Blessed and Left

When I was growing up, my dog was a Husky/Collie mix named Leigh. Leigh was a really smart dog. She could do all kinds of tricks – she could lay, and sit, and shake, and roll over. She could run to her fenced area of the backyard on command. And she could stay…but she would get nervous as you got farther away…and as soon as you were out of sight, she couldn’t stand it anymore, and she would come bounding to you. When she had been interacting with you, she was not comfortable with being separated from you.

In the passages of Scripture we read this morning, the writer of Luke and Acts is trying to help the community of believers deal with being separated from Jesus. The accounts of the ascension in Luke and Acts don’t match exactly. In Luke, Jesus ascends on the evening of his resurrection. In Acts, the ascension happens 40 days after his resurrection. One way that the discrepancy is explained is that Acts says that during that 40 days, Jesus has appeared alive to them by many convincing proofs. So, perhaps there were more than one time that Jesus appeared and then ascended away.

But, while that is possible, I think Luke is more concerned to link the two stories than he is about the chronology. The ascension is the end of the Gospel, but the beginning of the church. Luke is writing sometime in the last years of the 1st Century. It has been 50 or 60 years since Jesus ascended. The last of the first-generation followers of Jesus were dying.

They had never thought that it would be this long before Jesus returned. They were getting nervous. When Jesus ascended, they hadn’t thought that it was a new beginning. They thought he would be right back, which might be more credence for the thought that during the 40 days he may have appeared and ascended multiple times. But for the believers, the farther away the resurrection and ascension got…the harder it was to know that he would return. Just like my dog, Leigh, wanting to see me when I told her to stay and went into another room, they wanted to see him again.

So in Acts, Luke is trying to reassure believers with the history of events since Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. He starts by telling them that Jesus taught about the kingdom of God for 40 days after his resurrection. The number 40 is significant. 40 represents sacred time. So when we read that something happens for 40 days or 40 years, our ears are perked to listen for how the hand of God has been acting in history.

Dr. Paul Walasky is a retired professor at Union Presbyterian Seminary and an Acts scholar. He makes the point that Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are the three whose stories are marked by periods of 40 days and 40 years. And, this 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension is the last, but it is different than the others because it is not filled with fasting or wandering or temptation. During this 40 days Jesus eats and drinks with the disciples, giving them a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. “Finally,” says Walasky, “Jesus promised his followers not the law of God (brought by Moses), or the word of the Lord (brought by Elijah), but the very presence of God – the Holy Spirit.” It is a new beginning. At the end of the 40 days, Jesus blessed them and left.

Today, for a lot of the readers of Luke and Acts, the accounts of the ascension leave more questions than answers. How did he ascend? Where did he go? Why did he ascend? What does it mean theologically that the Son has ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father? The ‘how’ and ‘where’ questions are questions of mystery. We will not understand. We cannot picture it. Even biblical scholar William Barclay, thinking of all the strange artistic depictions of the ascension, wrote, “No one has ever succeeded in painting a picture of the Ascension which was anything other than grotesque and ridiculous.” The ‘why’ questions have libraries-worth of volumes filled with theological explanations. But, the question that is most important for the church, I think is the same question that the apostles were asking as Jesus left their sight. “What now?”

They are just standing there. And two men in white (maybe Moses and Elijah?) suddenly are standing next to them. “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

Why are you staying? That wasn’t the command. The command was to go, to be witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

God’s Spirit anointed Jesus, and now it anoints us. Not to stand staring at the sky, but to go. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes I wish I
had a list of where to go, or a map of my area. I want something to check off or shade in.

I wonder where I am supposed to go. I wonder how much is enough. I wonder how I can possibly know how best to respond to the needs that I am aware of. I wonder…and I catch myself standing, not going. Because I’m not sure. Because I don’t have all the answers. Because I can’t solve the problem. So, I just stand still.

You know, my dog, Leigh, always knew where I was when I told her to stay. She knew where I was, and she bounded to me when she couldn’t see me.

There may be times that we are like those very first readers of Acts. Frightened, confused…we haven’t seen Jesus in the flesh and we don’t know anyone who has. Want to know where Jesus is? Want to see him?

Follow the command to go. Go to help someone. Go to love someone. Go.
We don’t have a checklist or a set of coordinates on a map for our area of responsibility. It is a matter of heart. My dog Leigh could not stay because she couldn’t stand to be away from me.

Over the next several weeks, members of the Farmington family will be following the command to go. Going to help, going to love, going to be close to Jesus. We will be sending our Pentecost offering next week to ministries that work to inspire and equip young people for service in the world. We will be going to Ronald McDonald house to cook a spaghetti dinner and visit with families who are in Memphis to receive treatment at St. Jude. We will be attending the Pentecost event at Rhodes College and packing 10,000 meals for Stop Hunger Now. We will be reaching our community at Vacation Bible School. We will be going to the Yucatan to change the lives of 4 families by building cisterns to provide them with clean water at home. We will be connecting with the St. Theresa house to help women who are learning a new way of life now that they are no longer victims of trafficking.

Right now, the One Great Hour of Sharing offering that we collected on Palm Sunday is supporting Presbyterian Disaster Assistance in Nepal. We have been distributing immediate life-saving supplies since the first quake on April 25, such as water, food, shelter and medication to over 40,000 people in some of the most severely impacted districts; and will continue the relief and assessment efforts. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance will remain in Nepal for years now to ensure a comprehensive recovery. Through our presence, through our physical work, through our financial gifts, through our prayers, we go. We help. We love.

We want to see Jesus. And we won’t see him, standing gazing up at the sky.