor). 
God had made Jesus, the Risen Christ, the King or Lord of all creation. Christ  was now King of the new creation that had come into being with his resurrection.  A new creation that is still under construction.  
Ascension day, was the final time when Jesus was physically with his disciples. The event which Luke describes at the end of the Gospel and beginning of Acts is like a hinge, connecting the two volumes.  It marks the transition of his followers from being disciples to becoming Apostle; from being apprentices to being the ones with the responsibility to carry on the next stage of Jesus’s mission.  He had given them both the responsibility and authority to proclaim, not only to Israel, but to the whole world, the good news of repentance and God’s forgiveness through Christ. The healing of the wold. This is the work of the church. As we think about that let’s not take the word repentance lightly.  It’s not just about being sorry for our sins, its about turning around our whole lives, disrupting our comfort and security and living out Christ’s Gospel in a sometimes antagonistic and often disinterested world.    
That’s a big, difficult task.  I suggest we take it in bite-sized pieces.  Try to look into our hearts and find one area we know we should change.  And work on that.
I started this homily with mystery so we should end with mystery.  Not to demystify things, but at least to try to understand what they are about. Not how they can be made possible.
First we need to talk about the body!  There is the mystery of the missing body when the women went to the tomb Easter morning.  And the nature of Christ’s body when he appeared to the disciples.  Luke goes to great lengths to make sure we understand that this was the bodily Jesus they encountered.  Ghosts don’t ask you to touch them, and they certainly wouldn’t ask for some fish and eat it.   Yet this body was also different.  Jesus could seemingly appear to them at will.  
What many, including Paul, believe is that Jesus was the first born of a whole new creation for whom there was no longer a barrier between God’s realm and the created order.  We can’t know how.  Several months ago, Rev. Liz spoke about thin places.  The belief that there are places in the world where the barrier between the two is very thin.  The place where Jacob had his dream about the angels ascending and descending was an example.  I have experienced a few places that were special and Holy. One is in the Whiteshell, where there are petroforms, various animal shapes made from rocks. I visited there with my. Mother once.  And we both felt there was something holy about the place.  I believe the indigenous people who made the petroforms also recognized the site as holy and wanted to mark it as special.  In these places we feel God is very close.  
In Jesus’s resurrection God had started the new age, where there would no longer be a barrier between our world and God’s realm.  In the general resurrection we are given the hope of a new body in God’s new creation.
Jesus had told the disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit and then to be his witnesses in the whole world.  
The disciples ‘worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy’.  What a change from just 40 days before, when they were totally disheartened, terrified and suffering from guilt and  grief.  They had finally heard and understood the good news of God in Christ.  They spent their time  of waiting in the temple giving praise to God.   Can you imagine, in the temple, the place where they could be in most danger from the authorities? 
We are the church and have inherited the responsibility to take the message of God’s love to the whole world.  Not forcibly, not in superiority, but in humility and sincerity sharing the good news and in the spirit of Jesus’s hospitality inviting others to come and see and to belong.  And to do this, not for our benefit but for theirs. Not to fill pews but to fill hearts.
Next week we will hear what happened next as we celebrate another great mystery, Pentecost.
Let us pray as Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus: Holy and eternally loving God, we ask you to give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know you through Jesus Christ, so that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which you have called us.
Amen