Pastor Detweiler’s sermon from May 4, 2008

Through baptism, the glory of our ascended Lord opens our eyes to see glimpses of God’s glory

Acts 1:6-14

Christ is risen!

Thursday was the festival of the Ascension of our Lord. Since most people do not attend midweek services, that festival is transferred through the first lesson and hymns to this Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost.

In the chancel of the church across the street from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., there is a line drawing of the Ascension. It is very simple, in the style of the 20^th-century artist, Henri Matisse, with just black lines against the very white front wall of the church. The chancel is lighted by a skylight, so one’s eyes are naturally drawn upward toward the first figure who is distinguished by a halo and is about 30 feet off the ground.

Then one notices the disciples, clustered together just below the level of Jesus’ feet, heads turned upward. The softness, yet intensity, of the natural lighting produces a sense of upward movement. But the inscription below the drawing is from Acts 1:11: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

It is from this admonishment that most Lutheran sermons about the Ascension take their cue. We are usually urged to stop gazing heavenward because we aren’t going to find Jesus there, but to get busy with the work he has given us to do. It reminds me of my mother or my aunts telling me to stop daydreaming and get busy dusting or picking beans.

I have gone through several stages with this text and the festival of the Ascension. At first, being of German background and with little patience for sentimentality, I went along with the prevailing Lutheran point of view.

But then one year it occurred to me that if we were dismissive of looking upward at the ascended Lord, then it was ridiculous to celebrate Ascension. At that point I began my sermons with Acts 1:11 but said something like: “Yes, but I want to stand here and look upward a bit longer, to savor the glory that is Jesus’ and is promised to us through our baptism into his death and resurrection. I want to absorb the impact of Jesus’ ascension to live with God in eternal glory.”

More recently, I come to believe that we need both the gazing upward at the risen and ascended Lord, and the turning away to be about the work he has given us to do. One with out the other is hopeless and dead. Our serving in the Lord’s name, our sharing the good news of his love and grace are stimulated and formed by our seeing and celebrating God’s glory in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension.

Our looking upward is so that we can then look down and around with hope, hope that comes from God. Our seeing the glory of the ascended Lord prepares us to catch glimpses of his glory in our everyday lives.

If, though, we want to spend some time gazing into heaven, we have Biblical permission for it, at least for the next week until Pentecost. After Jesus’ ascension the disciples went back to the room in Jerusalem where they gathered and spent the next week in prayer. We are not told what they prayed about, but we can imagine it had to do with waiting for “the power from on high” – the Holy Spirit – that Jesus had promised them so they could be witnesses.

They didn’t go from the Mount of Olives and Jesus’ ascension right to Jerusalem and then immediately tell everyone about it. Rather they listened to Jesus’ instruction and waited 10 days. They prepared to receive the Spirit through prayer. They prepared so they could recognize and respond to the power from on high when it was at work on and around them. It was this power – the Holy Spirit – that would help them show and tell the difference Jesus had made in their lives.

I am not aware of Jesus’ glory and the power of the Holy Spirit every day. Even though it is around me I am often blind to it. But there are times when I sense that power is at work, and feel I have gazed into heaven and caught a glimpse of the Risen Lord in someone’s words or actions.

Nick was not a member of our congregation, but his wife and her children from a previous marriage had been members. As he nursed a cup of strong coffee and a cigarette he told of his wife’s suicide in a drunken stupor several years before. Now, as he anticipated remarrying he was concerned about her grown children, his step-daughters.

One was following in her mother’s footsteps and drinking too much. The other one, Brenda, was recently divorced from her abusive husband, and with her children dependent on welfare and in a rut. Nick was encouraging her to go the tech school so she could get a good job. To do his part (maybe more than his part) he was planning to buy her a condominium with the proceeds of the sale of the family home. He figured she wouldn’t blow the money that way and would have a roof over her children’s heads.

As he spoke I caught a glimpse of the glory of God in Christ. Nick didn’t have to do this – these were not his children or grandchildren – but he felt compelled by his belief in the risen and ascended Lord to try to give them a future and hope.

Probably all anyone else saw was a very ordinary and flawed human being, but each time I saw Nick and his second wife out in the congregation: with the grandchildren at holidays, and when Brenda’s oldest received Holy Communion for the first time, I glimpsed again the glory of the Risen One.

Baptism ties together gazing into heaven and being out in the world as doers of the Word, followers of the Risen Lord. Here we are joined to the one who died, whom God raised and ascended to be with him eternally. In baptism we are given the power from on high for which the disciples waited – the Holy Spirit. By God’s grace we are lifted up and have the promise of a resurrection like that of Jesus.

Through baptism the glory of the Ascended Lord infuses ordinary human life – our lives. We have our eyes opened to see glimpses of God’s glory as it infuses and informs everyday ordinary life. With this awareness of God’s glory we do not need to be looking upward, but can look outward. We can be involved in doing God’s work in Christ in the world: caring for the sick, the hungry, homeless and imprisoned in Christ’s name and with his Spirit.

Then the world can see his glory as we do.

Christ is risen!