Ilkley Baptist

I almost always hand write my sermons, but for last night's Ascension Day sermon I used my computer. So I can post it here. Not that I thought it was very good. I seem to think better with a pen in my hand.


Ascension Day Sermon, preached at All Saints Church, Ilkley

The Ascension leaves me cold. I tried to fix it so that someone else would preach tonight, but leading worship in another church is complicated (much easier for the hosts to lead and the visitor to preach), so it's worked out this way round. Sorry about that! It's supposed to be a celebration, Ascension Day. Jesus is received into glory, raised to the right hand of God the Father, and we're all supposed to be very pleased about that. It's supposed to be a celebration, but it doesn't do it for me.

It leaves me cold for two reasons. The first is that I just don't believe it. I don't think it happened as we read it. I'm a sceptic about all miracles, but this one is surely too ridiculous for anyone. Going to heaven by flying upwards from the earth? Heaven's above! Heaven isn't above, is it? It might be above in the way that lofty thoughts are above low cunning, but it isn't above in terms of altitude. Yet Acts describes Jesus moving upwards, well, upwards if you are in the Middle East, off to one side if you're thinking about it from a Yorkshire perspective, and disappearing into a cloud. And the disciples are told off by an angel for staring at the sky. 'Men of Galilee! What do you think you're doing, then?' It all feels a bit foolish. Can Luke have meant it like that?

Whatever. I'm bemused. The second reason it leaves me cold is that it doesn't strike me as something to celebrate at all. It is a sad and forlorn occasion. Jesus has been crucified, to the horror of the disciples and their deep grief. Then the Resurrection. Joy! He meets them again, though not quite in the old ways. Sometimes they don't recognise him, sometimes they don't believe each other, sometimes they don't believe themselves, and it doesn't happen that often. He is alive, but they don't get him back as it was before. And it doesn't last that long. Forty days of sporadic appearances, then he lifts off into a cloud and that's your lot. This is actually very sad.

In recent years my wife and I have taken our two older sons to university and left them there, and remembered how it was for us to leave home. Exciting, of course, but also sad. You're grown up now, but you don't always feel like it. Your heart can ache. You miss your family, your room, your brother or sister, the cat, the cooking, the mysterious put-it-in-the laundry-basket-find-it-in-the-drawer thing. Then, lo and behold, your old folks come and visit. It's weird seeing them standing there in your student room amongst all the dirty clothes and unwashed plates, but nice. Really nice. They might take you out for a meal, might buy you something as a treat. It's great, but then they go away again, and you're left staring out of the window and thinking you ought to work or join something, but feeling too small and lonely to bother. Then a couple of weeks later they call in again.

If. halfway through your first term, your parents announced that they were going to go and live in Fiji and you wouldn't be able to see them again, well, not for ages, certainly not until after your degree was over – that would be dreadful, not a cause for celebration.

So Jesus dies, comes back, hooray, there he is in the room, here we are enjoying a meal with him, wonderful, but it's so short lived. After few appearances he announces that now he's off in a long term way. Going to live in heaven. Be back sometime, but this is it for now. Have a great life!

What's to celebrate on Ascension Day?

The Ascension feels like an ending more than a beginning. Here is Acts, the story of the infant Church, here is chapter one, and it's good bye Jesus. An ending, a bereavement. In fact a shorter version of the Ascension is used by Luke to conclude his gospel. “He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them he parted from them, amd was carried up into heaven.” A mini Ascension, or a shortened story of the Ascension. And after it, the final two verses, “And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God.” Everybody's happy. How odd.

There's something else a bit odd the second time round when Luke gives us the longer version in Acts chapter 1. The disciples ask him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” I don't think this is a casual enquiry, of the 'do you have any plans for the weekend?' type. I think this is the big question his ministry has prepared them for. All the proclamation of the kingdom, all the signs of God being alive and working in the world, the healings, the making much of the lowly, the living out of the Good News. So is it all going to happen now? His death has been shown not as defeat but victory, so is his whole ministry going to be fulfilled?

They get a frustrating answer. “It is not for you to know.” I just don't see this making them happy. All they've been through, all the hopes and the learning to love, to care, to believe, to long, to yearn, and they ask if this is finally the time, and they're fobbed off. He's not saying. “But you will get the spirit,” he tells them, “and you will get a job, to be my witnesses.”

What makes all this good news? How does it make the disciples joyful? Because they were, I think. Certainly they were infectiously enthusiastic, they were full of commitment and confidence. They and their faith are the reason we are here tonight. How come?

I'm not sure. I think it might be to do with this ending and beginning thing. Here at the start of the Church is an ending, the Ascension. A birth and bereavement together. But when the disciples ask Jesus if it's all going to come to an end now, a good end, in the restoration of Israel and the fulfilment of all God's promises, he says no, and instead gives them a new work to do, a task to begin. So there is a beginning that turns out to be an end, and an ending that is expected but turns out to be just a start.

This is where we live. The end and the beginning are both here, yet neither is in our hands, but both in God's. We're not given an end to work towards – a deadline for the kingdom – and it's certainly not here yet.

It stops us being too task focused. The Church's job is not to build the kingdom, nor even to be the kingdom. It is God's kingdom and God's mission. But the Church is to be a place in which and with which God will be present and active. We are called to be faithful, not productive. No managers hanging over us with target sheets. We are called to be more than do, and as we become not so much effective as open, God who is the creator will use us.

There is a beginning here – the great journey of the faith through the ages, the story of the Church and our story. And something is finished: God has acted decisively in Jesus. The kingdom is here, though not fully expressed. And we are to join in with this, leaving the final outcome in God's hands.

So the work becomes a gift. God's service, as they say, is perfect freedom. And perhaps this is the source of joy.

Not that the world doesn't bleed, still. Israel, far from being restored, is engaged in a sort of slow genocide, and the hungry hunger while the rich wage war. But something has changed, as well as a beginning, there has been an end, and all is now in God's hands.

Well, perhaps. Perhaps if I could believe you can get to heaven by copying a helium balloon I could believe that “all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”



The disciples stand foolishly watching a cloud, until their thoughts come back to earth. And what do they do then? They look at each other, of course. And they smile. This much I do believe: if Jesus is ascended and gone from view, then we are given each other. And as he knew each of us, as God's children, infinitely valuable, so we now see each other. In love and freedom we can explore our diversity, learn from the stories of sister and brother, find ourselves in relationships of respect and regard, and find encouragement in each other; companions on the Way. We are given new identities as we learn to value and trust each other and as we take up our new role in God's mission – as the Church is born.

Men of Galilee, and women of Yorkshire, why do you stare at heaven? Look around, and see the work God is doing and your part within it, and see each other. Here is a task and people to do it with. And that is good.