SPEAKER_03: Crystal Senesti, hallelujah, Christ is risen.
SPEAKER_03: Aletho Senesti.
SPEAKER_03: The Lord is risen indeed.
SPEAKER_03: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_03: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_03: Almighty God.
SPEAKER_03: To you all hearts are open.
SPEAKER_02: All desires known, and from you no secrets are hidden.
SPEAKER_02: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your own name through Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_03: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that according to his promise, he abides with the church on earth even unto the end of the ages.
SPEAKER_03: Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God in glory everlasting.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: As you're being seated, our children, grades five and below, are invited to godly play in the back of the church with this servant today.
SPEAKER_00: In the first book of the Apollo, I wrote all about that Jesus had begun to do and teach until the day when he was taken up to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: After giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
SPEAKER_00: After his suffering, he presented himself alive to them by many convincing truths, appearing to them during the forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: While dating with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: He replied, It is not for you to know the time or periods of the Father by his own authority.
SPEAKER_00: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: When he had said this as they were watching, he lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight while he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly two men and white robes.
SPEAKER_00: He subdues the people under us and the nations under our feet.
SPEAKER_00: He chooses our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loves.
SPEAKER_00: God has gone up with a shout.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord with the sound of the rams.
SPEAKER_00: Sing praises to God, sing praises, sing praises to our king, sing praises.
SPEAKER_00: For God is the king of all the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Sing praises with all your seal.
SPEAKER_00: God reigns over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: God sits upon his own.
SPEAKER_01: I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.
SPEAKER_01: And for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.
SPEAKER_01: That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
SPEAKER_01: God put his power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named.
SPEAKER_01: Not only in this age, but also in the age to come.
SPEAKER_01: And he has put all things under his feet, and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sin is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_03: You are witnesses of these things.
SPEAKER_03: And see, I am sending upon you what my father promised.
SPEAKER_03: So stay here in the city until you've been clothed with power from on high.
SPEAKER_03: Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them.
SPEAKER_03: While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them, and was carried up into heaven.
SPEAKER_03: And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.
SPEAKER_03: And they were continually in the temple blessing God.
SPEAKER_03: This is the gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: The Lord is risen indeed.
SPEAKER_03: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_03: Hey, thanks for joining with that.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, really, the reminder is that we are now 43 days past the resurrection of the Lord, but this Easter season is a full 50 days, not one.
SPEAKER_03: So you could really say to your neighbor, happy Easter, and that would be accurate.
SPEAKER_03: Why do we do it so long?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I've tried to make the case, and I just want to remind you, I think we do it so long because we've done it so wrong.
SPEAKER_03: We have spent most of our Christian lives looking for a resuscitation from the dead.
SPEAKER_03: Resuscitation means we experience pain or harm or death, and we get our life back, and maybe it's a little bit normal, maybe it's a little bit better than before.
SPEAKER_03: And to be honest, most of us want that most of the time, and it has nothing to do with resurrection.
SPEAKER_03: The resurrection from the dead is when death enters the body and the wounds never leave, and the body will never die again.
SPEAKER_03: I want to make the contrast for you because it became very clear to me when we were walking with Camino and we were coming to the end to the ocean that most of my Christian life has been a sanctified way of how I lived before.
SPEAKER_03: That is to say, hey, we all know that being a jerk is bad.
SPEAKER_03: But as a youth, and this is probably me, I don't know that my preacher told me to be this way.
SPEAKER_03: I couldn't be a jerk to everybody.
SPEAKER_03: Not anymore.
SPEAKER_03: I could just be a jerk to people who didn't believe what I believed.
SPEAKER_03: I'm grateful for your laughing, but I'm gonna tell you that was the gospel according to how I was raised, and there's no life in it.
SPEAKER_03: So what did I do most of my youth and my college years?
SPEAKER_03: I focused on being right and loving people who were right.
SPEAKER_03: Which is a resuscitative way of life that leads to death.
SPEAKER_03: We spend so much time on this because we get it wrong.
SPEAKER_03: We get it wrong.
SPEAKER_03: Hey, listen, I'm just like everybody else.
SPEAKER_03: I like spending time with people I like.
SPEAKER_03: Spending time with people God likes.
SPEAKER_03: I hope you hear the difference between resurrection and resuscitation.
SPEAKER_03: It's challenging, which is why we usually would just rather be resuscitated.
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Now, this story is an interesting one because it's Ascension Day.
SPEAKER_03: And to be honest, it's weird.
SPEAKER_03: And if we take it so literally, I think we'll forget that this is actually the culmination of the whole story.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't know if you know this.
SPEAKER_03: Yuri Gregarian, the first person to go to leave the atmosphere, got up there and said, Look, God's a myth.
SPEAKER_03: I've left the earth and God's not here.
SPEAKER_03: If you read this story literally, Jesus flies away to where?
SPEAKER_03: We haven't found him with the Hubble telescope, friends.
SPEAKER_03: We haven't found him with the web telescope either.
SPEAKER_03: So just a reminder to you, we could take this so literally that we go right to the grave with the story.
SPEAKER_03: So let's enter the symbolic universe that we still occupy, where good things are up and bad things are down and we live in the middle.
SPEAKER_03: And here's the story of the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: God comes from up.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, listen, maybe this is a multiverse.
SPEAKER_03: Or maybe God lives in the fifth dimension and we live in the third.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know what you need to hear, but symbolically this makes sense.
SPEAKER_03: God comes from this good place and assumes our humanity.
SPEAKER_03: And every time we say we're saved by the blood of Jesus, I want you to hear not by like washing in Jesus' blood, but the fact that he took on blood.
SPEAKER_03: We get that symbol wrong most of the time.
SPEAKER_03: Has nothing to do with washing our sins away in blood.
SPEAKER_03: Has everything to do with Jesus having blood like you.
SPEAKER_03: So Jesus does that, becomes incarnate and lives between heaven and the underworld.
SPEAKER_03: And then what happens on Friday?
SPEAKER_03: He enters the underworld.
SPEAKER_03: Then on Sunday, he comes back to the middle place, right?
SPEAKER_03: Different, comes back to the middle.
SPEAKER_03: And here is really the thing that makes all of it work is that he ascends back from whence he came, changed.
SPEAKER_03: And what's changed?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I don't know if you we want to argue that Jesus has changed, but let's just say this.
SPEAKER_03: What does Jesus do fills all things because he assumed all things.
SPEAKER_03: The earliest Christian evangelist, Athanasius of Egypt, said, what has not been assumed cannot be redeemed.
SPEAKER_03: The Ascension Day talks about what God has assumed.
SPEAKER_03: What has God assumed?
SPEAKER_03: Boredom.
SPEAKER_03: Or the special kind of boredom you have in the middle class, we.
SPEAKER_03: And because Jesus knew what it was meant to be, bored.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, let's be honest, we don't hear anything about him for 30 years.
SPEAKER_03: Why is that?
SPEAKER_03: Because there wasn't anything to tell.
SPEAKER_03: You ever been before you ever been bored before?
SPEAKER_03: Well, so was Jesus, and so was God.
SPEAKER_03: And guess what?
SPEAKER_03: Boredom entered into heaven on ascension day.
SPEAKER_03: You think you're frustrated with people at work?
SPEAKER_03: Look, Jesus was with 12 people who didn't get it at all.
SPEAKER_03: How am I making that claim?
SPEAKER_03: They're looking at the resurrected Jesus and they say, Are you gonna make Israel great again?
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, No, sweetie.
SPEAKER_03: No, no, I'm just gonna leave now.
SPEAKER_03: Bye.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, look, I'm not making it up.
SPEAKER_03: We read the story.
SPEAKER_03: Make Israel great again is a resuscitated life.
SPEAKER_03: What do we want?
SPEAKER_03: A better king?
SPEAKER_03: Yes, that's what we want.
SPEAKER_03: We'd rather have a better king or a better president or a better governor than live into God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_03: And I'm talking to myself.
SPEAKER_03: But I hope you hear how we get it wrong.
SPEAKER_03: And part of it is, I think the reason we get it wrong is we look at this story and we'll say, well, I mean, Jesus flew away, so I guess we're on our own.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you know how this goes, but a week from today is Pentecost.
SPEAKER_03: And at the end of the story today, the disciples are like, Yay, Jesus, and they're praising God.
SPEAKER_03: And within 10 days, they've locked the doors because they're terrified.
SPEAKER_03: So their fun doesn't last that long.
SPEAKER_03: And here's why I think that is.
SPEAKER_03: Ever since the resurrection day, Jesus has been showing up in small glimpses.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: He'll like walk through the doors or he'll walk through Emmaus.
SPEAKER_03: And Thomas wasn't there, so a couple days later he'll show up to Thomas.
SPEAKER_03: And then maybe two weeks later, he'll show up with Peter's out there fishing, and then he catches all these fish, right?
SPEAKER_03: You know this?
SPEAKER_03: This is a game that Jesus is playing that is developmentally appropriate for mammals.
SPEAKER_03: It's called peekaboo.
SPEAKER_03: Consider how our brains work.
SPEAKER_03: If you've ever played with an empath, it's delightful because they don't understand that when they don't see you, that you still exist.
SPEAKER_03: And then what there you are, back from the dead.
SPEAKER_03: This is the journey of the disciples for 40 days.
SPEAKER_03: Hey, Jesus is alive, and the next day we're like, well, maybe he's not.
SPEAKER_03: And then he goes, like, peekaboo, here I am.
SPEAKER_03: They're like, oh, there you are.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, there you are.
SPEAKER_03: And then he leaves for a couple of days, and they're like, man, I just, I just don't know if Jesus is back.
SPEAKER_03: And then there he is again.
SPEAKER_03: And today is when the game ends.
SPEAKER_03: Today is when the game ends.
SPEAKER_03: Because today is the day in which Jesus fills all things.
SPEAKER_03: How does he do it?
SPEAKER_03: He takes his wounds and his boredom and his frustration.
SPEAKER_03: He takes the human experience in which some people get cancer and some people don't.
SPEAKER_03: He takes that and he takes it right to God where it exists forever.
SPEAKER_03: If Jesus doesn't take our humanity back to God, it doesn't work right.
SPEAKER_03: Which means today is a little bit of a tough day because it means, quite honestly, that as much as we'd like to say, seeing is believing, the truth is believing is seeing.
SPEAKER_03: The disciples are not really sure.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, within a week's time, they think God could care less about it.
SPEAKER_03: That's because they believe that they have to perceive Jesus with their eye for him to be real.
SPEAKER_03: And we could say they're a bunch of dummies, but I'm gonna tell you, I think that is pretty much human experience.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, once upon a time I knew this great priest who told me, you know why people sit in the same seat in church every week?
SPEAKER_03: And I said, Well, yeah, because like that's their seat.
SPEAKER_03: He's like, Well, that's the cynical way.
SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you why people do it.
SPEAKER_03: They sat there one time, and maybe it was a particular chord on the organ or the light came through the window.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it was something the preacher said, probably not.
SPEAKER_03: But they sat in that seat and they had this moment where, like, just a peak of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: So they go back again and again because they just need to see it again.
SPEAKER_03: I actually think he's right.
SPEAKER_03: I sit in the same chair every week.
SPEAKER_03: But I want to say, I think that's what our faith life often is.
SPEAKER_03: We can have this moment of surprise, and then we go back there again and again and again, and we say, Well, Jesus has deserted me.
SPEAKER_03: I'm living.
SPEAKER_03: We even have these phrases like, oh man, you know, like I'm just having a desert experience, my spirituality is dry.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to tell you why I think that is, because we wouldn't believe Jesus if we saw him anyway.
SPEAKER_03: We're looking for one thing instead of Christ to be full in all things.
SPEAKER_03: And I hope you're here.
SPEAKER_03: That doesn't take away disappointment and pain and sorrow.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't.
SPEAKER_03: I think what the ascension says, go ahead and have those experiences.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus, Jesus had them too, and Jesus is fully in those things.
SPEAKER_03: I don't want that.
SPEAKER_03: I want a resuscitated Jesus in which sinners gets cured, and death is no more.
SPEAKER_03: But you realize that when Jesus died, death entered God forever.
SPEAKER_03: So we don't, it's like, oh, God can't die.
SPEAKER_03: Oh no, we die in God.
SPEAKER_03: We die in God.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's what the story says is we live and move and have our being not outside of God, but inside of God.
SPEAKER_03: And the real question is, are we aware of it or not?
SPEAKER_03: So you might find yourself disappointed, well, in your faith life, in your personal life, in your work life, and you might find yourself doing things like, God, play peekaboo with me, show you're real.
SPEAKER_03: That's what youth camp was all about.
SPEAKER_03: But I want to change that language a little bit.
SPEAKER_03: God, I'm really disappointed, and I'm just gonna need help perceiving your presence in all things.
SPEAKER_03: Well, Mike, you're just dickering with words.
SPEAKER_03: I think I'm really just trying to express what's resurrected and what's resuscitated, and I think the whole gospel hinges on that.
SPEAKER_03: God, I'm having a hard time perceiving your presence right now.
SPEAKER_03: And you're not listening to my advice on how to fix it, God.
SPEAKER_03: Anyone else had that experience?
SPEAKER_03: God's not a great listener to my advice.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, go figure.
SPEAKER_03: My kids aren't either.
SPEAKER_03: You know, I think this is just a thing, right?
SPEAKER_03: And perhaps it's because I'm believing the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I also want to suggest to you that ascension isn't just a thing that Jesus did once and that's cool and it completes the story.
SPEAKER_03: I actually want to suggest to you that there is something really important for it as a way of life for us.
SPEAKER_03: So I want you to hear this story about ascension, and you might say, well, Mike, that just sounds like a therapeutic trope.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's fine.
SPEAKER_03: That may be what it is, but for me, it has a real spiritual value.
SPEAKER_03: I'm walking the Kamina with my kid, and my kid decides that they want a thing.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I knew that that thing was not really gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03: But instead of me saying, just no, what I said is that's improbable, that's unlikely, you're gonna have to get permission from your mom, which I knew wasn't gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03: We call mom, and mom says, Why did you put me in this position?
SPEAKER_03: I'm not there.
SPEAKER_03: So finally I say, Fine, I hear you, and I'll just say no, like I should have.
SPEAKER_03: No.
SPEAKER_03: My kid, of course, is very disappointed.
SPEAKER_03: And I say something like, Well, disappointment's really normal, and I get it.
SPEAKER_03: And then about 10 seconds later, I'm like, Well, you've been disappointed long enough.
SPEAKER_03: How about you get over that?
SPEAKER_03: And I'm just wondering if any of you with kids have ever thought you shouldn't be disappointed to this degree.
SPEAKER_03: And out of that should, you decided to take matters into your own hands.
SPEAKER_03: And here's what that looked like for me.
SPEAKER_03: Hey, I gave you this really gift.
SPEAKER_03: What that gift I gave you wasn't good enough.
SPEAKER_03: This is master manipulation.
SPEAKER_03: And I want you to hear it comes right out of the underworld.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: Comes out of the underworld.
SPEAKER_03: And so, what did I need?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I needed to get out of hell, friends.
SPEAKER_03: I needed to give Anna hell because you know one thing, hell loves is company.
SPEAKER_03: And I sure was inviting my kid right down into the grave with me.
SPEAKER_03: Now, look, what happened eventually, I mean, I'd like to say it happened quickly.
SPEAKER_03: And in some ways, I'm telling you the story because it's an anomaly.
SPEAKER_03: More often than not, I get it wrong.
SPEAKER_03: Ultimately, what had happened is I realized oh, the way I was raised was that I wasn't supposed to be disappointed.
SPEAKER_03: I was raised with the idea that feelings can be controlled.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to tell you, feelings can be repressed, but they sure can't be controlled.
SPEAKER_03: Feelings are very real, they're just not always true.
SPEAKER_03: But feelings don't listen to the logic.
SPEAKER_03: You ever talked yourself down to being disappointed?
SPEAKER_03: I doubt it.
SPEAKER_03: You might have talked yourself into repressing your disappointment, but I don't think you've ever said, oh, I really shouldn't be disappointed right now, therefore I won't be.
SPEAKER_03: And your body was like, I agree with you.
SPEAKER_03: So what did it take for me?
SPEAKER_03: It took me realizing, and I have this unique personality fall that says, Oh, my kid's disappointed, it's because I did something wrong.
SPEAKER_03: It took me a moment of saying, like, wow, I've got this wound in my life that is going to wound my kid.
SPEAKER_03: Because that's no way to live.
SPEAKER_03: Friends, that's no way to live.
SPEAKER_03: And it took me like some prayer and some grace, and then I was able to say, Wow, I blew it, kid.
SPEAKER_03: I blew it.
SPEAKER_03: I told you you could say you were disappointed, and then I chided you for doing it.
SPEAKER_03: So something in me needs resurrection.
SPEAKER_03: And I want you to hear whether it's a silly thing like your kid or at your job and with your priest or whatever it is, God would be really on the side of you having new life.
SPEAKER_03: Now, me trying to control my feelings is an old wound.
SPEAKER_03: It's never going to go away.
SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't have to define the way I live spiritually or as a parent or in society.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't have to.
SPEAKER_03: Christ has said, the powers and principalities I've taken care of, will you choose to enter that victory with me?
SPEAKER_03: Most of the time, though, I'd rather Jesus just did it for me.
SPEAKER_03: Ascension Day is about Christ doing it alongside us, being with us, whether we do the holy work or not.
SPEAKER_03: Now, this is really weird because you know that we're supposed to have this Paschal candle up here to lit for all of Easter tide, and then you know, well, it's also Pentecost, so we're gonna do that, and then it's going to be Trinity Sunday, so we're gonna have it then too.
SPEAKER_03: But I just want to offer you this exercise of why I think this is so difficult for the disciples and why it's often difficult for us.
SPEAKER_03: We've been looking at this very visible, perceptible light now for 43 days.
SPEAKER_03: And the disciples were looking at Peekaboo Jesus for 43 days as well, and they see him leave, and I guarantee you the thought that they had the next day was the light's gone.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, look, in three weeks the light's gonna be gone.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: I think you know that for a second, and you're like, I'm okay, my brain's okay.
SPEAKER_03: But then as hours and days accrue, wow, the loss of the light is really, really tough.
SPEAKER_03: So here's what I want to say about God filling all things, and it's pretty much similar to what I say at funerals every time I do one, because I don't have a better message than this.
SPEAKER_03: All the light we do not see.
SPEAKER_03: And we live in a resuscitated world that says Mammoth Cave has no light in it.
SPEAKER_03: It's absolutely dark.
SPEAKER_03: You ever been to Mammoth Cave?
SPEAKER_03: Carl's Bad Caverns.
SPEAKER_03: You ever been in a cave where they turn out the lights and you're in absolute darkness?
SPEAKER_03: And the truth is it's full of light, it's just imperceptible to your eye.
SPEAKER_03: And you say, wow, I'm really scared of the dark.
SPEAKER_03: There's no light here.
SPEAKER_03: Boy, that defines a lot of my life in crisis.
SPEAKER_03: But the truth is, Mammoth Cave, the life we have on earth, is teeming with the light of God, just not always perceptible to our eye because we've decided what light looks like.
SPEAKER_03: It looks like this.
SPEAKER_03: But you know, it also looks like infrared and microwaves, which you can't see, but you rely on every day.
SPEAKER_03: So, what do we do on Ascension Day?
SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be jarring, which is why we're gonna get to do it again next week.
SPEAKER_03: Well, what we do is we change the light.
SPEAKER_03: The truth is, just like every funeral, we don't put lights out.
SPEAKER_03: Because in the Lord, life is never ended, even though it will always be changed.
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna watch me change it right now.
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna say, Mike, liturgically, you can't put the Paschal candle out.
SPEAKER_03: I'm not putting it out.
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna change it.
SPEAKER_03: Because Ascension Day is when visible light changes, and over the next seven days, you might find yourself thinking, I just feel really lone in a dry place, and I want to invite you, the light's not gone.
SPEAKER_03: It's actually filled every crevice of every dark cavern in your life and in the world.
SPEAKER_03: So then we say, Help me perceive, God, what you perceive.
SPEAKER_03: You will never see a microwave with your naked eye.
SPEAKER_03: You never will.
SPEAKER_03: You don't need to see them to know what they do.
SPEAKER_03: So this is our invitation to say, I may not see you in the people I hate.
SPEAKER_03: And you're there.
SPEAKER_03: God, I may not see you in an unfavorable medical diagnosis, but you haven't flown away and left the building.
SPEAKER_03: You have filled all things with your presence.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe we say, God, it'd be enough if you could fill me with trust, but if you can't, just help my brain to say this thing until my body believes it.
SPEAKER_03: The truth is, if God can fill all things, what do you think God wants us to do?
SPEAKER_03: Love is a terrible thing to ask, isn't it?