Things Change

Acts 1: 1-11 Marianne Niesen June 5, 2011

Today we celebrate a little known feast in the Christian Church – Ascension Sunday. This rather obscure day on the church calendar remembers the day Jesus ascended or arose into heaven. The day is different from Easter in that Easter celebrates Jesus rising from death into life while the Ascension celebrates Jesus rising from the earth into heaven. But, perhaps, more to the point, on Easter the disciples were excited because they experienced in a very real, concrete way that Jesus was still with them. Death did not hold him. Death did not separate him from them. Death did not end his presence among them. The Ascension was how they came to understand and explain to each other that he was no longer there – at least not in those concrete real ways they so loved after the Resurrection. Things had changed.

We know, of course, that the design of the universe is far more complex than our ancestors ever imagined. For them, the earth was down here and heaven was, quite literally, “up” there. If Jesus was still milling around ‘here,’ the only way he could get to God, to heaven, was to ‘go up.’ Thus, they describe it that way. Jesus goes up like a one-man space shuttle – which is, of course, ludicrous. And if we spend our time focusing on the aerodynamics of the Ascension, we miss the point. As always, the question to ask is not how did it look but what does it mean? What was Luke’s point in his account of this thing called ‘Ascension’? He must have had a point, after all – he tells the story twice. He ends his gospel with a short version of the story. In that one Jesus was ‘carried up’ into heaven. And Luke begins his ‘Acts of the Apostles’ where his gospel left off – with the description I just read of a mountain and a heavenly Ascension. If it wasn’t meant to be a scientific description of the movement of a body through the air, what was it?

To understand, let’s take a step back. Scholars believe Luke wrote his two volume work about in the mid-eighties – in other words, over 50 years after that first Easter. That means many of the people to whom Luke addressed himself did not know Jesus personally. And the memories of those who had known Jesus were getting dimmer. Not too long before Luke wrote - in the year 70 – the civil unrest that was already brewing when Jesus lived had led to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jewish people far and wide. Jews and Jewish Christians alike would have been among those attacked and dispersed. And all of them – whether Jew or Christian – would have begged heaven for answers. Where are you O God? How long O Lord? Jews wondered when the Messiah would come and Christians begged Jesus to return as he had promised.

The Christians who did that heart-felt pleading were faced with a whole new challenge in their life of faith. As they gathered, they told the stories, broke the bread, did the good deeds to which Jesus had called them. But, as always happens, as time passed, their memories had begun to grow dim. Can’t you just imagine their conversations…we thought –with Jesus – everything would be different. But, we don’t feel him any more. Now what? Things had changed.

On the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, there is a rather obscure pilgrimage spot. It has a small mosque, built over a Christian shrine that dates from about the year 380. It was built, they say, around some dusty footprints and tradition has it that it was from precisely this place that Jesus was launched into heaven at his Ascension. The footprints were his. When the Muslim conqueror Saladin took possession of Jerusalem in the 12th century, a mosque was built over the Christian shrine – after all, Muslims hold Jesus in high esteem as well. By then, these footprints were set in stone. One of them is still visible today although, you need a fair amount of imagination to make it out. On one of our first visits to Jerusalem in the mid-nineties, we visited there with our group. I had been asked to lead a short devotion at the place. What struck me when we got there was that we were standing at a mosque, in Jerusalem with a group of Christians. Our bus driver was Muslim and, if I remember correctly, was even fasting for Ramadan and our guide was Jewish. I had planned a devotion, of course, but after seeing the place, I had an idea. I asked Omar, the driver, if he would pray with us. He was surprised but agreed. I made a similar invitation to Doron, our guide. And, I told them both my idea.

So, after we had filed through the mosque (which was very tiny and held only 4-5 people at a time) and paid homage to the very obscure footprint, we gathered in a circle on the Mount of Olives just outside the mosque. It was a lovely, though breezy, Jerusalem day. We opened with a prayer and then I read from the gospel of Mark . . . ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’[1] Then Omar, with great devotion, recited a similar passage, which is found in the Quran, from memory. And, also from memory, Doron recited that same passage from the Torah. And there we were – American, Palestinian, Israeli, Christian, Muslim, Jew, in English, Arabic and Hebrew – in the midst of one of the most volatile regions of the world, all proclaiming that the greatest commandments were to love God and to love each other. There we were, looking out from the Mount of Olives very near the place where Jesus wept over Jerusalem. And we prayed for peace. And, for a moment we were no longer bus driver, guide and pilgrims. We were just people who longed together for a better way. That moment did not change the world. And it did not bring world peace but I think it did something in the hearts and souls of at least some of the 40 of us who gathered there at the mosque of the Ascension. We were different somehow. Things had changed. Not the world . . . but we had. And it happened not because we looked at a footprint etched in stone but at the very human faces of one another.

Fundamentally, I believe that is what the Ascension of Jesus is really about. It is not about knowing where the last footprint was or how low the clouds got or if he went up in some kind of blaze of glory or just floated on air. The description we have is rooted in a 1st century understanding of the cosmos. And, delightful though it may be to speculate, etching footprints in stone misses the point. Because the point was, quite frankly, that nothing is etched in stone, nothing was the same. Everything had changed for those early disciples and they were faced with the fact that very little had turned out they way they had hoped. The early experience of resurrection . . . of seeing Jesus and knowing him to be present with them was fading. Jesus was gone. The Romans were still there. Jesus had ascended, had left and the people were still poor. Life was still hard. Fears were still real. And the disciples looked at each other and said now what? And then . . . and this is important . . . then, they answered their own question. Now what? Now, we do what Jesus did – knowing, trusting, that he is with us still. That his spirit is truly in us and with us. It is significant that both the angels at the tomb and the angels at the Ascension essentially said . . . don’t just stand here looking around . . . do something already. If you are different, act like it – even if you don’t feel like it. Don’t look FOR Jesus, look LIKE Jesus.

The great preacher Peter Gomes preached a sermon just before graduation day at Harvard one year. On that day, he challenged the new graduates with these words . . .

I will give you my definition of what a Christian is. To be a Christian is to be a changed man or a changed woman in an unchanged world. Anyone can be a Christian in a Christian world, but, in case you haven’t noticed it, this is not a Christian world. This is a pagan world, a fallen world, a secular world, a sordid world, a shabby world, and it happens to be the only world that you and I have. That’s it. To be a Christian in it is to be changed in the middle of what is unchanged.[2]

And friends, I don’t think anything makes that point clearer than a good Ascension! He’s gone. You’re not. What are you going to do about it? That’s the message of the whole thing! Imagine the possibilities before us! Imagine what it would be like if we actually lived that great commandment about loving God and loving others – even when the others speak a different language or believe a different way.

Luke ended his gospel with the Ascension . . . and he began his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles with the same thing. The Ascension. Because, after the Ascension, it was ‘show time’ for the disciples. For the fledgling church. It was time to do what Jesus had done. To live as changed people in an unchanged world. And that is what we have been trying to do ever since. We’ve taken some detours along the way. Like looking for footprints in the sand. But the real challenge is to make footprints. To get on with things because, well, we’ve been changed by this one we call Jesus - by his message, his example and his presence with us and in us in new and ever-changing ways. Look around. The “Romans” – the powerful - are still in charge and people are still poor and God still aches for those who will work for peace on earth, goodwill toward all.

And nothing quite moves us forward like a good Ascension! The question is . . . what will we do about it in our day and time?

[1] Mark 12: 28-31