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9th May 2013 - Ascension Day - Revd. Preb Maureen Hobbs
Sermon for Ascension Day 2013
Acts 1. 1-11
Luke 24. 44-53



A good friend of mine and an outstanding New Testament Scholar, Paula Gooder, has written about the festival of the Ascension that we mark today in this way...

Of the four events in the Easter Season - death, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost - the ascension is the least celebrated or really thought about - and yet it is one of the most significant for us as Christians living and working and striving to follow Christ in today's world.

One reason is the fact that, coming 40 days after Easter Day, it is always celebrated on a Thursday - and we are not used to making much of a fuss about Thursdays! It is easy to see the ascension as a bit of a dip between the high points of Easter and Pentecost. They are moments of great celebration, whereas the ascension recalls the moment of the final goodbye of the earthly Jesus. Since Good Friday is the day with all the drama and trauma of his death, it can feel hard - just 43 days further on, to be saying goodbye yet again...

Another problem comes with the word itself and all those pictures of feet disappearing through the clouds. The ascension recalls Jesus going upwards into heaven. This comes from a time when people thought seriously that heaven was physically located 'up there' somewhere above the earth, and reaching it meant going up. We now live in a world where people go 'up' every day - way up above the clouds - and more rarely even beyond the earth's atmosphere - and we all know that heaven is not to be found literally in space, above the earth.
How then do we talk about the ascension if we no longer have the same view of the world as the earliest Christians?

Many preachers have made use of balloons or rockets to help illustrate what happens at the ascension. And while, both may be rather fun in their own way, neither is really very satisfactory as a symbol. Balloons - especially the helium-filled variety - may float upwards very satisfactorily, but they clearly do not end up in heaven, and eventually the gas runs out and they get snagged in a tree and pop. And the same applies to rockets. Very spectacular in the short term, but the debris eventually falls to earth leaving a whiff of cordite behind.... not the stuff of heaven at all!

In some ways, we - like the disciples - run the risk of being fixated on the upwards movement of Jesus. The two men in white robes, - usually taken to be angels - ask the disciples why they are standing looking upwards? Today we run the risk of appearing even more stupid, staring quizzically up to heaven - no longer clear about why we are doing so, but doing it anyway .... While all around us in the world of here and now there is so much that we should be focusing on instead. The point that the two men make to the disciples is, I think, the clue to help us understand the ascension properly today. The point is not so much that Jesus has gone upwards, but that he has gone. The direction of movement is not as important as the absence.

At ascension we celebrate the great divine absence - which is a vital ingredient in our call to mission. This is not to suggest that God has abandoned us - far from it! - but that, if Jesus were still on earth in his risen existence, we would probably leave him to it. We might stand on the edge making admiring noises, but it would be hard to join in. Which of us could feel confident to make disciples, to baptize or to teach Jesus' commandments if Jesus himself were likely to appear at any moment? Who would listen to our proclamation of the Good News, if they could hear it from Jesus instead?

Have you ever found yourself volunteering to take on a role, simply because there was no-one else to do it? I would be amazed if not - that is generally how most volunteers get started! And sometimes we are not very good at the task we take on - especially in the beginning. But perhaps if we persevere - and maybe if others take pity on us and get involved too, we can discover that we make a rather good team. That has certainly been my experience with the Messy Church initiative ... but none of this would happen without the desperation of absence.

Jesus' absence is the vital link in God's foolhardy plan to show his love for the world and to save it. First he sent his son, who might have died as a baby or at any point along the way before he actually did die on the cross. Then, having raised him from the dead, he leaves us to finish what Jesus began. It is the riskiest plan possible, but bizarrely - and largely because it is God's plan - it has worked! There is no harm in reminding ourselves, however, how essential we are to this. God still entrusts the world and everyone in it, whom he loves so much, to our care - a bunch of amateurs! But there is no-one but us to do it. God waits for us to realize the need and to fill it.

Next week the new PCC meets for the first time and will be considering what our priorities in mission should be for the next 12 months.... I do not mean by this which charities we should support, although that too may be a part of our mission, but rather how we can work in this community to make Jesus real and relevant to people out there. How we may better communicate his love for them - and us.... This perhaps is the real message of Ascensiontide.