singing with holy abandon, smelling incense, feeling the water from our font wash over our with us now in bread and wine… and in the embrace of a friend or stranger during the peace….Jesus has ascended….but has he come again now?ģ8.6 million people in the US have filed for unemployment….since the pandemic began… and some of us have felt the sting of those numbers close to home.and if we haven’t lost our jobs we still may feel anxiety and fear of the unknown…. I’m not sure…for me one of the clearest signs of Jesus’s presence down here…. Whestelle poignantly titled his ascension sermon the Glory Down Below….Īll of this about Jesus coming in the same way….may sound a little flat.right now/disconnected… or a promise that is only for later.after all it is not as easy to sense Jesus’s presence with us these days….or at least for me…. And this is the way Jesus still comes….With this in mind, Prof. born… to a teenage mother…eating with sinners and tax collectors.and eventually to a roman cross, outside of the city … Before his ascension/in his life and ministry….God in the flesh stooped down.toward us…. The discouraged and the dispossessed.the hopeless and the struggling…. Whestelle reminds us that ….Jesus.when he came among us.the first time.before his ascension….he came to the poor and the forgotten, the lonely and the isolated…. Westelle points out that this….Reveals something about Jesus' presence now that he has ascended.and where exactly Jesus is to be found….now….post ascension. To that promise that Jesus will come again in the same way.…. he points out an interesting image in our Acts reading….as they are staring up into Heaven one of the men in white robes says: why are you staring into Heaven::: This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." When I was preparing for today….I was reminded of a sermon that one of my late professors from the Lutheran School of Theology, Vitor Whesttele preached on Ascension …. We even might….instinctively point up often when referencing heaven… where Jesus is to be found…. Has gone vertical….up into heaven….which many of us think of as beyond space….or another realm and stayed there…. much like the memes that have been made about it…. Our texts are filled with phrases like God has gone up with a shout, Jesus being taken up into heaven.carried into heaven.and God has now been seated Jesus at God’s right hand in heavenly places…. To be fair.the NYT article was talking about the Latin mass… but this is just “bible story weird”.right?Īscension is one of the times when Christianity gets weird…. and.I don’t know if you saw the meme that someone posted in the HT Facebook group….about the Ascension being when Jesus decided to….work from home….but if not you should check it out…. There’s more out there too.you can do your own research later…. Sort of funny…I even decided to do a quick google search of Ascension memes….here are a few I found. It is one of those weird days….centered on one of those weird stories of our faith.…. I was talking with my brother.about how I was preaching today.and we talked about how we both kind of like it….because …. I kind of like that about it….that is weird….
I mean…I get that… resurrection is strange period….don’t get me wrong….but so is the Ascension…. Really you can’t blame them for not having a whole day devoted to it….because when you stop to think about it….it is a little….strange…. But there were never really sermons on Ascension texts….and we definitely did not have a whole day for the Ascension….like we do….and like other liturgical traditions do…. And we had some vague idea that it was when Jesus somehow left earth and went back up to heaven…. Today is one of those days when, quote unquote: Christianity gets weirdĪscension….the 40th day of Easter….I definitely did not grow up celebrating….commemorating….or doing much thinking at all about the Ascension… in the more evangelical churches I grew up in…. To borrow a phrase from a recent New York Times piece …. One of my favorite icons of the Ascension is this one….an Orthodox picting Jesus being carried up into Heaven….surrounded by the disciples…
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