A Sermon for Ascension Sunday
A Sermon for Ascension Sunday
Acts 1:1-11
by William Klock
The King came to Canada this week and I can help but reflect on how providential this event has been—the King of Canada coming to take his throne in the Senate chamber in Ottawa—in the same week that we remember and celebrate the ascension of Jesus. I might be tempted to title my sermon: A Tale of Two Kings.
So a new Parliament needed to be opened. A throne speech had to be read. That’s normally done by the Governor General, but these are not normal times. The new President next door, in what has always been Canada’s best friend and ally, is now making economic war and daily challenging the country’s sovereignty. It was time for the Sovereign to come and save the day. And so the King came, and he ascended to his throne in Parliament, and he read a speech. The last time the Sovereign did this was almost fifty years ago, so this is no small thing. And yet the King was here for all of about twenty-four hours. The speech he read was written by government speech-writers, not by the King. And even then, it’s vitally important in our constitutional monarchy that the King avoid any openly political speech—and so the big concern of the day, the big thing that threatens the nation’s economic well-being and sovereignty—was only hinted at obliquely. And everyone applauded. And then the King got back into his jet and flew home. And maybe it’s just because I’m an American, but it doesn’t seem to me that all the pomp and circumstance and expense really accomplished anything. The King didn’t go to Washington to negotiate peace with the belligerent bully or to rough him up a bit or even to give him a good talking to. Instead, he came here, he sat in the Senate chamber, and recited back to the government the talking points it gave him. Again, I mean no disrespect to the King or to Canada’s constitutional monarchy, but watching and listening to this week’s events as an American—although I suspect even the staunches of Christian monarchists can’t help but notice it too—that there’s a big—an enormous—difference between the ascension of King Charles III in Ottawa this week and the ascension of Jesus that we read about today in both our Epistle and Gospel.
I listened to the throne speech and even though I know that the King can’t actually do anything, when it was over I still felt like: What now? The King flies all this way, he ascends to his throne with great pomp and circumstance, he reads a speech intended to stir patriotic feelings—and even as an American, watching and listening I felt pride for Canada—but then he got back into his airplane and went home. He didn’t do anything about the current crisis. The enemy is still there. In fact, the King’s talk of Canadian sovereignty just seemed to provoke a new round of fifty-first state talk. It’s kind of a let down. I don’t know what I expect the King should do, but he’s a king after all and I sort of have a mental image of him taking off his pinstripe jacket, putting on a shining suit of armour, going to Washington, and popping the President in the nose. In real life that probably wouldn’t solve anything. It’s just that kings are supposed to deliver their subjects in times of trouble and cast down their enemies. Right? That’s what kings are for.
This is why the disciples were so discouraged when Jesus was crucified. They thought he was the Messiah, the anointed king, and then he got himself killed—and that’s not what was supposed to happen to the king. He was supposed to defeat his enemies and take his throne. And then Jesus rose from death and he met them and they were so excited to go declare the good news to Jerusalem that Jesus actually had to calm them down and tell them to wait. Enthusiasm isn’t enough. They also needed the power of God’s Spirit—but that’s for next week. But for forty days Jesus has been teaching them. He’s been walking them through the scriptures and showing them how it was there along: the Messiah had to die in order to defeat his enemies and take his throne. Like I said a couple of weeks ago, those forty days must have been the most thrilling days in all of history as Jesus taught them and as it all came together. And yet, even then, the disciples were still stuck on the wrong things. But now I’m getting ahead of myself for today. Keep this all in mind and let’s look at our Epistle again. The first chapter of Acts. Luke writes:
Dear Theophilus, the previous book which I wrote had to do with everything Jesus began to do and teach. I took the story as far as the day when he was taken up, once he had given instructions through the Holy Spirit to his apostles.
Luke is talking about his Gospel. He goes on in verse 3:
He showed himself to them alive, after his suffering, by many proofs. He was seen by them for forty days, during which he spoke about God’s kingdom. As they were having a meal together, he told them not to go away from Jerusalem, but to wait, as he put it, “for the Father’s promise, which I was telling you about earlier. John baptised with water, you see, but in a few days from now you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.”
So good so far. Forty days of Bible teaching with Jesus. All about the kingdom. He thinks they’re ready to do the proclamation part of their new ministry, they just need to wait a minute so he can ascend to this throne and send the Spirit who will empower that proclamation. Jesus thinks their ready to be set loose on the world. But have you ever taught something to someone, explaining it to them, and they’re nodding and you think they understand. You’re ready to turn them loose. And then they ask you a question and you realise that they still don’t understand the central point of what you’ve been trying to teach them?
I took calculus as a freshman in college. Twice. The only class I ever failed. I understood the instructions. But no matter how hard I tried and no matter how long the professor explained it to me—I had the benefit of sitting next to him in the church choir—I never understood what it was all about. I didn’t get it. I thought that at least I could just follow the instructions to solve the equations. I found that usually worked pretty well with math. But it didn’t with calculus. So he—or my friends who understood calculus—would explain it to me and I’d say, “Right. I do this, then this, then this, and so on.” And they’d smile and say, “Yes!” Like it was finally sinking in for me. And then I’d do what I thought were the steps and it wouldn’t work and they’d ask me to explain it, and I couldn’t, because I never could wrap my head around the concept at the heart of it all.
Brothers and Sisters, the kingdom was the heart of everything Jesus was teaching and doing. And the disciples knew this. That’s, again, why they were so discouraged when he died. Dead kings don’t establish kingdoms. But now Jesus is alive again and they’re excited and especially so because for forty days Jesus has been teaching them even more about the kingdom. And then they ask, “Master, is this the time when you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel.”
I remember the look on my calculus professor’s face when he through I’d finally got it through my thick skull and how his smile faded away when he realised I didn’t get it at all and I can picture the same look on Jesus’ face. Disappointment and exasperation. I don’t know. Maybe Jesus knew that no amount of talk would get them straight on this and that it would only fall into place once they saw him ascend and once they’d received the Spirit. But it’s clear: despite all the teaching, the disciples still didn’t get it.
See, this idea of the “kingdom of God”, for the Jews it had become shorthand for the idea that one day the Lord would fulfil his promises, come back to Israel, take up his throne. He’d defeat Isreal’s enemies and he’d set Israel to rights—and then they’d all live happily ever after with God as their king and the pagans under their feet. They sang songs, like Psalm 2, about the nations raging and the kings of the earth getting together to plot against the Lord and his people. And in the middle of the song the Lord bursts out in laughter, mocking the nations and their feeble kings. And then the Lord lets loose his wrath and announces, “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.” And then the king speaks: “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” And then the Psalmist can announce to the nations: “Now, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.” It’s the king in shining armour come to crush his enemies and set his people to rights.
They sang songs like the one in Isaiah 52 about the beautiful feet of the one who brings good news and who announces to Zion, “Your God reigns.” “The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God.” This was the same song in which they sang about the suffering servant who would be exalted only after he had borne their griefs and sorrows, only after he’d been stricken and afflicted.” This was the hope of Israel and this is why the disciples had followed Jesus. They believed he was the Messiah, the king who would rescue his people and defeat their enemies. Again, for those three days he was in the tomb it looked like they’d been wrong, but now Jesus was alive again. They knew with absolute certainty that he really is the Messiah. And so now they’re asking him: “Your resurrection put the story back on track, Jesus. So when are you going to fulfil those old promises, defeat the nations and their kings, and set Isreal on the top of the heap?”
And Jesus says to them in verse 7: “It’s not your business to know about times and dates. The Father has placed all that under his own direct authority. What will happen, though, is that you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Then you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judaea and Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth.”
I’ve noticed a lot of people read this and think that Jesus is saying something like, “No. It’s not time to restore the kingdom. I’ll do that sometime in the future and only the Father knows the date.” But that’s not what Jesus is saying at all. Think of the pair Jesus met on the road to Emmaus. They were saying that they’d hoped Jesus was the one who would redeem Israel, but well, he’d been crucified so scratch that idea. And that’s the point when Jesus explains to them that it was actually through his crucifixion that he would accomplish God’s long-promised redemption. Even though it was there all along in songs like Isaiah 52, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that the Messiah would usher in God’s kingdom by his suffering and death. And yet when Jesus says this, suddenly a lot of other things he said and did finally make sense. Think of the stories—the parables—he told. Over and over: The kingdom is coming—yes!—but it’s not coming like you think. Instead, the kingdom is coming like seed planted in the ground. The kingdom is coming like leaven in a lump of dough. The kingdom is like a man who had two sons. Or when Jesus and the disciples were approaching Jerusalem and they asked this same question: Is the kingdom finally coming now? And Jesus said that the kingdom is like a nobleman coming back to see if his servants have been faithful with their stewardship. Over and over Jesus has been saying, “Yes, the kingdom is coming right now, but you keep missing it because it doesn’t look like what you expected.
At that last Passover meal Jesus ate with his friends, he told them that he would not drink with them again until the kingdom had arrived. And here they are, these forty days after the resurrection eating and drinking with Jesus as he teaches them. The kingdom has come, Brothers and Sisters. Too many Christians live as if the mission of the church is to prepare for Jesus to become king, when the church’s mission is, in fact, really all about announcing and living out the reality that Jesus is the king even if his kingdom isn’t quite what a lot of people expected.
And then, just to make all of this absolutely clear, Luke says in verse 9: As Jesus said this, he was lifted up while they were watching and a cloud took him out of their sight.
We’re prone to missing the significance of this image because we’re not steeped in the Old Testament the way they were. The disciples, however, understood exactly what was happening: Jesus was acting out the prophecy of Daniel 7. That’s the chapter were Daniel has this nightmare full of beasts coming up out of the ocean. It’s a vision of the nations and their kings raging against God’s people. But then “one like a son of man” is taken up and exalted on the clouds to sit beside the Ancient of Days. He’s given a kingdom, power, and authority so that all people, nations, and languages should serve and obey him. It’s a vision of the kingdom being restored to Israel. And now, all through Jesus’ ministry, we’ve heard him talking about himself as this son of man, as Israel’s representative, and now—in answer to the disciples’ question about the coming of the kingdom—Jesus literally acts out Daniel’s vision. He fulfils it. In fact, in Matthew’s telling of the ascension, Jesus even says—echoing the words of the Ancient of Days in Daniel—“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. So you must go and make all the nations into disciples.”
The ascension proclaims: Jesus is king and his kingdom is here. One day Jesus will return to finish what he’s begun, but never forget that it has begun. As Paul says in Romans 15, “He has to go on ruling until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”
So the disciples were thinking that Jesus was going to lead a revolution—like Judas Maccabeus or Simon bar Kochba—except this time it wouldn’t fizzle out. This time it would be successful and it would be forever. And Jesus is saying (and acting out) that no, the kingdom has been inaugurated and it’s going to take shape and grow—the nations will be put under Jesus’ feet—not as the disciples take up arms, but as they go out into the world as witnesses of Jesus: as they go out and proclaim the good news that Jesus crucified and risen, is the world’s true Lord and as they live out the reality of his kingdom. Like Jesus did, the disciples would work miracles—miracles that underscored that in the kingdom all the sad thing are beginning to become untrue; and they would live lives transformed by the Spirit’s fruit, but maybe more than anything else, they would confront the kings of the present evil age with the reality of Jesus’ lordship. And through their witness, the world would begin to change.
It’s not a linear, always progressing, always upward change. That was the idea of theological liberalism a century ago, but two world wars and nuclear bombs and fascism and Communism blew that idea up. But through the witness of the church, the world is changing. I’ve mentioned before Tom Holland’s remarkable book Dominion and how, in that book, he writes about the profound changes that the gospel brought to Western Civilisation. Each generation lives in its own brief age and so, if we don’t know anything about history, we’re prone to not even noticing the changes that have happened, but happen they have. Christians began taking in the unwanted girl babies of the Greeks and Romans, left to die of exposure, and we taught the world the value of life. The influence of the gospel put an end to gladiatorial games and slavery. The gospel has taught the world mercy and grace, the value of life, the dignity of each person. And on and on. The church, when we are faithful witnesses of Jesus and living the new creation life the Spirit gives, builds and spreads the kingdom and someday, when the work is done, Jesus will return—not to take us away, but to restore heaven and earth, God and human beings, and to put an end to death and sin once and for all. To consummate his new creation.
But there’s work to do in the meantime. He created us in the beginning to be his stewards—to cultivate his garden. That’s why, when it came time to set us back on that track, God called and created a special people for himself: to be his representative, to be his stewards, to be his living kingdom in the midst of the old. And so Luke says, They were gazing into heaven as he disappeared. Then, lo and behold, two men appeared, dressed in white, standing beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken away from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you saw him go into heaven.”
Brothers and Sisters, there’s work to do. Like Jesus said, they needed to wait a few days before going out, so that when they did go out, they would go out in the power of the Spirit. The kingdom doesn’t happen in our power. But it does happen as we go out to faithfully fulfil the mission we’ve been given to witness Jesus. Our task is to go out in faith, to till the soil, to steward the garden. It’s an overwhelming task. That’s why it takes faith to go out and do it. But we go out in faith knowing that God has given us his Spirit who infuses what we do with divine power. We go out in faith knowing that in Jesus—at the cross and in the resurrection—God has already done the impossible part. Now, as Paul wrote, all he has to do is go on ruling until all his enemies have been put under his feet. There’s no “if”. It’s just “until”. It’s a sure thing. And so is the witness of his church.
It doesn’t always seem that way. Sometimes it seems like we’re going backwards and things are getting worse. People won’t listen or won’t take us seriously. Sometimes we’re tempted to give up. Sometimes we act like all Jesus did was come to earth to give us a rousing pep talk, then he went back home to heaven. But read the Gospels and that’s not it at all. He hasn’t just gone back to heaven and left us alone. He’s ascended to his throne, where he rules and reigns over his kingdom, which—remember—is like seed planted in the soil and like leaven in a lump of dough and like a man who had two sons. And one day, through his people—through us—the work of his word and the work of his Spirit will be done. The world will know his death and resurrection, it will know the forgiveness of sins, it will know the end of death, it will know mercy and grace. The knowledge of his glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea and every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Because Jesus died and rose again, because the Lord’s word does not return void, and because he does not give his Spirit in vain.
Let’s pray: O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus the Messiah with great triumph to your right hand in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us for the task you have given, and that we might look forward in hope to the day when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. Amen.