Fairhaven Sermon 6-1-2025

Well, again, good morning. And this morning is the seventh week of the seven weeks of Easter. And since seven is the number of perfection in scripture, I feel very appropriate that we have seven weeks of Easter. And every year around this time, we also talk about Jesus' ascension, the day that Jesus left the disciples here on earth and returned to God in heaven.

And usually we tell the story from the point of view of the disciples who were watching him ascend, which makes sense because we are disciples too, and we can relate to them. We can relate to what they were seeing, and we can relate to their surprise and their misgivings and their not wanting Jesus to leave. We can relate to all the questions that started to crowd into their minds. But what was the ascension like for Jesus? And the best way I think I can answer that question is to sort of collect up bits and pieces because God and Jesus are so far beyond us.

We can get parts of it at least. So let's take a look at what's happening and what we do know, and then see if maybe we can catch a glimpse of what Jesus was thinking and feeling on this day. Let me start to say at the start that for the disciples who had traveled with Jesus for three years and had lived with him and eaten and worked and ministered alongside Jesus for three years, that they'd gotten used to Jesus being there. It's not just being one of us.

It's not all that Jesus was. Jesus was both human and divine. His mother, of course, being human, his father being God. So Jesus is totally both.

But they were just so used to having him there. within arm's reach, right there. And Jesus also loves his disciples very much. And toward the end of his life and toward the end of his time here on earth, Jesus was praying for them a lot and also praying for us.

And even on the night that he was crucified, Jesus was praying for us. So the first thing we can know for sure from Jesus' point of view is that Jesus loves the disciples and loves us and is going home to God because he loves us. For the disciples who were Jewish and knew the Jewish scriptures back then, Jesus' ascension would not have been quite so unusual for them as it is for us. They already knew about people ascending to God.

It had happened before. They could remember from their own history the prophet Elijah ascending into heaven while he was still alive and that this was witnessed by the prophet Elisha. And in Elijah's case, he was taken into heaven in a chariot of fire. That's where that expression comes from.

And when that happened, the mantle that he was wearing fell to the ground at Elisha's feet, a symbolic passing of ministry from one prophet to the next. In Jesus' case, shortly after his ascension, the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples, which was another passing on of the ministry. And the disciples would have understood this. For us today, the mantle of Jesus falls on us as well.

We as believers and followers of Jesus also receive the Holy Spirit, and Jesus has said, You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So the ministry that Jesus started is now in our hands. Our mission and our commission is to take it up and carry forward the work that Jesus started. And we can do this in his way, in his power, and in his name.

The message the disciples shared, and the one that we have to share as well, is that Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, that the one who never tasted death entered into death for us, and after three days he rose again. And doing these things, Jesus conquered both sin and death. Jesus has won the victory for us, for all of us, and this is our message. The other thing we see in Acts chapter 1, which we just heard, is that the disciples leave the place of the ascension together.

They were together with Jesus when he ascended, and they were together later on in Jerusalem. They pray together, they eat together, and after the Holy Spirit comes, they go out in Jesus' name together. They are of one body, one heart, and one mind. And It's just one problem for us, and that is that all these events are history.

So long ago, these events are in a very real way beyond our experience. So how can we relate to what the disciples were doing and feeling being where we are in our time over 2000 years later? So let me try by approaching this from a different direction. It is biblical to talk about our relationship with God and God's relationship with us, his people, as being like a relationship between a parent and children. In fact, Scripture uses this parallel a lot to help us understand how God feels toward us.

how much God loves us, how much God protects us and provides for us. That's why we think of God as Father, and we call God Father. And because many of us are parents ourselves, and all of us have had parents, we can, to some extent, understand something of what Jesus is doing and feeling on Ascension Day. To give an illustration, There may have been times when we were growing up when our parents needed to go somewhere for a while and didn't take us kids along.

They might have taken a vacation without the kids. They might have had business trips. For me, I can remember a time when my brother and I were very, very young, like preschool age, when our mother became ill and had to be in the hospital for a while. And dad had to keep working to keep the insurance and to keep the house.

So we kids were sent to live for a little while with aunts and uncles. And we were sent to live for a little while with aunts and uncles. And my brother and I at that age had no way of understanding what was going on. We were too young to understand the medical terminology that the grownups were using.

We were too young to understand why a person would need to go stay at the hospital because they were sick. All of us, all we knew is that we weren't going to be home and that mom and dad, while we could still talk to them on the phone, they weren't going to be with us. They couldn't be with us, and nobody in the family was happy about having to do all these things. And of course, everybody wanted mom to be well and for things to be back to normal.

But our parents assured us that they would be home as soon as possible, and so would we. And they wanted us to know how much they loved us, and they wanted us to know that we were going to be okay, and that everything was going to be okay. In a very similar way, as the time of ascension draws near, Jesus is doing the same thing. The disciples don't understand why Jesus has to leave.

And Jesus is assuring the disciples that they are not going to be abandoned, that Jesus will be back, first in the form of the Holy Spirit, and then finally, he will actually return physically, which he had told them about. Now, unlike with us kids, there's one other challenge that the disciples are facing, and that is that Jesus seems to have changed somewhat physically since his resurrection. He looks different than he used to. There are a number of times in the Bible where the Bible tells us that after Jesus' resurrection, the disciples didn't recognize him physically, not by the way he looked.

Luke tells us in the first chapter of Acts that Jesus presented himself alive to the disciples by many convincing proofs. Well, why would he need convincing proofs if he could have just said, well, look at me, it's me. Somehow, something had changed. And maybe this is a way of God saying to us that seeing is really not believing, and that faith, as Scripture says, comes by hearing and not by seeing.

Right? The disciples recognized Jesus through his words and his actions. And I think this tells us something important about heaven, specifically that appearances don't mean everything. In fact, that's kind of where we are with God right now in these days post-ascension. It's not that Jesus doesn't want to be here with us physically, he does.

It's just that Jesus needs to take care of some things that he can't do if he's physically limited to one place. And part of what Jesus is doing right now is healing, healing the planet, healing human society, preparing a home for us who love him, a forever home. Because unlike with our mom and dad, when it comes to God, we're not going to go back to the old house. We're going to a new home.

And Jesus is getting that ready. In the meantime, he knows that this world can be a scary place, sometimes, sometimes a dangerous place, especially when those who love us best aren't here with us. So Jesus gives us each other to look after each other, to create safe spaces where people can be welcomed, where people can be seen and heard and cared for. Amen.

And as Pentecost approaches next week, God will take all of us who were once strangers and create a community, create a family through the Holy Spirit. Our community of faith is to carry on the teaching of our Lord Jesus and to carry on the work that Jesus did of healing and of feeding and of welcoming. And for some reason we don't understand. Jesus is not able to give his followers the gift of the Holy Spirit while he's still physically here on earth.

I think that's just one of those grown-up things that we spiritual kids are too young to understand right now. But we will understand it someday. For now, we trust our Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Parent, who loves us. And we try to be patient, and being patient is not easy.

You know how frustrated kids get when they ask us why, and we tell them, well, you'll understand when you're older. I used to hate that. I think that's the kind of how we feel with God sometimes, not knowing why Jesus can't be here right now, not knowing why God doesn't step in and put a stop to the wrong things in the world right this very minute. It's not easy to deal with the fact that there are some things we just don't know yet.

It is tough not having Jesus here physically. And I think it's probably just as hard, if not harder, for Jesus being away from us. Just like kids miss their parents and parents miss their kids. Jesus knows more than we do about how soon he'll be back.

But we can almost feel in our reading from Luke today how tough it is for Jesus to say goodbye, even for a little while. Because when we love someone, we want to be with them. And Jesus wants to be with us. So for now, through the Holy Spirit, that's how Jesus is with us, through the Holy Spirit.

Having the Holy Spirit within us is kind of like having that ability to call home. It's not the same as being face to face. And we know that, and Jesus knows that, but we're not out of touch, we can still call. So Jesus' final words as a loving parent are words of blessing.

Jesus not only blessed the disciples, it says in the scriptures, as he was ascending, he kept on blessing them, kept on speaking words of blessing, even while he was being taken up into heaven. So Jesus' love is always with us, and we can trust that. So where does this leave us for now? What do we do while we're waiting for Jesus to come back and take us home? Well, back in the day..

. The disciples were thinking, well, maybe it was time for them to take Israel back from the Romans. So before Jesus left, they asked him, is this the time when you're going to restore the kingdom? Is this the time we're finally going to get rid of these nasty Romans? And Jesus' answer is an important one. He said, it's not for you to know the times or the periods that Father has set by his own authority.

But... you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

That's what we've been given to do until Jesus gets back, to witness to the truth that we have seen, to be faithful to the love that we have known, and to do this in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Now, what does that mean for us? Because those places are...

thousands of miles away. What does that mean for us? I once heard somebody explain it this way, somebody who lived here in Pittsburgh in contemporary terms. He said, from our point of view, from where we live right now, we are to bear witness to Jesus in the South Hills, in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, in the United States, and around the world. Makes sense.

That'll keep us busy for a while, yes? And while we're doing this, what is Jesus doing? We don't know exactly what exactly he's doing, but the Apostle Paul gives us a few hints in his letter to Ephesians. He said, Jesus is being given great power, including the power of resurrection. He says Jesus is being given authority and dominion for both this age and the next. He said that Jesus is the head of the church, that is, of all Christ followers everywhere forever.

And finally, when the time is right, Jesus will be back. And we don't know that time as in the day or the month of the year, and we don't know that time as in when's the right time. We don't know. but we can trust that God does know and the God who sends the Holy Spirit to walk with us through this life and to help us be witnesses to God's truth and love.

In both Luke's gospel and in the book of Acts, the focus is on the promise of the Holy Spirit to come and we are to wait for that spirit to be continued next week. Amen. Amen.