We Work From Home! Ascension 2024

 

We Work From Home   Ascension 2024 

The Feast of the Ascension –forty-days after Easter, when we celebrate, as some wag put it, “the day Jesus began work from home.” As true as that may be, it would also seem to miss the main point of Ascension as a Church Celebration. As we might note, storyteller Luke gives us two versions of the story, one at the end of the gospel, and the other as the opening of volume two, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. He does this, no doubt, so that we, you, me, any and all of us who are listening closely may notice that the story does not really have much if anything to do with Jesus’s departure from this fragile Earth our island home. It’s about those first disciples becoming apostles – those who are sent - to be witnesses as friends of Jesus. 

That is, they are to be witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and to be those friends of Jesus who continue to do the things he does, “and greater things than these”! So it is, that the end of Luke’s Gospel account begins with him reminding them “that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” He then proceeds to remind them what that means in practical terms: to love God, to love our neighbor as we love God, as God loves us and forgives us, and as we love ourselves. And oh yes! To love our enemies and those who don’t like us. Finally, they are to remain in the city, that is Jerusalem. 

“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.” [Luke 24:44-53] That is, they did what he asked them to do, while awaiting a further anointing by the Holy Spirit ten days later on the Israelite festival of Pentecost. 

Then comes volume two. The title of that book tells us all we need to know: The Book of the Acts of the Apostles. It is a book filled with stories of just how they were baptized by the Holy Spirit, and the many things they did as witnesses and apostles. In Acts, storyteller Luke goes on to say that Jesus told them to fan out across the ancient world: “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." [Acts 1:1-11] It’s important to remember that the Samaritans firmly believed their region of the land, their temple, and their understanding of what God asks of us to be the way, the truth and the life. Surely those early apostles were hesitant to go to Samaria. There was no love shared by Samaritans and Israelites. 

No doubt, it ought to strike us as challenging as well, to hear we are expected to reach out to those most unlike ourselves. That is, Jesus calls for a vast expansion of just who these neighbors we are meant to love as God loves us is to include. This remains our greatest challenge as Christ’s Body, the Church: to leave our comfort zone on Sunday mornings to fulfill what it means to follow Christ rarely fits into our daily to-do list. To often we have other interests, other priorities. 

The same was true on that day of Ascension as the disciples quickly change the topic: are you now going to restore the kingdom of Israel? No longer interested in what they are called to do, what can you do for us, they say. I don’t think we can begin to fully understand just how disappointing this would be for Jesus to hear. He is all about the kingdom of God his Father wants to be our future, and instead we want to go back to the way things used to be. Jesus shows great restraint and patience. Rather than chastise them for not getting just what he has been preparing them to do, he simply reminds them of their mission, blesses them, as he ascends out of their sight on a cloud. 

As they stand gazing up into the heavens there can be no doubt that like their companions James and John had demanded, they would rather go with Jesus to sit at his right-hand and his left-hand in God’s household of steadfast love and forgiveness. Why can’t we just get away from it all and go with him they think? In all fairness, most of us, if not all of us, feel that way from time to time. How great would it be to get away from it all! As Woody Guthrie famously sang during the Dust Bowl years, sometimes we feel like “I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.” The world as we once knew it, or at least how we think it had been, has simply moved on without us. Like the disciples, we stand gazing up at the heavens, yearning to return to the past. In truth, those days were never as good as we would like to think. At least nowhere near anything like the kingdom of God Jesus calls not only to embrace, but to actively bring to others – especially to those utterly unlike ourselves. 

Enter stage right, two men in white robes who are suddenly standing beside us asking the pivotal question in Luke’s story of Ascension: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Followers of Jesus, his Body, the Church, why are you standing around gazing up into the heavens? Wish you were somewhere else? Wish you could just leave this place and be carried away and disappear among the clouds? Do you want to go back to the days of old? Why, indeed! 

At the end of the day, the story Luke tells is all about us. Like the disciples, we are meant to stay where we are in our Jerusalem. God’s kingdom is not somewhere else. It is meant to be planted, unfold, and grow right here and right now. If this world no longer feels like home, Jesus calls us to follow him to make the world new in the image of God’s kingdom. To make it the home that God has intended all along – a friendly place, with friendly folks, beneath a friendly sky. 

A friend once said, “All sickness is homesickness.” The African bishop, the Blessed Augustine, wrote in his confessions, “Our hearts are restless until we find our home in Thee.” This is where the kingdom of God’s steadfast love is meant to take hold and grow into our real home: in our hearts. Our true home. Christians are fond of saying that Pentecost is the birthday of the Church – the Church that is meant to be the first outpost of God’s kingdom for which Jesus gave his all. But the true birth of the Church is on that fortieth day after the resurrection as he leaves us on our own to continue the work he does, and greater things than these. Everything necessary for the birth of God’s kingdom has been given to us in Christ. As he leaves to work from home, he trusts us to continue to remake this world into a new kind of kingdom, a new kind of home for all. 

Christ says, “I came to serve others, not to be served.” His true home is in our hearts and in the things we do and say. Our acts as apostles. The real truth is that he never really leaves us. We simply forget he is here. “I am with you always, to the end of the age,” he says. [Matthew 28:20] He does not leave us altogether, but he does entrust us to continue the work of taking his Father’s kingdom to the ends of the earth, serving others as he served all others. Serving the Christ that is in all creation from the beginning: Christ in every person, every creature, every rock, river, tree, flower, and ocean. When our home is in Christ, wherever we are, we work from home. Just like he does! Amen.