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Luke 24:44-53

Ascension / Easter 7

May 13, 2018

William G. Carter

Then Jesus said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “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. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

One summer night some years ago, I watched a hot air balloon launch at Lackawanna State Park. My kids were a good bit younger and a friend called to tip us off. “They are going to love seeing this,” she said. We all enjoyed it.

We arrived just in time to hear the thunderous sound of hot air filling up those enormous balloons. The balloons began to inflate and rise. The passenger baskets turned upright and the lines grew tight. Pretty soon somebody shouted, “He’s off.” We watched as the man in the basket began to rise into the sky. It was a thrilling sight!

I’m not afraid of heights, but I do like to have a solid floor beneath my feet. So I was only a little envious to see the man in the basket go higher and higher. It was enticing. He was leaving all his cares down here on the ground, lifting above our distress, going up and up. I would guess he was at least three hundred feet beyond reproach. Soon he was up even further. It was an amazing, dazzling, almost other-worldly sight.

Some people were discussing this passage at the very end of the Gospel of Luke. They knew about the Easter story; everybody knows about Easter. But they had not realized the story goes on a bit more. Jesus goes up into the sky. “He was carried up into heaven,” says Luke. He ascended into the sky.

One of the ladies in the discussion group said, “I can’t blame him.” Why do you say that? She said, “He got out of here as soon as he could.” The group giggled, but she pushed here point. “Oh, I’ll bet Jesus was in a hurry to get back up into heaven,” she said. “After all, don’t forget how they treated him when he was here.”

Going up – is this an escape? I remember James T. Kirk, captain of the star ship Enterprise. How many times did he say, “Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life down here.” The lady in that group made it sound as if Jesus was talking the same way to God in heaven: “Get me out of here.”

I had never thought of the Ascension quite that way. We say the line from the Apostles’ Creed almost every week: “he ascended into heaven.” Is that intended to suggest an escape from the mud, the muck, and the evil here on the ground?

In 1830, a young girl named Margaret McDonald had a vision. Or a dream. Or some kind of something. She was attending a healing service, and suddenly pictured a two-stage return of Christ from heaven. First, he will come secretly to snatch away all his believers, and then later he will come to judge whoever had been left behind. She described the scenario to John Nelson Darby, a British preacher.

Darby was a bit of sensationalist. He took the idea and began to develop it. He would preach it, and then preach it some more. Soon the idea began to develop into many stages, which he called “dispensations.” He began to categorize different historical eras: this happened, and that happened, and then finally this is going to happen. He described the whole thing as if it was a scientific system, an unfolding account of the End Times.

To support it, he plucked a single verse from one of Paul’s letters. Not just any letter, but First Thessalonians, probably the earliest composed document of what would later become the New Testament. In chapter four of that letter, Paul was writing to comfort the believers, who expected Jesus to return at any moment, just as he said he would. When Jesus comes, all the believers will be “caught up in the air to meet the Lord.” (1 Thess. 4:13).

Darby called this “the rapture.” Nobody had ever said anything about this in 1800 years of Christian history. Darby invented it and declared it to be true. And at heart, here’s what it is: an escape plan.[1] When everything falls apart, the Christians get out for free, but only the true Christians, you understand. So Darby and all his kind have come up with one test after another, to learn who the true Christians are. I guess if you pass their test, string together the same verses plucked out of context, and arrive with the same conclusion, then you can escape the world and spend eternity with all the people who agree with you.

These are notions that have infected the American church and split it into splinters. These ideas have invaded our politics and twisted our policies on the Middle East. They have given birth to unholy conspiracy theories and plundered the soil of God’s good earth. “We might as well strip mine the mountain tops of West Virginia and make some money now,” say some, “because Jesus is coming to snatch us away to fly up to heaven.”

Maybe you’ve heard about that sort of thing, or maybe you find the notion appealing. Just take note: a rapture like that is never mentioned in the Bible. Never! It is not mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession, or any of the other historic summaries of the faith, for two very good reasons: First, John Nelson Darby invented the “rapture” in 1830. Second, people who love Jesus and follow him are never looking for an escape hatch, or a hot air balloon to be lifted above difficulty. Why? Because they believe in the Ascension.

So what is this Ascension stuff really all about, anyway? I think it’s about three things.

First, it means that Jesus is not here. He is risen from the dead, and now he is risen to the Father. He is gone from the earth. He doesn’t live here anymore. He lives in complete unity with the Creator. And he did not return to the Father as an escape, because when he was here, he was really here. Jesus lived a completely human life: he worked in a Nazareth wood shop, he fell asleep in the back of a fishing boat, and he ate a lot of fish.

Jesus preached the truth, he healed the broken and the broken-hearted, he took nails in his wrists and feet and was mistreated like all of God’s prophets. Killing him was the great human mistake, says Luke. Raising him from the dead was God’s work of justice: it confirmed that everything Jesus did was right and true. And now, he is lifted to the highest place of authority. He sits with God the Father; he is not here.

Second, it means that Jesus is free to come back as often as he wants. There are stories of the Risen Christ appearing on earth. The scholar Raymond Brown says those appearances are always “from heaven.” Jesus keeps returning again and again and again. And the purpose is clear: just as heaven and earth were united in the person of Jesus Christ, heaven and earth have been reconciled in the death and resurrection of Jesus. They have been brought together, and it’s not our place to separate what God has brought together.

It is possible to discover the Holy in the every day. That is what it means. Christ is not here, but he keeps returning here. That’s what we mean by “the Holy Spirit.” Jesus tells his friends to stay in Jerusalem “until they are clothed in power from on high.” (24:49). To state it another way, God will come – the Risen Christ will come – in a way to stay with all who love Jesus, who return to him after pushing him away, who receive his forgiveness. The same Jesus who walked among us on two feet now rules over all of us. He is not done with us; neither is he “done” with the world.

So (1) Jesus is not “here” anymore, not in the way we once knew him, and (2) he is free as Lord to come among us in the power of his Spirit, that means, third, that there is work for us to do. In his physical absence, we are his hands and feet on earth. We speak his word with our tongues. We heal others in his mercy through our kindness. We continue his first century work in our twenty-first century world.

We don’t escape the world; we enter it more deeply.

So there are mothers to cherish and women to lift up in dignity; that’s a good part of our work. The Jesus we meet in the Gospel of Luke is One who honors women as equals in the human race. He converses with them when the men of his time refused. He tells stories of women as heroines (15:7-10). He speaks of God as a Mother Hen who wishes to gather all her chicks (13:34).

He goes to the woman who is so bent over she can only look at her sandals and lifts her up so she can look around in God-given dignity (13:10-17). He welcomes the women who support his work out of their own pocketbooks (8:1-3). And on Easter morning, Jesus goes first to the women to show them he is again alive (24:1-12).

My friends, if we celebrate Mother’s Day by honoring the women in our lives, it’s a good beginning of the work Christ gives us to continue. As he honored women as equals and children of God, we continue that work when we let them know they are cherished.

There is no “escape” allowed, not for those who love Jesus, not for those who honor those whom he honored. We are the living witnesses of what he did, what he had begun, what he can continue through the likes of us. And that’s why we are here today, and last week, and next week…because we are part of an ongoing work called the Gospel. God has put us in this place, at this point in human history, to continue the Gospel right here, in the places where we live and work. The Christ who is above us promises the power for us to make the Gospel real here and now.

Years ago, when I was in Sunday School, one of our teachers gave us a true and false quiz after Easter. True or false: Jesus was raised from the grave. True or false: Jesus is alive again. True or false: Jesus lives with God in heaven.

Then this question: true or false, after Jesus went up into heaven, after Jesus went out of sight, his friends didn’t have to go to church anymore. That was, and still is, an intriguing question. I’ve noticed some people slip away from the sanctuary after the Easter hymns are over. So I answered “True,” because I was a kid, and I wanted it to be true.

The teacher said, “Billy, read the last sentence in the Gospel of Luke.” And I read: “They worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” There is no escape from the Lord who went up, no escape from the travails of Jerusalem, no escape from the things that promise great joy. Jesus is not here, he will come back regularly at any time, and in the meantime, there is work for us to do.

See you next Sunday.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] See, for instance, Barbara R. Rossing, The Rapture Exposed (New York: Basic Books, 2004) pp. 19-46.