Ascension 2025

“So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’”

Isn’t this just the question!

O Lord, when are you going to come and fix things?  When will you restore things to the way they used to be!?   It’s the same question I was asked when you interviewed me, how will you grow this church…we were such a thriving parish…how will you fix it?

It’s the same question we all wanted to ask of the candidates for bishop at yesterdays election…how will you restore this Diocese?  It’s the big question right now, something everyone wants to know and Christ’s answer was the worst…by which I mean the most frustrating.  “It is not for you to know…”   ooooooh I bet the disciples loved that as much as I do.

Not for you to know.  But we WANT to know.  We NEED to know the plan.  We HATE to live in ambiguity, but nonetheless it’s true.  We don’t need to know and apparently we aren’t going to know, because that is up to God, it is not what we are called to do. 

Our job it to witness.  Our job is to observe where God is in the world.  To recognize scripture in action.  To experience Christ in our lives and then to tell others what we have seen and known.  We are witnesses.

But we aren’t all that keen for our job.  Many of us grew up with that ‘Great Protestant Work Ethic’.  The ‘get ‘er done’ mentality.  We like Jesus here among us, because Jesus did stuff!  He worked miracles.  He taught hundreds.  He died for his people and then was raised and kept on teaching!  It was awesome.  In a mere three years Jesus got so much done.

Witnessing, or worse evangelizing seems less productive and frankly more uncomfortable than joining a committee.  Worse still with witnessing you don’t know if you are actually ‘doing’ anything.

There was a MASH episode that I remember that spoke to this.  Father Mulcahy was the chaplain at a Korean surgical center near the front.  Every day he’d see the surgeons perform life saving operations and shake hands with the people whose lives they save.  Father Mulcahy though laments “sometimes—most of the time—I honestly don’t know whether I’m doing any good or not.”  We want to know what we are doing is going to accomplish something…we want to see results.

Then we read that he ascended; “When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven?”

 

Well I know why they were staring up at heaven.  After the first shock of the moment, they each and everyone though… what do we do now.

It’s like we are still in biblical times, nothing changed.  We as a church are in a in a similar state of shock as things change around us.   We are here, staring at the sky and saying ‘what do we do now?’

Hey Priest, what are you going to do to make St. Andrew’s thrive?

Hey new bishop how are you going to make the Diocese financially stable?

What we forget is that we are not supposed to make things happen, we are supposed to witness.   I know we don’t like hearing this, but nowhere in the bible did Jesus tell us to build churches, in fact when Peter proposed something similar he was shut down.

We are not called to create financially stable institutions.  We have inherited some rather financially instable institutions.  But fixing them is not our primary purpose. 

Yes, it gets cold and we need walls and a roof.  Yes, our many missions need locations to work from.  Yes, there are practical considerations to having a church.

But we cannot forget that we are called not simply to have a church, but to be a church.  Paul in his letters speaks about gathering finances for ministry and the practical issues of transportations and such, but far more often he speaks of a people’s faith.

“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power”

 

Christ spent his time with the disciples, and through them with us, teaching and equipping us to continue his work.  Christ send the Holy Spirit to empower us to do his work.  Not the work of salvation, but the work of witness.  Of continuing to teach others about Christ and help each other grow in relationship with God, Christ and the Spirit. 

It is a vital ministry and one that we are all called to via the Spirit.  Which is why Paul prays for the church to receive the wisdom of the Sprit and a revelatory understanding of Christ.  It is why we pray that our hearts may see God as clearly as my eyes see you here.  So that we may know how very rich we are in Spirit and in faith.

We spend our time looking at the sky and wondering what to do next.  Worried that we don’t have the answers, that we don’t know what to do.

Christ’s ascension this day…40 days after his resurrection signifies that Christ’s earthly work is done…salvation has been assured and the barriers of mortality have been removed.  Christ has empowers us, as we read this week and next with everything we need, the experiences gained and soon the confidence of the Holy Spirit to do our part.

 

What do we do next?  We preach, we teach, we guide, we pray, we read and we act as Christ’s hands and feet in this world until Christ comes again.  That is what we do.  We live out our witness of Christ in this world.  We tell others of what we know.

 

  “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. “

 

We are witness.  That is what we are called to do.

How will this fix the church?  How will this finance our Diocese? How will this grow our congregation?  Not a clue! That, That is God’s job.  We may not know when, or with who, or how, but I have faith that our witness will help the church grow.  It may not be for us to know the details but we have hope, and we have the experience of history. 

What the answers will be.  I don’t know, but I do know that there is work to be done here and now. 

So, there is no need to stare at the sky and wonder ‘what next’.  That is for God.   Our job is what should we do now, and that is to be witnesses of Christ.  Incarnate, Crucified, Resurrected and now Ascended. 

Praise be! 

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”

Christ’s blessing is ever with us.  We are never alone and never without help…as we shall see next week.

So it is up to us to receive that blessing and be witnesses to all we meet, sharing our faith and praising our God.

That is our lesson this Ascension Feast. 

Thanks be to God