Sunday Sermon - 17 May
As I was researching and preparing for this homily it became abundantly clear that you can’t speak of the Ascension without also speaking of the Pentecost. So, today’s homily is the first of a two part series.
You know what I love about the disciples? How deeply human they are. How much I can relate as I read in my Bible about their actions, behaviours, confusion and mistakes. They remind me of my humanity, they remind me of our shared humanity. How we are trying to be our best and how we sometimes achieve that goal and sometimes fall short.
The reading from Acts today paints a pretty strong image of what I’m referring to as an example of their humanness. As Jesus is blessing them, He departs into the heavens and there they are, probably awestruck, staring upwards and (I expect) asking themselves; “What just happened?” Confused, bewildered, locked in a spiritual (and cognitive) stasis - maybe even conundrum - waiting for that which is promised to come.
Let’s look at this a little deeper, from the disciples perspective:
Jesus was their anticipated king, the disrupting Messiah who was supposed to come, defeat Rome and all the oppression that came with occupation, and bring freedom and glory back to the Israelites.
Instead, He is turned over by His own people to the temple leaders after He is sold out by one of His own disciples, their brother. He is arrested, beaten and put to death as a criminal. They betray Him, they hide (perhaps cowardly) and lie about having known Him out of fear for their own lives.
But He comes back. He rises from the dead. He forgives them, cleanses them of their sinful guilt and, over the next 40 days, He appears to them, again and again. He teaches them, He eats with them. He restores them with His salvific love. And now He is leaving them…again.
Perhaps for the first time, the disciples begin to realize that following Jesus is going to look very different from everything they have known before. For three years they’ve walked with a teacher they could physically follow. When they were confused, they asked questions. When they were afraid, He calmed them. When they were hungry, He fed them. When storms arose, He stood in the boat beside them.
Even after the trauma of Good Friday, the Resurrection restored something they thought they had lost forever. The risen Christ returned to them with wounds still visible, with peace on His lips, and mercy in His hands. But today, on Ascension Day, something changes. Because today they must learn how to live without relying on the physical presence of Jesus.
For them, that is terrifying. Because underneath the joy of Easter still lies the painful truth: the disciples are not heroes. They’re not saints. Not yet.
Peter denied Jesus three times. The others scattered in fear. Thomas doubted. Most of them disappeared, they ‘ducked and covered’ when things became dangerous. Yet the astonishing thing about the Resurrection accounts is that Jesus returns to these failed disciples not with condemnation, but with peace and unconditional love.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus opens their minds to understand the Scriptures. He eats with them. He blesses them. The risen Christ does not shame them for their failures. He restores them.
This matters to us, this is a model for us, because Christianity begins not with human strength, but with divine mercy. The disciples become apostles not because they were brave, wise or holy enough. They become apostles because Christ forgave them. Perhaps that is where we come in. This is where our own Christian story begins as well.
I don’t know about you, but I know what it means to fail. I know what it means to feel cowardly in the face of fear. I know what it means to not live up to my God given potential. I know what it means to fall before God bearing the weight of guilt and regret, and I would expect you do too. There are moments in our lives when we:
lose courage
say the wrong thing
avoid doing the right thing
betray our convictions
grow tired and are just too weary to do the right thing
become fearful
And fall short of the people we hoped we would be.
There is this story about a firefighter who spoke honestly about one of the calls that haunted him for years. I don’t actually know if it’s real, but I heard it once and it resonates with the point I am trying to make. This fireman and his crew arrived at a terrible house fire in the middle of the night. There was smoke everywhere, confusion, shouting, panic. In the chaos, he hesitated for just a few seconds before entering the house because he was afraid the floor might collapse beneath him. Another firefighter stepped up, and went straight ahead before him - first.
Everyone survived, but afterward he carried enormous guilt. Not because he had abandoned anyone. Not because he had failed in his duty entirely. But because in the moment when he imagined himself being fearless, courageous, heroic, a fire fighter — he discovered he was human. Years later he said what stayed with him most was not the fire itself, but the realization that fear had such power over him. He said, “I always thought courage meant never hesitating in fear. But now I think courage means being afraid and still moving forward.”
I think many of us know that feeling. Maybe not in a burning building, but in ordinary moments of life. We imagine we will be brave, patient, faithful, compassionate. Then the moment comes and we hesitate. Perhaps we stay silent. We avoid the hard conversation. We protect ourselves instead of loving selflessly, courageously, sacrificially. Afterward we carry regret because we fell short of the person we hoped we would be in that moment, feeling as though we’ve let ourselves, and God’s purpose for us, down.
That is exactly why the Resurrection matters so deeply. Jesus returns not to perfect disciples, but to frightened and wounded ones. He returns to people who failed Him, and calls them forward anyway.
If you take one message away from this homily, take this: Our failures and mistakes do not disqualify us from being useful to God. Our failures and mistakes do not make us unworthy before God. Our Church - The Church - begins with forgiven people. Not perfect people. Forgiven people. That is the great gift of Easter. The Cross and Resurrection declare that sin and failure are not the end of our story.
Today’s feast of the Ascension shows us something else too. Forgiveness alone is not the end of the story. Even after the Resurrection, even after the risen Lord bestows forgiveness, the disciples still do not fully understand.
Notice what they ask Jesus in Acts: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Even now, they are still imagining political victory, earthly power, national restoration. Just as they’d hoped when Jesus was alive, before his arrest and crucifixion. They are forgiven, but they are still limited. They’ve been restored, but they are still incomplete and grasping for understanding of the truth that is the Kingdom of God.
I think that is important for us to make note of, because many Christians quietly believe that once we encounter Christ everything should immediately become clear and easy. Not so fast, it’s not that easy. I know we talk a lot about following in the model of Christ but, as fallible human beings, we tend to more practically follow in the example of the disciples. As a result, we should pay close attention to what we read and learn about them in Scripture: They remind us that spiritual growth is often slower than we expect.
Grace has entered their lives, but transformation is still in the process of unfolding. And so it is with us. Then comes the most difficult part of all for the disciples. Jesus leaves. Again.
The Ascension is not only glorious. It is disorienting, confusing. Imagine the emotional tension: they finally have Jesus back and now He departs from them again. What are his instructions? What does he tell them to do?
Not: “Go conquer the world.”
Not: “Go organize yourselves.”
Not: “Go fix everything.” “Revolt!” “Rise Up!”
Instead he tells them: “Stay in the city…wait for the promise of the Father.” If he were using today’s language he’d say something like “Just go back to Jerusalem and chill.”
If you know me, you know I am not a patient man. So, for me, being told to wait is perhaps one of the hardest spiritual commands of all. I expect most of us prefer movement and action to waiting. I don’t like passive dependence. I am a motivated, action-oriented individual who seeks to manage and control my own life.
God calls us to be patient, to wait, to set our need for control aside, and to trust. You see, Jesus already knows how God’s grace will unfold, and this is something the disciples do not yet understand - forgiveness has restored them, but they still cannot accomplish God’s mission through their own strength alone. No matter how much enthusiasm they display, no matter how much they remember Jesus’ teachings, no matter how hard they work in proclaiming His glory and good news, they are still missing the key ingredient. Something else is needed.
My point is that Church, our church, cannot be sustained merely by human energy. No matter how hard we work, our church can not survive.
The disciples are told to - and must learn to - wait. Wait for the life of God to be breathed into them, the essence of God to be within them. Perhaps this is where Ascension speaks very directly into our own lives and into the life of the Church today. We live in this same in-between, this place of waiting.
We believe in the Resurrection. We know God’s mercy. We want to follow Christ. Yet we also know how we feel. In fact, the following words could describe the life of the Anglican Christian community, in our Diocese if not our country, pretty accurately:
exhausted
uncertain
divided
fearful
inconsistent
We know what it is like to love Jesus and still feel unready and it’s okay, because today we learn that the disciples felt that too. Maybe that is why the final image of today’s Gospel matters so much. Luke tells us: “He lifted up his hands and blessed them.” The final act of Jesus before the Ascension is blessing. Not disappointment. Not anger. Blessing. It’s as if Christ is saying: “You are not ready yet, but you will be.”
And so the disciples do as they are told and stay in Jerusalem carrying both the gift and the burden. The gift: Their sins are forgiven. Their relationship with Christ is restored. The Scriptures have been opened to them. The burden: They are not yet the Church that will turn the world upside down. Not yet.
Peter is still impulsive.
Thomas still struggles.
All of them still do not fully understand.
They have seen the risen Christ but they have not yet received the fire that will make them one. So Jesus tells them: Wait. Wait for the promise. Wait for the power. Wait for the Spirit. Because forgiveness may heal the past but the Spirit will create the future.
So now we wait. We wait, patiently, unfulfilled, just like the disciples, in joyous expectation for the fulfillment of that promise and next week, at Pentecost, we will discover what happens when that promise finally arrives.
Amen.