Ascension of Jesus.

Presented to Boolaroo Uniting Church, 25.5.2025 - also available on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ixVIfluMab8?feature=shared

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Today we're observing the Ascension of Jesus, which is a really exciting service for us to be reflecting on.

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Many of the great iconographers have painted various interpretations of Ascension of Jesus in countless paintings and icons and frescoes throughout all of history. Jesus is usually depicted as ascending. His feet no longer even touching the earth. Sometimes surrounded by angels and a cloud above ready to envelop him from human sight.

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We know in some of the post resurrection texts that Jesus is seen in many places by a great many people. He enters a room suddenly without using a door. He appears next to a couple walking together on the road to Emmaus. He cooks breakfast for Peter and his friends by the shore. And he quite often disappears just as suddenly as he appears. So this hint tells us that though the resurrected body is visible to the disciples that the qualities it demonstrates are very different from the body that was crucified.

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Now there's a lot of conjecture in theological circles of how this event actually took place. And I think for the interests of time we probably need to be content with living in the mystery of that for now. Because the reality is we weren't there. We didn't see it. We have a few brief verses from Luke and Acts which we heard today about what was experienced. But the ‘how’ almost takes a back seat to the ‘why’ for me these days.

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In the church I grew up in, St Mary's Anglican church in Ballina, the ascension scene is captured in the sanctuary's main stained glass window. With Jesus rising heavenward whilst extending a hand to his audience bidding us to come. The window is quite stunning, it's warm, it's welcoming, hospitable. And it sets our eyes on heaven filling us with expecting hearts of how and when the cosmic Christ will continue to interact with this world that God so dearly loves.

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“Why do you stand looking up into heaven” asked two men dressed in white robes? Jolting us all out of wonder and awe that we've been enjoying “why” indeed. You know we can often feel just as confused and dumbfounded as the disciples when someone or some situation is taken away from us. And we're left with the very hard work of honouring that person or season of life relating to them in new and unfamiliar ways. If you've ever loved someone who had to leave, truly leave, you know it can be an incredibly difficult experience. This seems to be a rip in the fabric of life itself. A hole where warmth and presence used to reside and sometimes we in the church can be a bit too eager to try and patch it up, to explain away the unexplainable. To offer tried and easy answers for deep and complex life experiences not because we don't care but because oftentimes we simply don't know what to say but the ascension event reminds us that there is room for both grieving what was and for placing our faith in what is emerging and what will be.

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 I had a conversation this week with someone who's mentor passed away several years ago. This mentor occasionally visits this person in their dreams and so that connection continues. For others a reminder of a new way of relating might be found in keeping a journal, singing a particular hymn, listening to an orchestra, cooking a particular recipe, listening to the oceans crash, revisiting that sacred place that's significant for you.

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 In the ascension event today we're given a front row seat into the disciples recognising that they too needed to look for Jesus in new ways as he ascended beyond their sight. After all he promised he would not leave us orphans but would send the spirit, the advocate on his behalf. They would need help in discerning the signs and wonders of Jesus' ongoing presence in new ways that would continue to empower them and inspire them the rest of their lives. We need that too don't we?

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And so the disciples watch him ascend in a cloud taking him beyond their sight and if you think about it a cloud is both present and impossible to grasp. It's a perfect metaphor for the ascension event. For even though Jesus has been raised and ascended his energy, his presence, his spirit became infused into the hearts and minds of his followers in such a new and dynamic way that it was impossible to ignore.

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He was still with them but in a different way and they had to reorient themselves to the new expressions of his presence that would follow.

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To this day in many parts of Greece the Orthodox Church observes today with great enthusiasm. Village people staying up all night on the eve of ascension. Staring up into the skies. Legend has it that those who are pure in heart see a light ascending to the heavens. Such a beautiful tradition teaching young children from an early age to look out for the light amidst the darkness. God's present shining amidst the chaos.

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 We all need those kinds of rituals to help lift us up and give us hope. The ascension event embraces Jesus in all his full humanity and so his whole life, all his emotions, his memories, his actions, his relationships, all of these things and more are taken up to the divine.

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It's the transformed and resurrected Jesus in today's reading from Acts who for 40 days met and ate and instructed his disciples to hold on to faith, to not give up. The particular gift of the gospel today is that all are lifted up and embraced by God too for all life is precious. The ascension of Jesus means that all humanity, all of us, everyone who has ever existed and who will ever will exist share in that reality of being drawn back into God and we are reminded that the changing seasons need not define us for our hope is found on deeper ground.

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Through our daily encounters with the risen and ascended Jesus we are invited today to look for that ascending light from the Greek tradition and to notice an inner transformation taking place in us as we celebrate God with us. We should be filled with new hope, new fervor to preach the gospel, to feed the hungry, to look at people differently, treating them as we would Jesus. For having encountered Jesus in our lives we too should become much better at seeing Jesus in others. This is the transformative effect of Ascension Day. The tide has turned. This is the day for turning our eyes not only upward but outward as well. This is the day for changing our focus to see Jesus in the world and to allow his love, his compassion, his way of peace and justice to become the blueprint for how we interact and care for one another and for this world that God so loves.

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When God is no longer visibly present in one form we're compelled to cultivate a deeper relationship with our inner life in the mystery that is God. It means that we are intentional about looking out for that light amidst the darkness. It means that the blessing that Jesus extended as he ascended continues to be extended to us. It means the hope of his mission and love for all lives on in us and we take up the call to follow him: to be his hands and feet in our local neighbourhoods.

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Wherever there's need we will be lifted up by his light and also we become a light for others. The great joy the disciples felt was a profound affirmation of a new kind of presence unfolding, a new way of being with God which invited them into the future God was calling them into. May we look for those signs and wonders of God breaking through into our ordinary world. May we be open to the new things he is doing in our midst and the future that he is calling us into here in Boolaroo.

Amen.