He Ascended Into Heaven, a sermon based on Psalm 77 and Acts 1, preached on Ascension Sunday, May 21, 2023

As I said before, today is Ascension Sunday, which is a special holiday that our church recognizes every year. However, Ascension Sunday and Pentecost, which is next Sunday, are holidays not nearly as popular as Christmas or Easter. No one makes a special effort to attend church on Ascension Sunday, while there are those who attend only on Christmas and Easter. We call them CEO’s, “Christmas and Easter Only,” but it’s not the same on Ascension Sunday. It’s not that kind of a day at First Presbyterian Church. It’s one of the holy days we don’t think too much about. No one puts up a tree for Ascension Sunday. There are Easter-egg shaped Reese’s Cups, but nothing like that for Ascension Sunday. Still, today is a significant day that reminds us of a significant promise that God makes to us. Today, we remember that “He ascended into heaven,” a phrase we stand and affirm nearly every Sunday in the Apostles’ Creed, maybe without thinking too much about it. “He ascended into heaven,” we say, but what does that mean? “He ascended into heaven,” while His disciples were left standing there looking up. They watched as His body lifted off the ground, and they were still standing there staring into the heavens even after He was gone from their sight. I don’t think about this supernatural event described in our second Scripture lesson all that often, but it matters. Maybe none of us spends as much time thinking about His ascension as His birth at Christmas or His Resurrection at Easter, yet saying, “He ascended into heaven” matters for us, especially as we think about the moment when we will leave this earth, following Him to the place where He has gone already. He ascended into heaven, which is different from being raised from the dead. While we all know that Jesus was raised from the dead, celebrating the miracle of resurrection every Easter, more than one person in the Bible died and was brought back to life, to die again years later. Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead, had a second funeral. The same is true of Dorcas, whom Peter raised from the dead in the book of Acts. On the other hand, Jesus ascended into heaven. There is no headstone with His name on it. Where does His body lie? It was never buried. No one made the call to Mayes Ward Dobbins to take His remains. He ascended into heaven. Up He went. He died on the cross, rose from the grave, and ascended into heaven, which is where we are going too. That He went from here to there is the assurance that we will follow where He leads. On this Ascension Sunday, what I want you to hear is that just as Moses led the people right through the sea, God is in the business of taking us from one shore to the other, from this earth to the New Heaven and New Earth. Just as He took the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land, He will lead us by the hand from this place to that Golden Shore, but did you hear how they were acting while they walked from one side of the sea to the other in our first Scripture lesson? Did you hear it? When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid. The very deep trembled. The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered; your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lit up the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea, your path through the mighty waters. Yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. Like a flock of what, I wonder? If there was that much thunder and rain, I imagine that Moses and Aaron led those people through the sea like a flock of wet and terrified sheep, who were all trembling and shaking from one side of the sea to the other. Think of them and remember that there is a divine promise to celebrate on Ascension Sunday and a human limitation to pay attention to. Today, we remember the divine promise that just as He ascended into heaven, and just as He sits at the right hand of the Father in the Kingdom of Heaven, so we will be there with Him for He will lead us from here to there. There’s also a human limitation: It’s hard for us to follow because following Him requires risk, trust, and change. We don’t like change. In fact, I hate it. While Moses and Aaron led the people like a flock of wet sheep from one side of the sea to the other, and it took hook, crook, and cattle prod to get them to move, I can imagine Hhhhhim leading us from this life that I love to that Golden Shore as looking something like me taking our dog, Junebug, across the railroad tracks. She’s so terrified of railroad tracks that we must pick her up and carry her over, and so I imagine that Jesus will have to carry me from here to there, so terrified am I at the thought of death. I don’t want to go. I don’t want anyone to go. Worse than the thought of my own passing is the thought of letting people I love go. Anything we can do to have more time with our loved ones we do, though by faith we believe that following Him to Heaven might solicit in us even more hope than following Moses and Aaron from one side of a sea to the other. It’s going to be good on the other side. That’s the promise. The way C.S. Lewis said it, we are “like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” The sea shore is beyond our imagination, so we are tempted to continue with our mud pies, which we know, which we are comfortable with, but God has invited us to something better. Again and again, we come face to face with the promise of something better and the fear of letting go of what we have. Preschool graduation was last week. I wonder how many students would stay in our preschool forever if they could. They’ve learned their way around our church. They’ve walked through the halls. They know their teachers. They get plenty of snacks. Life is good in preschool. The thought of going from preschool to elementary school is a little scary, even though their teachers and their parents tell them how great it’s going to be. One graduate received a note in her little lunch box on her last day of First Presbyterian Church preschool from her mother. Her teacher read it to her, and then her teacher told me what it said. It said, “Dear Kate, the next time I write a note to you and put it in your lunch box, you’ll be in the cafeteria at Westside Elementary School.” Think about that. How many kids have trouble going from what they know to what they don’t know? How many adults have trouble going from what they know to what they don’t know? How many of us hold too tightly to the right now, while God promises us so much more? We must get better at letting go, lest we get stuck where we no longer belong. Growing up, one of my favorite books was Where the Red Fern Grows. A farm boy named Billy wants two good hounds to trap racoons, but his father can’t afford any, so Billy works hard and eventually saves enough money to order these two dogs, brother and sister, one named Old Dan and the other Little Ann. He trains these two hounds to tree racoons, which is the most exciting way to do it, though his grandfather taught him another way to catch racoons. To catch a racoon in a trap, all you have to do is drill a little hole in a log by a water source. At the bottom of the hole you drilled, place something shiny: mica or a piece of an old mirror. The racoon will reach his hand down into the hole, forming a fist around the shiny thing. Once his fist is formed, he can’t get his hand back out. All he must do to be free is let go of the shiny thing, while the racoon would rather hold on than let go and be set free. There is so much more than making mud pies in a back alleyway. There is so much more out there to learn beyond the walls of our preschool. There is so much that God has promised, but to follow Him to that further shore, we must push off from this one, let go of what we have now, be led through the parted sea, or walk the valley of the shadow of death. He ascended into heaven and will lead us there to be with Him, but listen to what the disciples did: As they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” This is such a funny image, the disciples standing around staring up into heaven, and so they are addressed with such a strange question. Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? That’s what the two men in robes asked them, and my translation of their question is: Why are you looking for Jesus in the place where He no longer is? They are still clinging to what they remember, and I get it. I think about some of the saints of this church who have gone on ahead of us. Do you remember Helen Jones? Helen Jones used to park her little red car right outside the glass front doors of our church. She would block my bike rack and park, just right out there. Once, the deacon holding the door told her she couldn’t park there. She threw him her keys and said, “You move it.” I stand and look at the place her car once was, but that’s not where she is now. Likewise, today, many of us look around this place, and everywhere you look, Flora Speed once was. Someone said that Dr. Jim Speed was the pastor here from 1972-1999, but he was married to Mother Theresa. She served food at Wednesday Night Supper. She was one of those who got Club 3:30, our afterschool program, started. She welcomed so many of us into this church. When we moved back here, she invited us over, and more than once, she fed my family and me on her back porch. She was a fixture here, but don’t look for her in these halls any longer. She is not here. For He ascended into heaven, and we all will follow Him there in our own time. Crossing that great sea, we will leave this place for a New Heaven and a New Earth, where all those who have gone on before will be waiting on that Golden Shore. Do not cling too tightly to this world. Do not cling so tightly to what is that you miss out on what will be. For He ascended into heaven, and we will follow Him there. Halleluiah. Amen.