Acts 1: 1-11

May 12, 2002

Urbana Grace United Methodist Church

a sermon by J. Michael Smith

About a year ago, this congregation experienced a crisis when our office manager, Janice Roy, went on a leave of absence. Nobody was quite sure what all she did. And to the extent that people were aware of what she did, they wondered, ‘Who could possibly do ALL those things!’

Well, Janice wrote down about 50 of her jobs: that she could remember at the time. And Pat Price came in for about 5 months and pulled things together. And dozens of other people pitched in to help. And things got done. And we were pleased when Janice was able to come back to work.

But one of the things that we discovered in that time was that getting many people involved in the work was good for the church. We had grown too dependent on Janice over the years, giving her too many jobs--that we should have been doing ourselves, growing complacent and passive. But during the time that Janice could not be here, we discovered that we had powers and gifts and abilities and willingness throughout the congregation--that we had never tapped.

When Janice got ready to come back to work, I was a little worried. So many people were involved in doing her old jobs that I didn’t want her to feel unwanted. And so I talked with her several times and warned her, "Now the job you are coming back to is not the one you left." I warned her that she was not coming back into a Lone Ranger role, but rather she was coming back to be at the center of a team of people, a web, a network of folks who were devoting their services to God through the church. And its been wonderful to have Janice back, and its been wonderful to see so many people continuing to work with her. It’s been good for the church for more people to have power, participation, and parts to play.

Two thousand years ago, it seemed as though Jesus was doing everything: exorcisms, healings, feedings of thousands, stilling of storms, teaching of wisdom, reforming of the temple, challenging the religious and political establishment, forgiving the guilty. Jesus was the center of it all, the doer of it all.

But it was a part of God’s plan from the very beginning that Jesus would be taken away from them all. The day was coming when Jesus would be taken up. And so it was that Jesus was crucified and died. True: a few days later he was raised from the dead. And then he was with his followers for 40 days--teaching them and giving instructions and encouragement. But he was with them for those 40 days in order to prepare them for his being taken away again.

Now this notion of Jesus being taken away was a crisis for his early followers. If Jesus was taken away, who would heal the sick? Who would free the prisoner? Who would still the storm? Who would shine a light on the path to take? Who would feed the hungry? Who would give life to the dead? Who would cast out the demons?

It was only when Jesus was taken away that the disciples truly discovered that THEY had the power to do those things. It was only when Jesus was taken away that the disciples discovered that THEY could participate in the work of God and that THEY had parts to play!

When we read the story of the ascension, of Jesus being taken up into heaven, we are reminded of the Old Testament story in 2 Kings of Elijah being taken up into heaven, away from his disciple Elisha. The old man, Elijah, had lived his life and the Lord was about to take him away--just as Jesus was taken away in the story in Acts 1. And there were questions: Who would do the work Elijah had done? Elisha, his successor, was with Elijah the day the old man was taken up into heaven. And as HE stood watching the sky, he also looked down and noticed the old man’s mantle at his feet. The ‘wearing of the mantle’ was symbol of the one who would do the work. When Elisha picked up the mantle and put it on his own shoulders, he symbolized that he was picking up the work of Elijah.

Would the disciples pick up the work of Jesus?

The last verse of our scripture this morning is a comment by the two men wearing white robes. They say, "This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."

I’d like to offer an interpretation of this verse that runs a bit different from the way we normally hear it explained.

This verse is often understood as a prediction for a rapturous return of Jesus. But that’s not quite what the verse says. This verse doesn’t really say that Jesus will return to the earth from the sky--riding on a cloud. It is not a prediction of the rapture. It is, instead, a reminder that this faith of ours is full of irony. In the very act of Jesus’ leaving, he comes to us. "He will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." It is irony: in leaving us in the flesh he becomes more present to us. He comes into our inner beings. He comes among us. He surrounds us with a presence more powerful than the disciples felt when they were with him in the flesh. Did you ever notice that some people can be more present to us in their absence than they ever were in their presence?

It is an irony. In his leaving he comes to us.

This truth is not the only irony of the Christian faith: The first shall be last. Those who mourn shall be comforted. If we want to save our lives, we must give them up. Those who seek to save their lives will lose them. We are to love our enemies. Our faith is full of irony.

We see Jesus come into our lives--as we see him go!

It is too easy for us to become non-participants in the work of Jesus. We often do not see ourselves as the ones to heal the sick, cast out unclean spirits, proclaim the kingdom, teach the wisdom of God, still the storms, bring life to the dead, and challenge religious and political authorities in the name of God. We expect Jesus to do those things. We’ll just watch. But when the presence of Jesus results in our abdicating OUR discipleship, our following of him, our doing what he did and saying what he taught--then Jesus is not at all present. The disciples saw him leave--and then they picked up the mantle, received the power, and carried on the work.

Most of us experience Jesus through conventional religious means. And when those ‘conventional’ means of experiencing Jesus no longer work--it is as though he has been taken from us--just as he was the first disciples. But in the breakdown of our conventional ways of experiencing Jesus, it might just be that God is about to make him present with us in ways more powerful than we have ever imagined.

In the loss of their typical ways of experiencing Jesus, the disciples became aware of a new presence of their Lord, and they became effective witnesses of Jesus to the ends of the earth. In like manner, we continue to experience the ebb and flow of our own faith. Often it is in the ebb of our faith that we find ourselves experiencing anew the presence of a more powerful, more personal, more engaging Christ than we have ever known.

Thanks be to God for the continuing unfolding of this ascension story--in our own lives!

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