Ascencion into Pentecost

Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life
to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy
Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the
preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the
earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns
with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.

We continued this week to ponder the meaning of Jesus’ ascension and considered its theological relationship to the outpouring of God’s power at Pentecost. Jesus had told his disciples, if somewhat cryptically, that it was to their advantage and the advantage of the whole world that he depart from them physically (this is said in different ways in John 14-17). What helps us begin to make some sense of that promise is what God says to us through Jesus’ ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church at Pentecost. Here is how one fine preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, thinks about it:
“No one standing around watching them that day could have guessed what an astounding thing happened when they all stopped looking into the sky and looked at each other instead. On the surface, it was not a great moment: 11 abandoned disciples with nothing to show for all their following. But in the days and years to come it would become very apparent what had happened to them. With nothing but a promise and a prayer, those 11 people consented to become the church, and nothing was ever the same again, beginning with them.
The followers became leaders, the listeners became preachers, the converts became missionaries, the healed became healers. The disciples became apostles, witnesses of the risen Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit, and nothing was ever the same again.
That probably was not the way they would have planned it. If they had had it their way, they would probably have tied Jesus up so that he could not have gotten away from them, so that they would have known where to find him and rely on him forever. Only that is not how it happened. He went away—he was taken away—and they stood looking up toward heaven. Then they stopped looking up toward heaven, looked at each other instead, and got on with the business of being the church.”


Jesus’ ascension may at first have felt mainly like an absence and a loss to the disciples but his disciples were soon to learn that Jesus’ human presence with the Father is a sign of judgment and hope for this world. Why judgment and hope? Because in much more than words, God has shown his love for our human flesh by judging and condemning everything that moves against human flourishing. So mysterious is the incarnation, the resurrection of Jesus’ flesh, and the ascension of the man-God that we don’t often think enough of how the ascension of human flesh speaks the gospel to us. God, in Christ, loves the flesh and blood you; he loves the messy you who thinks thoughts you should not think and sometimes acts on them; he loves the you who overeats and struggles with his temper; he loves the you that is impatient with her children. Jesus did not become incarnate, die, rise from the dead, and ascend to the right hand of the father on behalf of an “ideal” you. He did it for the flesh and blood you.

The ascension means judgment and hope. When I say judgment I mean it in the sense that all enemies of human flourishing have been judged for what they are, judged and condemned, defeated and banished from God’s world to come. Growing in God’s wisdom and holiness, in part, consists of being able to see what is judged and condemned and, by God’s grace, to treat it as condemned. Perhaps this is what St. Paul meant when he said we should consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to righteousness (Ro. 6). What I mean by hope is found in the grace that enables us to yearn for Jesus’ triumph as a human being as our guide for this life, yearning for that vision to more and more guide us in how we see what makes for human flourishing in our lives and for those around us. I might rather be self-indulgent and skip an opportunity to serve at the homeless shelter partly because I have not yet grown enough to see this participation in God’s self-giving love as more lovely than doing simply what I want to do and when I want to do it. Sacrificing for others becomes more lovely and desirable to us as we come to see human selfishness as judged and condemned.

So, we see that Jesus’ ascension has brought us closer to God. Rowan Williams puts it this way: “Jesus hasn’t just gone away. He has gone deeper into the heart of reality – our reality and God’s. He has become far more than a visible friend and companion; he has shown himself to be the very centre of our life, the source of our loving energy in the world and the source of our prayerful, trustful waiting on God. He has made us able to be a new kind of human being, silently and patiently trusting God as a loving parent, actively and hopefully at work to make a difference in the world, to make the kind of difference love makes.”

And this is where we pivot from Ascension to Pentecost, when we long to make the kind of difference that love makes. Here again is Williams: “So if the world looks and feels like a world without God, the Christian doesn’t try to say, ‘It’s not as bad as all that’, or seek to point to clear signs of God’s presence that make everything all right. The Christian will acknowledge that the situation is harsh, even apparently unhopeful – but will dare to say that they are willing to bring hope by what they offer in terms of compassion and service. And their own willingness and capacity for this is nourished by the prayer that the Spirit of Jesus has made possible for them. The friends of Jesus are called, in other words, to offer themselves as signs of God in the world – to live in such a way that the underlying all-pervading energy of God begins to come through them and make a difference. If we are challenged as to where God is in the world, our answer must be to ask ourselves how we can live, pray and act so as to bring to light the energy at the heart of all things – to bring the face of Jesus to life in our faces, and to do this by turning again and again to the deep well of trust and prayer that the Spirit opens for us.”

The event of Pentecost itself was a wild day with wild things happening. The main take-away for us, I submit, is not to look for events that look a lot like that but instead to look for the Spirit to enable us to communicate God’s love to others in the power of the Spirit and not according to our own wisdom or power. New Testament scholar, Will Willimon, has great insights into what was going on with Peter and the crowd on Pentecost: The power being offered here is not that of Peter’s homiletical ability to get the crowd worked up into an emotional frenzy or in the crowd’s sincere inner-determination to get themselves right with God.... the story of Peter’s Pentecost sermon is told in such a way as to make it clear that the power at work is God’s power ...the response of the people is neither something they have derived from within themselves or part of their natural human inclination, for they are, as we all are, part of a crooked generation....what saves them is the story of what happened... that God was in Christ was reconciling the world to himself.... they have not been looking for Jesus... God has come looking for them (adapted from Willimon’s commentary on Acts).

And so the challenge to us is to indeed be signs of the hope of a new humanity but to be these signs by humbly telling our stories of how God has sought us out for restoration to himself and, in being restored to him, being restored to our true humanity.

Question for discussion:

1. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you consider that God loves the real you and not an ideal version of you? How would you put this aspect of the gospel message in your own words?

2. Can you think of a time recently when you were demanding an ideal version of a friend or loved one in a way that caused you to be impatient or unloving to her or him? Can you think of a time recently when someone was dealing with you in that mode? What could help you apply the truth that God loves the real you in your relationship to others - what sorts of thing should you do and think about to help you get your head and heart more fully engaged with that aspect of the gospel?

3. What is your greatest concern or fear that comes to you when you think about being God’s sign-posts in this world? Which concerns are well founded and which are, perhaps, based on a misconception you may have of what that means? How can you tell the difference?