And then what happens?

Ascension (transferred)
Acts 1:1-11
The Gospel of Luke 24:44-53
Preached at House of Hope Lutheran Church (New Hope, MN)
May 29, 2022

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Grace and peace to you, beloveds of God, from God the Creator, Christ the Liberator, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Today we are marking the feast of Jesus’ Ascension, the end of the Easter season. Ascension Day was on Thursday, 40 days after Jesus’ Easter resurrection. One of the reasons communities often transfer Ascension to Sunday is that without these texts from the Book of Acts and from the Gospel of Luke, we miss the end of Jesus’ physical, embodied, earthly ministry with the disciples. We are left with Jesus resurrected, eating with his friends, coming with words of peace, appearing in rooms locked tight with fear and uncertainty, but not knowing what happens next. Hearing fragmented stories of Jesus appearing, embodied after resurrection, and then….? Without Ascension, there is a gap in the story, leaving us asking, “and then what happens?”

Today we are also coming together in grief and lament. Holding in our hearts the lives of those killed in Buffalo. In Laguna Woods. In Uvalde. And their communities. Holding in our hearts the memory of all those who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic so far, who are living with long-COVID, or who are forced into unsafe working conditions. Holding in our hearts the life of George Floyd, and all who have been killed by unchecked police brutality. Holding in our hearts the truth that we are entangled with racist, ableist, classist, and oppressive systems. You might be feeling a little fragmented this week, this month, this year – I know that I am. Holding these communal griefs alongside personal griefs, knowing that things will not go back to how they were before, living in the midst of climate chaos and fear, wondering, “and now what happens?”

And still, today, on Ascension, we hear the story of how Jesus is lifted up, still embodied, to be united with the Holy One. Jesus, who lived and breathed among humanity, among Creation, was raised to be with God. Jesus’ full humanity, and therefore our full humanity, dwells with God. We know that Jesus was born, incarnate into a human body. He grew up and was baptized. In his ministry, he healed, taught, and fed. We know that Jesus was killed by the powers of Empire. Jesus died. And then Jesus was resurrected – living, physical, still teaching, still feeding. He kept showing up in the most unexpected places – on seashores, behind locked doors, in a garden. He was raised to dwell with God. And we also each know our experiences of Jesus, now – the things we’ve learned from scripture and tradition, the ways Jesus’ life impacts how we live our lives.

And so we have a fragmented answer to the question, “and then what happens?”, at least in the narrative of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. I imagine the disciples, too, were feeling fragmented when Jesus ascended, and wondering what happens next for them. Living the trauma of his death, the mystery of his resurrection, the confusion about where to go from here, the fear of more violence, the hope and promise that Jesus’ scarred body brings. At its core, the Ascension is an image filled with mystery. Awe and mystery breaking into trauma, into uncertainty, roots breaking into soil and reaching towards the sun.

Jesus was different, after resurrection. Still scarred, still marked by the wounds of crucifixion, still himself, yet the disciples don’t recognize him in the same way, maybe due to their own trauma, or maybe because resurrected, Jesus is fully himself – Divine and human, all at once. In the garden, he needs to say Mary’s name before she knows it’s him. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus wasn’t known until he broke bread, and shared it. In the locked room, Jesus offers his wounds, his body, as proof of identity.

And Jesus was different, after Ascension. The disciples still had access to their memories of Jesus, the lessons they learned, but he is not present with them the same way he was before. He gives a final blessing, a final memory, a final lesson, opening their minds to the Scriptures, and then he is gone.

In the Luke text, the disciples react to this transition with joy, worshipping God. But the Ascension texts, this year, do not feel only like a triumphant, joyful, completion to Easter. In the Book of Acts, the disciples react to Jesus’ ascension by continuing to look towards the last spot they saw him, and they needed a reminder to return their attention to the ground, to their physical reality.

Sometimes, the Ascension texts have been used to separate the Kingdom of God from the Kingdom of Earth. Jesus is taken somewhere else, and the implication is, “that’s where we should want to go too”. Somewhere else. Somewhere Divine. But God is not separate from God’s Creation. God chose to be incarnate in a human body with all of the limitations, emotions, and pain that brings – and then brings that same humanity even closer to God, forever. Jesus ascending is not God abandoning God’s Creation, or a message to only focus on our spiritual lives. In fact, the text works directly against that. Jesus, as he is ascending, blesses those still on the ground, promises that the Holy Spirit will be sent into Creation. And Jesus’ ministry isn’t done, even though he is no longer on Earth in the same way. Two messengers appear, reminding the disciples to return their attention to the world around them, living in love and liberation like Jesus taught them to.

I wonder if the disciples experience the Ascension as a moment of trauma-mixed-with-promise. Another loss to mourn, but also another moment where God’s mystery takes their breath away. The disciples witnessed as their teacher was executed by Empire. They watched him die. They might’ve carried the guilt that it was one of their own who betrayed him. The guilt of their own betrayals, their own distance. They experienced the confusion, and the tentative hope, of the empty tomb. When Jesus began to show up, resurrected, they experienced the hope of promise, of fulfilled Scriptures. They got to be with Jesus, again, after his death, while they were still alive. It’s a beautiful gift that no one gets, that they received.

And then Jesus is gone, again. They might need to mourn him, again, in the way we mourn for those who have died, but also the way we mourn when big changes mean an end to how things were, whether those changes are desired or not. The disciples might be asking themselves, “and now what happens?”

Collectively, we are asking that same question. We are living in a post-Ascension world like the disciples, holding together our grief and our hope in God, hearts breaking over the ways that people are hurting and hurting each other. And the truth is, we can’t know what happens next. 

But Jesus, ascending, left the disciples with a blessing that extends to us. I imagine the blessing Jesus offers echoing the blessings of the Beatitudes. “Blessed are you who weep now, because you will laugh.” “This is still not the end of the story”. “Even though I will not be with you in the same way, you will not be alone, because God is here, and because the Holy Spirit is coming”.

And even in the immediacy of the Ascension, the disciples are given space for their bodies and hearts to process what’s happened, to mourn, and to celebrate. To wait for the Holy Spirit.

This is an active waiting – they are waiting in joy, in hope, in blessing, in mourning, in memory. They are waiting for God to reveal Godself in a different way, and are worshipping in the waiting. They are given space for their bodies and spirits to process the seismic shifts and traumas and mysteries they have experienced. They are given space to slow down, to not rush immediately into the next thing, away from each other, sent out from their community. I wonder, too, if they are taking this time to move intentionally, to not replicate the systems of violence that killed their teacher. To move intentionally, and pay attention to how God is already moving through the world, and where they might work in unison. To be gentle with themselves, slowly allowing hope to come into their mourning, and trusting that God’s grace and love holds them when a wave of grief comes. To worship joyfully, noisily, at the wonder of the resurrection. Beginning to imagine what their lives will be like, now, after encountering and breaking bread with the risen Christ. Not rushing themselves before they are ready, but preparing their hearts and exploring what it means to be witnesses of Christ.

Witnessing to Christ means being present to the world. Living into the commandment to love one another as Jesus loves us. Caring for our neighbors – whether that be the people who live next to us, our extended communities, or the neighbors across the globe that we may never meet. We witness to Christ in our words and our deeds, not to earn God’s love, but in response to the love God pours freely and abundantly into us and our relationships. In response to the Holy Spirit. And that work in the world, loving genuinely, requires us to be rooted in the love of God ourselves, trusting in the promises of God.

Out of the mystery, out of the pain, we trust that God is always finding new ways to be with us, even where we might not expect to find God. God is with us in the small, ordinary actions that we take to care for our community and disrupt systems of harm. God is sitting in stunned silence with us. God is planting seeds for a future harvest we may never see. God is sitting at the table, when you are sharing a meal with your family and friends. God is whispering alongside us when we call our senators. God is present to our anger and lament, and God holds the tensions of experiencing joy alongside a world in deep pain.

Witnessing to Christ and being present in the world is the slow work I imagine when Jesus tells the disciples that there will be “a change of heart and life for the forgiveness of sins” “preached in [Jesus’] name to all”, beginning there, where they are. There is a promise of change, of growth, all made possible through God. This is the slow work we are constantly being called towards – the work of transformation, of loving one another, in real, material ways. There’s not a division here between the material and the spiritual – our bodies are holy, our lives are holy, and even in the text today, the disciples were reminded to return their attention to the world they are living in, a world in which God is dwelling, amidst pain and amidst joy. Shaping our hearts and lives in response to God isn’t a to-do we can check off, we can’t put a timeline on it – instead, this is the work of our lives and our faith.

We can’t know the answer to the question “and then what happens?”, because God is still and always revealing Godself, sending the Holy Spirit into our lives and our relationships. We are constantly making choices about how to relate to each other and to Creation, which shapes the world. And God is urging us to trust in God’s promises, even when promises of restoration and life abundant might feel impossible. To joyfully worship in our daily lives. To cry out and mourn and be angry. To rest. To trust that God can hold whatever we’re feeling and experiencing. And to take comfort in the fact that Jesus sends us with a blessing, so that we might be blessings in the world, whatever happens next. 

Amen.