Monday, June 2
Eden Prairie, Minn.
Yesterday, I had the honor of joining the good people of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minn., for worship. I’d never preached on the Ascension before, and I always love the chance to dig into a text I’ve never preached on before.
I don’t often share my sermons here. Most of the reasons are best unpacked with my spiritual director or therapist. But what I’ll share here is that it’s only partly a matter of confidence. It’s also my inclination to write my sermons for a specific congregation in a specific place at a specific time—not for anyone and everyone, everywhere and anytime.
This one, though, might meet some of you where you are too. So I offer it to you with open hands, in the hopes that it might bring you some hope. If you’d rather watch and listen, the YouTube link is below; the sermon begins around the 28-minute mark of the video.
All my best,
Jeff
Luke 24:36-53 (NRSV): While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, and he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 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.
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Our text today brings shocking news of a longstanding lie: The Last Supper we thought we knew was not in fact the Last Supper. If Leonardo da Vinci, or whoever named his painting, were accurate, that famous scene would have been called “the last supper before Jesus’s arrest” or “the last supper with all the disciples.” And look, I know that’s a mouthful, but here we have an altogether more miraculous meal—the real last supper, of post-resurrection broiled fish.
Yet growing up, I never heard this story preached.
If there’s an underdog tale amidst the narratives about Jesus’s ministry, it’s this one. I know people find profound meaning in the festive waving of the fronds on Palm Sunday and the ritual foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, the solemn grief of Good Friday and the sacred limbo of Holy Saturday. Then there’s the joyous glory of Easter Sunday. By the time we’ve gotten through all that, we might just be spent. But if it were up to me, we’d have a great feast today, perhaps even with fireworks, because we’re marking the Ascension—or, as I like to call it, Joyride Sunday.
Today marks the end of Jesus’s earthly ministry and the beginning of kingdom come. His ascent to heaven puts an emphatic exclamation point on his descent to humanity. Christ has risen, we believe, not just from the dead, not just having conquered the grave. He is risen indeed—to be seated at the right hand of God Almighty, to reign as the prince of peace, to complete a death-defying roundtrip that enacted, in grand fashion, the divine embrace of the whole world.
Luke insists this isn’t merely metaphor. In his telling, Jesus goes for a literal joyride in an unspecified, perhaps invisible vehicle, carried up into the heavens. And his friends, basking in his blessing, “returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” It’s a wild story.
Do you believe it?
I don’t know about you, but as I read the words “great joy,” I confess I didn’t feel “great joy.” I haven’t felt great joy for some time. It’s hard to feel great joy; I’m struggling to muster even a little. My goodness, I’d love to make joy great again. Yet a week ago, we marked the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s killing, even as this country still won’t reckon fully with racism’s brutal reality. In the Holy Land, so much that is unholy continues to be unleashed; while some of our coreligionists stir fear of fire and brimstone in the hereafter, what about the hell and fury of the here and now? Many stories of suffering and violence don’t even make it to the headlines, which are crowded with tales of corruption and misdeed, depraved spectacle and power run amok. Amidst all this, we are to hold to the truth that there’s good news—to witness, Jesus says, to repentance and the forgiveness of sins.
Do you believe it?
In the run of resurrection stories that ends Luke’s Gospel and culminates in today’s text, we’ve walked the road to Emmaus, and heard of the disciples burning hearts, and glimpsed a stunning moment of realization that accompanied the breaking of bread. And now we step into a whirl of fear and confusion, perhaps even a ghost story, except that Jesus declares, “Not a ghost!”
It is so on-brand for Jesus. He makes sure to name their fear and note their anxiety, and then he meets them in the midst of those emotions. “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” he says. Though you could hear that as callout and rebuke, my ears hear acknowledgment and empathy, because he then backs up his word with action. He then holds out his hands and directs their attention to his feet: “Touch me and see,” he says. No shame, just open invitation.
Do you believe it?
The disciples obviously didn’t, not wholeheartedly. Yes, the visible reality of those hands, which they’d seen nailed to a cross, and those feet, which had walked many dusty miles alongside them, allowed a bit of joy to seep into the mix of feelings flooding their overwhelmed hearts, into the swirl of doubt and disbelief, into a room crowded with so many questions and so many wonderings. Yet Jesus knows, because Jesus knows them. So there’s one more thing: He asks for a snack—and, one more time, it’s in the act of eating, in sharing a table, that something real seems to happen. Some faith is kindled, some memory stirred, some safety found.
Do you believe it?
Here’s why I believe it.
I believe it because I need to believe it.
I believe it because I need to believe it, at a time when loneliness is epidemic, when so many bodies are shamed, when God’s good creation in the form of your beautiful faces and your lovely fat bellies and your aching hips is so often dishonored: Jesus showed up, in his very human body, his wounded yet resurrected body, and Jesus said, “Not a ghost,” and Jesus said, “Touch me and see.”
I believe it because I need to believe it, in a time when so many go hungry and people lack adequate health care, amid doubt that salvation is real and disbelief that wholeness can ever come: Jesus said, “Have you anything here to eat?”
I believe it because I need to believe it, that Jesus met those grieving disciples right where they were, in the midst of that world where tears mixed with hope, just as Jesus meets us. He lifted those same hands that had just taken the broiled fish and fed his not-a-ghost body, and with those hands, he blessed his friends and he blesses us too.
I believe it because I need to believe it, in a season when we’ve seen the limits of worldly leadership and felt the abuse of temporal power and witnessed the ugliness of rampant ego and heard the viciousness of lies. Jesus points us to something transcendent and eternal and self-sacrificial and honest, calling us not to be defensive, not to go to war of any kind, not to convert, not to contend, but simply to be “witnesses of these things”—good things, life-giving things, humble things, true things.
I believe it because I need to believe it, that one thing to which our spiritual ancestors bore witness was the truth that a living body, a very human body, was whisked into heaven—not some disembodied soul, not some nebulous spirit, but an actual resurrected body that had felt the weight of the world and carried sorrow for a dead friend and knew the ache of many miles.
I believe it because I need to believe it—and because I need great joy. Do you?
That God’s own self would take on human flesh? Fantastic.
That God’s human incarnation would show such compassion, such care, such solidarity? Wild.
But then, that God’s enfleshed self, with its listening ears and its gentle but sometimes cranky voice, its healing hands and its rumbling hunger for bread and wine, for fish and for figs even out of season, would choose not to shed this skin but rather take that whole package of flesh and bone and head on up to the heavens, park his butt down at the Father’s right hand and argue for us with that mouth and watch over us with those eyes and keep on blessing us with those wounded hands? That’s just beyond.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be, though. If we’ve been paying attention, we would have seen all along that God has shown up in ever so many ways, the evidence of God’s abiding presence manifest throughout this world and in the stories throughout the book that we love: a rainbow and a pillar of cloud, showers of manna and storms of quail, in an apparition visible only to a donkey and in the surprise of extra flour in a jar, through meals delivered by raven and announced by the rustling of the leaves of the balsam trees. Why not, then, through the friendship of a man with a soft spot for healing, a tenderness for those on the outskirts of community, and a predilection for miraculous meal prep?
Against that backdrop, the ascension is not beyond at all—
Not beyond our hopes and dreams.
Not beyond God’s possibility.
Not beyond God’s love—God’s all-powerful, all-knowing love, God’s compassionate and steadfast love, God’s self-sacrificial and solidarity-filled love, God’s love for you, God’s love for me, God’s love for all this tear-stained world.
It may not be for you or for me to know the times or periods that the Father has set1 but it is for us to know the love that the Son has embodied, and to clap our hands in anticipation of its return, and to shout for joy in symphony with the ancients, and to sing praise in chorus with all creation2
After Jesus’s suffering he presented himself alive to his friends—alive with compassion, alive with understanding, alive with love, love that moves, love that breathes, love that inspires, love that humbles, love that transcends all division, love that is still working its healing in the world, love that invites us still to bear witness, even now, as we still hope and as we still wait.
Can you believe it? It’s joyous good news.
Amen.
This line borrows from Acts 1:7. The New Testament reading for the day was Acts 1:1-11.
This is an allusion to our psalm for the day, Psalm 47, and I specifically requested that we use the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney’s translation from A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church.
I love it when someone helps me see fresh truth in familiar verses. Thank you and God bless you, Jeff!
I believe it because it makes me a better human.