Shall We Dance - With Special Guest Rev. Emily Robnett

The Ascension of Jesus is often overlooked but essential to understanding our salvation. When Jesus ascended to heaven in His human body, He brought humanity into the very presence of God, making us one with the divine. This isn't just about future hope - it's about bringing heaven to earth now. The Ascension completes our salvation story and commissions us to continue Christ's work in the world. We're called to address real needs like poverty, oppression, and brokenness while living out God's kingdom values daily.

Transcript

All right, well, I was told there was a video, which is why I was standing up here for too long. I'm Reverend Emily Robnet. I am the director at the Tulsa Wesley foundation, and we've had some of your. One of your members serve on our board. And you guys have also served lunch at the Wesley foundation as well.

It was very well received. I can't remember how many we served that day, but we usually serve around 160 people, which is incredible. And I just want to thank you for your support and all of the ways that you have helped make my ministry possible and in extending our church to those who are going to school, who are going to higher education. It means a lot and it makes a huge difference in the church and in our world. So thank you for that.

Before we begin, I'm going to read our scripture and then I'm going to pray and then we'll get to it. Okay, so our passage today is on the Ascension, which is. It's interesting because the Ascension only appears in the Gospel of Luke and it also appears in Acts. It's kind of alluded to in the other Gospels, but there's no real account of it. So this is kind of it for the Ascension.

Luke 24:44 53. Then he said to them, these are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. 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 to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised.

So stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And while he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they were continually in the temple, blessing God.

The Word of God. For the people of God. Thanks be to God. All right, let us pray. Gracious God, we marvel at all of the ways that you have walked upon this earth, that you have become a human being, that you died a human death and that you ascended to heaven.

And God, we thank you for all of the miraculous things that you have done for us and our salvation. And so May the words of my mouth and all of the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. For God, you are our strength and our redeemer. Amen. So we don't.

How many. How many of you remember a sermon on the Ascension from your lifetime? Okay, yeah. The DS's wife. You should.

Yes, definitely. I was sitting. I was trying to remember. I cannot even recall a single time that I have heard the Ascension preached on in my time in the church. And I've been a Christian since I was in, like, the ninth grade.

Now, granted, a lot of my early church years were spent passing notes to very cute boys in the balcony, and I really wasn't paying attention. So I may have just missed it, honestly. But regardless, Ascension Sunday is very often overlooked, and sometimes it's even ignored. And this could be because the ascension is always 40 days after Easter and it always falls on a Thursday. So we're not really at church on Thursday usually.

And so preachers, usually, they would rather just preach the seventh Sunday and Easter, that lectionary text rather than the Ascension. So we don't always have a special service for the Ascension. And maybe it's because, like, you know, in the United Methodist Church, our founder, John Wesley, he reportedly loved the Ascension. It was like, one of his favorite things. But he has not left us one single sermon on the Ascension to communicate his theological beliefs.

So there's kind of a trend here, but I think it extends even farther back than John Wesley because, you know, as I said, three out of four Gospels don't really even have a direct account of the Ascension. They just kind of allude to it. And it's only in here at the end of Luke that we have the Ascension and at the beginning of Acts. And yet the Ascension remains a very important article of our faith. And actually, every time you say the Apostles Creed, we actually proclaim it.

We say, on the third day, he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From there, he will come to judge the living and the dead. We say it all the time. What does it mean?

If the Ascension is one of the central tenets of our faith, why the mystery? Why don't we have more details? What is the significance of the event? Why did Jesus need to ascend? Now, now, I'm not going to answer all of those questions because, frankly, we do not have time.

And I also don't know how to answer them all. So I'm just going to answer some of it. I wonder if the ambivalence that we find in the Gospels and even from John Wesley. I wonder if it doesn't just stem from the same feeling of like, how exactly are we to understand this? And can we.

So let's look at the account. In Luke, Jesus proclaims that everything that was written about him has been fulfilled. And he opens the disciples minds to understand the Scriptures. And then he leads them out as far as Bethany and he lifts his hands and he blesses them. And then in verse 51 he says while he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven.

And the disciples are said to worship him and they return to Jerusalem. But that's literally it, like that's the end of Luke. Jesus withdraws from them and he goes to heaven. It's just poof, he's gone. And then the account in Acts, it's a little different.

For one, in Luke, Jesus ascends the day after the resurrection, but in Acts he ascends after walking the earth in his resurrected body for 40 days. So you know, there's a discrepancy there. But in Luke we don't really hear much from the disciples. They're kind of just mute, I guess. This doesn't happen in Luke necessarily, but in Mark.

The disciples I think are portrayed as kind of dumb. So I always call them the Duh ciples because Jesus will be like, I've already said this. And they're like, but we don't understand.

So in Luke we don't really get much from them. But in Acts they actually have a lot of questions, like, you know, the obvious one, like when are you coming back? And Jesus says, well that's not for you to know, but you'll receive the power of the Holy Spirit and that will enable you to do my work in this world. And then the author writes, when he said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while he was going, they were gazing upward toward heaven.

And suddenly two men in white robes stood by them and they said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. So rather than the worshipping and rejoicing that we get in Luke, the disciples seem to be just craning their necks, looking at the sky and they're just standing there in awe and disbelief. And frankly, I find that a lot more relatable because I think that's what I would be Doing like, oh, he's just leaving. But regardless of any of these differences, what we see in both accounts, the same two things happen.

Jesus ascends into heaven and the disciples are commissioned to be his witnesses in the world. And this is kind of a hinge event that ends Luke's Gospel, but it begins the Acts of the apostles. Jesus going away is both an ending and it is a beginning because in Jesus case, going up is not really going away. The two accounts work together and they give us this two dimensional understanding of this very mysterious event. Now the first Jesus ascension, it is a cosmic event, so it seems like it's just a guy floating up into the air.

But this has cosmic implications for every human being on earth. And the other dimension is the disciples commissioning. So Jesus is sending them out to tell everyone about what has been done. And this has practical implications for our everyday life here on earth. And so let's think about the cosmic aspect.

And this is my favorite because it's very woo woo. But Jesus ascension, so why does he need to go? Why does he need to ascend to heaven? I think wasn't dying and then being resurrected kind of enough. Do we really need the ascension?

Couldn't he be just walked around in his earthly body forever hung out? I would have appreciated that. But when we think about it, each part of Jesus life holds significant meaning for our salvation. And the ascension is not different. Everything that Jesus did in his life was for us and our salvation.

Everything he did was meant to bring us into closer relationship with God. So the purpose of the incarnation was, was to unite humanity to divinity, human nature to divine nature. And the crucifixion and resurrection served to defeat sin and death. And the ascension completes the story of salvation as Jesus ascends to heaven, which here heaven, it simply means presence of God. So as Jesus ascends into the presence of God in his human body and he's still marred with the scars of his very violent death, he is joined with the Godhead.

He joins with the Godhead. So just as divinity entered humanity in the incarnation, humanity enters divinity in the ascension. I just think that's so beautiful that humanity is eternally intertwined with the Godhead. There's a little piece of human beings in the Godhead. It literally blows my mind.

It's just so profoundly powerful and it's hopeful. And it's not just that God exists within us, that we exist within God. It's an incredible demonstration of God's solidarity with us. It is astonishing that our God so earnestly desires that kind of intimacy with us.

So when theologians imagine the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity, so God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, it kind of. It breaks your brain a little bit, because I don't know that we're really meant to wrap our brain around the Trinity. But when they imagine it, it's often described as a divine dance, that somehow these three are intertwined as one, and yet they remain distinct from one another. They're all dancing in a way that makes them look like they're one, and yet they're really still three, but they're still one, you know? And so as Jesus ascends, our humanity is taken up into the Godhead, and we are, in a sense, invited into this divine dance.

We are, in a very real way, one with God.

But there's more. Jesus ascension affirms that we as the church are also accepted into heaven or into the eternal presence of God with Jesus, just as it is written in the Ephesians, chapter 2. However, God is rich in mercy. He brought us to life with Christ while we were dead as a result of those things that we did wrong. He did this because of the great love that he has for us.

You are saved by God's grace. And God raised us up and seated us in the heavens with Christ Jesus. God did this to show future generations the greatness of his grace by the goodness that God has shown in Christ Jesus. So, in short, the ascension is what makes heaven possible for us.

So we have the birth, the life, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension, and all of those things equal our salvation. And maybe that's what Jesus meant when Jesus said, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you with me so that you may also be where I am.

So with Jesus gone, and remember, he's not really gone. He's always present to us. And he even makes appearances throughout the Bible. You know, like to Paul, just really important spoiler if you've not read that.

What are the disciples to do with Jesus? Not here anymore. What. What are we to do? Jesus ascension may be the end of Luke's gospel, and it is the end of his life on earth, but it is also the beginning of the story of the church.

And as we well know, salvation is not just our hope for eternal life after our earthly death. There are plenty of traditions that are craning their necks, and the only hope they have is this pie in the sky. And none of all of this matters. But that's not our tradition. Our tradition believes that heaven is very much present to us now.

Salvation is not just restricted to the spiritual or even the future. It is a very real and present thing to us. And this is why in Jesus ascension, he commissions disciples to be his witnesses here on earth, and why the men in white robes appear and they're like, hey, why are you standing just looking up at the sky? Because we're called to do more than just stare at the sky.

As Jesus earthly life ends, our work begins. Plenty of people here and now need to be saved from addiction and poverty and oppression and persecution. Systems are broken. War is rampant. And we cannot forget that our salvation is not just personal.

It's not just that Jesus died for me, right? Our salvation is communal, and the ascension challenges us to bring heaven to earth. That is to live Jesus values in our world every single day. On this day, we are called to rise up. Not to escape the crises on earth, but to dedicate ourselves to a vision and mission that is larger than ourselves and our individual communities.

Our mission is here, here. The hope is here. Our mission is to heal and to embrace and to welcome and to love. Just as the Lord's Prayer says, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We're not waiting.

We're going to do it now. And since we are one with God and truly one, it makes perfect sense that we are called to be a continuing presence of Christ in the world. Our work on earth is an extension of the divine dance.

We are inextricably caught up in this dance, and we are commissioned to invite others into its loving embrace.

And wrapped in the arms of an ever present, abundantly loving God, we are assured that, yes, right here, right now, can be the day of transformation and fulfillment. And right here, right now, we can live into the promises of heaven. We don't have to wait. And so, my friends, perhaps I've not answered every question about the Ascension. After all, I am not God.

But the most important question remains. Shall we dance?

In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, all of God's people said amen. All right, let us pray.