Episode 13 - Ascension Day

Pastor Dan and special guest Betty the Dog talk about the ascension of Christ and what it means to live in the "already but not yet" Kingdom of God.

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Hey everybody, welcome to another Sermon Prep Podcast. This is Dan Metzgrim, the pastor at St. Mark's United Methodist Church. My special guest today is Betty, my golden retriever. She's the only other person in this room. And she just rolled over and looked at me and is curious why I said her name. She probably won't say much. I don't uh anticipate her adding a ton to this recording. But um today we're gonna talk about uh something that uh is kind of hitting the cutting room floor today this coming Sunday. Um it's uh it's one of the lesser-known holidays in the church year, and uh I'm not gonna have a whole lot of time to talk about it, but I thought I'd just share a little bit uh on this about Ascension Sunday. Actually, Ascension Day is today, the day I'm recording this. Today's Thursday. Uh it's 40 days after Easter. Uh the book of Acts tells us that it's 40 days after Easter that Jesus ascends into heaven. And this has become a holiday throughout the uh Christian world, um, a day that uh churches remember it's a feast day in the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, but um not something that we generally talk about in uh Protestant uh in our Protestant faith, but it is a day that we all recognize and remember. Uh we talk about it in our apostles' creed. We say that he ascended into heaven after he was crucified, died, was buried, he descended to the dead, he rose again, he ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father. Um, and uh and in the midst of all of this, you know, we just kind of like blow right by that. Uh, but it is an important part of our faith that we believe that Jesus isn't still in his bodily form, walking here on the earth, uh, that he did end up ascending into heaven, going into heaven 40 days, uh, at least according to the book of Acts, 40 days after his resurrection. So I thought what we'd do is just look a little bit at what the gospels say about the ascension, and uh we'll talk about uh what it what it might mean for us. So uh the gospels are not actually all in agreement as to exactly what happened after Jesus' resurrection. Uh the gospel of Matthew, to start off, it says that after his resurrection, that he told them to go ahead of him into Galilee, and it's when they uh the disciples are in Galilee that Jesus comes and he meets them on some certain mountain in Galilee. And it's while he's there that he gives them the great commission and tells them to go into all the world to make disciples, and uh it but then it doesn't say anything really about him ascending into heaven, uh it just says that he gave them uh gave them these instructions. So what happens? We don't we don't really know according to to the gospel of Matthew, but he does seem to say, I'm going away. He's he's giving them kind of his goodbye speech, and he tells them, I'll be with you even to the end of the age, but he doesn't say exactly what's going to happen to him. Uh, the gospel of Mark is a little bit confusing because Mark's gospel, uh, some of you might notice this in the end in your Bibles, in the end of the Gospel of Mark, that there's two possible endings. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure book where you get to kind of pick your ending. The shorter ending uh that some ancient sources have just kind of ends with the women seeing that the stone has been rolled away from the tomb and Jesus isn't there, and they're confused and they don't know what's happening. Uh, but uh there's also some other sources that are part of the Gospel of Mark that add this ending that happens where Jesus appears to the disciples while they're eating somewhere. And it's while they're eating that Jesus appears and he uh gives them these instructions to to go out and uh to bring healing to people and uh and to preach uh about repentance, and then it says that he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. Um, so that's that's another possible kind of interpretation, and it doesn't say exactly where they were um uh when this is happening, uh, but it seems like they were in the the vicinity of Jerusalem somewhere, somewhere in that area. The Gospel of Luke tells us that it's it they're in the vicinity of Bethany. So if you're looking at a map, you see Jerusalem, and then right next to Jerusalem, there's the Mount of Olives, and on the other side of the Mount of Olives is the village of Bethany, uh, where uh Lazarus was, and uh, there's Bethany and Bethbage that are over on that side, these two little towns. And it says that they're in the vicinity of Bethany, and uh that it's there that Jesus appears to them, and it says that he lifted his hands and he and he blessed them, and then he ascended uh into heaven. We'll pick up a little bit more of Luke's story in a minute because Luke also writes the book of Acts, and that's where we get most of this story, the ascension. Uh, but John's gospel it doesn't mention the ascension story at all. It ends also in Galilee with uh Jesus meeting the disciples up there. The disciples have gone fishing. Uh Jesus reinstates Peter after they uh after they get back to shore. He asks him three times, Simon, do you love me? And then he says, Feed my sheep, and he reinstates Peter. And then John just kind of ends his gospel with his own kind of reflection and uh says, you know, I that Jesus did many more things, and all the books in the world couldn't hold everything that Jesus did. But it doesn't say anything at that point about him ascending into heaven. Earlier in his gospel, he quotes Jesus, Jesus a couple of times mentioning, um, like in chapter 6, verse 62, that the Son of Man's going to ascend to the Father and is going to go up to the Father, and we'll talk about what that means in a minute. Um, but it's it's the gospel of At, or the Gospel, the book of Acts, that um that gives us the clearest picture of what happens with the ascension. It says that once again they were eating, so that's right in line with Mark's gospel. Um, that they're eating together, and it's while they're at dinner that they're talking, and and Jesus says, You're gonna be or they ask him, you know, is this the time when you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel, the throne to Israel? And Jesus says, It's not for you to know these things, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. And then we're told that he is, uh, that he ascends into heaven, he's taken up into heaven, uh, right in front of their very eyes, and they're and they're looking up, they're they're looking up, watching this happen. Now, unless they were at an outdoor picnic eating, I don't know how this happens. Uh, because if they're eating together, they're they're likely in a room, and I don't know what they're seeing as they're looking up, like he goes through the ceiling, or or what happens here. Uh, but we're told that uh two men in white, uh, we would call them angels, uh, messengers appear and say, Why are you staring into the sky? Uh, Jesus is gonna come the same way that you've seen him go. And the disciples recognize in that moment that that things are not exactly what they thought they were going to be. That's gonna be our big theme this Sunday of what the future was meant to look like. They had one idea of what it would look like for Jesus to reign on his throne, um, but it turns out it's gonna be something entirely different. That his throne's a heavenly throne, which is really, I think, what the ascension story is supposed to be about. It's not just uh this really fun story about Jesus flying through the air like Superman. Uh, it's it's something much more than that. In fact, they the people of that uh time wouldn't have necessarily thought of heaven being up above it in the out in the universe somewhere, you know, beyond the stars and all of this. Uh they were thinking more of a heavenly throne, um, not something that was necessarily in the direction of up, but that it was uh that it was something spiritual that was that was happening here, uh where Jesus is being exalted in some way. He is going to sit on a throne that's that's more than just an earthly throne, he's going to sit on a heavenly throne. That's the that is the ultimate point of the ascension of who Jesus is. Um and there's this one verse that gets quoted over and over again in the New Testament. It's from Psalm 110, and it's verse 1, and it says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. And we kind of look at that and say, All right, well, what's that mean? That doesn't seem to mean anything, but for them it meant everything. This was um this was saying that the messiah was not just going to be Jesus, who they believe was the Messiah, was not just going to be somebody who's going to restore this earthly throne now. Now we're seeing, oh, he is sitting at the right hand of the Father. He is he is sitting, he is ruling on high in a way that's beyond anything that we dreamed for the Messiah to be. The dream for the Messiah was that he would come back and he would uh have a political revolution, that that Israel would be restored. And now we're seeing, no, this is a restoration of of humanity, of the universe, of creation. This is something beyond uh what they could have what they could have possibly thought about. And so Jesus, in a sense, we we kind of have this idea, this I don't know, this human earthly idea that okay, this is the time when Jesus went away. But he doesn't really go away here, he just assumes a new position. Um he's taken he's taken a new role, it's an exalted role, it's uh it's a much higher role. And now he is reigning and he's interceding and he's sending the spirit out. And what we end up seeing is this thing that that theologians now talk about, and I'm sorry, I'm getting kind of heady. I promise I'm gonna get to some um some real life application here in a second, but this thing that theologians talk about as the already but not yet of the kingdom of God. That yes, we are still waiting on something, we are we are waiting on the return of Christ, we are waiting uh for this full restoration that seems to be talked about in like Revelation and Daniel and all of these other things, and that Jesus himself seems to point to in Matthew's gospel and and other places throughout the gospels of uh of what you know that someday that total fulfillment is going to look like. But we also see Jesus is on the throne now, like right now. And if he's on the throne right now, that means that the kingdom of God, and Jesus tells us this over and over throughout the scriptures that the kingdom of God is here and now. It's not something we have to wait for, but it's something that we are living in the midst of. So it's already, but it's also not yet. There's more yet that that's going to happen that needs to happen. But all of that ends up begging this question, which will be kind of our main point this week at St. Mark's, is we're gonna be talking about, all right. So, what does it mean that we are living right now in the kingdom of God? That he has sent us out. That is a part of his graduation speech to us. Um, you know, you're gonna go, you're gonna do these things, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth. What does it mean that right now they had been waiting for Judea to be restored politically? But he's saying, No, that's not what this is about. This is about something much larger. How do we go about living into the kingdom of God right now? I think we have this tendency um to just kind of sit back and say, God, isn't this something you're supposed to take care of? Jesus, isn't this something you were supposed to do? Uh, we feel helpless, we feel like we are just uh very small pawns in this, in this much larger thing that's happening. Um But he tells us, No, you are you are my solution to this. You are a part of what it looks like to bring about the kingdom of God. He's sending, he sent the disciples out and he's sending us out to restore the kingdom. That's our job. It wasn't something he was gonna do, it's something he's telling us to go and do, to bring about the kingdom of God. We pray this every week when we pray the Lord's Prayer. We say, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is not something that we are saying, gee, I hope it happens someday. It's something we're saying we are gonna be an active part of, we are active participants in this. And so I think for me it begs the question, well, what does it look like to be an active participant and bringing about what the kingdom of God looks like? And you have to go back through the gospels and say, well, what does Jesus say the kingdom of God looks like? What sort of things happen? In Luke's gospel, when he's announcing his ministry, he says that you know, a part of what the kingdom of God looks like is uh that there's gonna be release for the prisoner and recovery of sight for the blind and setting the oppressed free. That it's gonna seem like the year of the Lord's favor, but it's not something that's just gonna cosmically happen, it's something that he's building up this these followers, us, uh, these people who are going to call themselves Christians. It's a part of what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to help loose the bonds of injustice, we are supposed to uh to help bring healing and hope to a world that needs it. Uh, when people are looking for the year of the Lord's favor, that's something that we help bring about. All of these things are things that we are meant to be active participants in and not just passive watchers of. Uh, that it's stuff that we're supposed to do, and I think that that's maybe where the church has gotten it wrong sometimes over the years. One of the places the church has gotten it wrong over the years is that we tend to just um file into our pews and uh pray that the clouds would part and Jesus would come back and just fix stuff, and we're just gonna hang on in our little bunkers until it happens. Um but that's not what it's meant to be. We are we are meant to be a part of what it looks like to bring about the coming reign of Christ, the kingdom of God. We go out and we do things like loving our neighbors as ourselves and turning the other cheek and um and doing it unto others as we would have them do unto us. All of these things that are counter to the rule and reign of this world, uh of the things that everyone else says that we're supposed to do, ways that we're supposed to live. We're supposed to live differently, not just because we're citizens of a king of the kingdom of God, but that we are active participants in bringing it about. So it's gonna be a little bit shorter than uh normal. Um, but we are my my hope for uh for you all, and uh we're doing this uh uh on Saturday. We're gonna be going out super service Saturday, gonna be going out and serving in our community. It's a part of how we bring about the kingdom of God, sharing that love and that hope and that healing with the world, um, repenting of times where we've gotten it wrong. Um, all of these things, these are things that we do to help see his kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Uh, so my hope for you is that in the days to come you find ways to help bring about the kingdom of God, help help to make this world, this nation, um, look a little bit more like you think Jesus wanted it to look all along. Uh that's a part of our job. We are sent to go and to do this. So thank you for joining us for another sermon prep podcast. Um, probably have a guest next week of some sort, but this is just something I wanted to share today uh on this ascension day when we remember that Jesus is ruling and reigning on his throne. Um and I hope that you have a great day and uh join us next time for another sermon prep podcast.