Easter 7 / Ascension Sunday

Easter 7 / Ascension Sunday
May 16, 2010
Luke 24:44-53

A guy I know told me about growing up fundamentalist with notions of the rapture — the end time stuff of Tim LaHaye and others.
He was always afraid of coming home from school and find nobody at home.
Fear would grip his heart in an icy vise.
The Rapture.
Jesus came back while he was walking home from school and he didn’t notice.
Not only that but everyone in his family was taken up into heaven — except him.
Nothing at home except for the little piles of clothes left behind when everyone in his family — except him — was Raptured.
He swears this was a real fear, growing up.

But “rapture” is just a generalization of a tradition that goes back a long way in Western religion.
Lots of people have had their own personalized raptures, or “ascensions.”
Enoch is the first in Jewish history — the Book of Genesis says he was taken up because he ‘walked with God’— kind of a scary consequence for getting a little too chummy with the almighty.
The jury is out on whether Moses was buried or ascended — there are stories both ways.
There is no ambiguity about Elijah, who was carried away by a fiery chariot into the clouds.
Even St. Paul talks about a man who was taken up to the Third Heaven.
Even Mary got her own launching pad in 1871 when the first Vatican Council declared the Assumption of Mary an official dogma of the Catholic Church.
Folk piety had always regarded Mary as assumed into heaven — Martin Luther believed it; he didn’t think it should ever be a doctrine.

Of course, the biggest ascension in our tradition is Jesus.
Frankly, these stories seem mythic. That would be mythic with a capital M – Mythic. Not mere myth, but true myth.
When confronted with the more Mythic elements of our faith, we have to ask like our catechism does, What does this mean?
We do not ask if this is “true.” We ask instead if this is TRUE.
What is this saying to us and does it say anything authentic, does it mean anything genuine?

When Martin Luther was constructing his theology of the Eucharist, he struggled with the conundrum of how Christ could be seated at the right hand of the Father, and simultaneously present as body and blood on every altar in the Christian world.
John Calvin confronted the same problem.
Calvin decided Jesus could not be present on the altar. If the ascension was real, then the body and blood was not. Reformed tradition talks about a “spiritual” communion.
It does not talk about the Real Presence of Christ in the bread and wine.

Martin Luther’s answer wasn’t it own. It was the same answer very early theologians determined – and which has been taught in the Church of Rome since forever.
The Holy Communion was a continuation of the incarnation.
We believe, said Justin the Martyr (died 180), the Word made flesh in the manger is the same Word among us . . . in the bread and in the wine.

This is the called doctrine of ubiquity, one of the most blatantly mystical doctrines in the history Christianity.
The doctrine of ubiquity says Jesus can be in two places at the same time. He is simultaneously seated at the right hand of the Father, as we say in the Apostolic Creed, and present in the bread and wine on every altar - not because Jesus has the ability to bilocate, although that’s a nifty trick, too - but because his ascension means he is present everywhere.
This is standard teaching in the Eastern Orthodox churches, and in the Roman church, and among Anglicans (when they bother teaching anything), as well as for us Lutherans.
As one famous prayer puts it, Jesus “ascended into heaven to fill all things.”

Christianity could not have caught on if Jesus had just hung around.
Crucified, resurrected, and living in Jerusalem. What would that be? He’d become a tourist stop.
No, the survival and progress of Christianity depended upon the apostles growing up, showing up, coming into their own through their own adventures and struggles, with Jesus ascended.
In other words, if Jesus had stayed, the apostles never would have grown.
Jesus told them in another place, “You will do greater things than I,” and he needed to leave so they could.
Greater things? Sure. Look around. Seated here, already, are at least twice the number of close disciples that he gathered to himself. It isn’t that we have done better, but that we have done greater.

It’s no different for us now than it was for those first century apostles, either.
The Spirit of Jesus is everywhere present — as our companion, our encouragement, our inspiration.
All to the point that disciples in every age will step up and grow into our Christian maturity.

This is what we are here for.
There is a lot more suffering in the world today than in Jesus’. There is a whole world that must hear: Christ is our hope, Christ is our salvation. Our job is far from finished.
In fact, for each generation of Christians, it is only beginning. We must still find the courage to fearlessly walk as he walked.
And Jesus promised us, we will do greater things than even Jesus himself.

Jesus may have been “taken up,” but we are not “left behind.”
We carry on the work of Jesus in the world — healing the broken, fostering compassion, befriending the outcast . . . and indeed, raising dead faith.