Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter May 21, 2023

Acts 1:6-14+Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36+1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11+John 17:1-11

There are some cheeky angels in the writings of Luke. On the morning of the resurrection, two men in white (aka angels) say to the women who have come to anoint the body, “‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen” (Luke 24:5). On the day of the Ascension forty days later, two more men in white – or maybe they are the same ones – say to the dumbfounded disciples, “‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards 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’” (Acts 1:11).

Of course the women were looking for Jesus at the tomb where they had watched his dead body being placed on Good Friday. And hey, angels, in case you hadn’t noticed, our friend just rose up into the clouds. Of course we are looking up with our mouths hanging open. We’re not stupid, you know. Silly angels.

Unless you are fairly well-versed in the New Testament, you may forget that the gospel we attribute to Luke the Physician was written by the same Luke who wrote the book we know as the Acts of the Apostles. I mean, you would think that the compilers of the New Testament would have put them together, but they are actually different categories of writing. Luke is one of the four gospels, the four accounts we have about the life of Jesus. The order in which they appear in our contemporary bibles is the order of the Jerome Tradition. St. Jerome was a 4th -  5th century priest who translated the bible into Latin, what we call the Vulgate. He believed, based on what many of the early church Fathers believed, that Matthew was written first followed by Mark, Luke, and John. (N.B. I am more of the Markan priority school of thought, but I will save that for another day.) So, if these gospels were put into the Jerome bible in that order, then Luke and Acts can’t appear sequentially. Acts is not a gospel account; it is an account of the earliest days of the church of which Luke was an eyewitness, at least in part, as a companion of Paul.

The gospel of Luke ends with the Ascension, with Jesus being carried up into heaven and the disciples returning to Jerusalem where they spent their time in the temple praying and praising God. Acts opens with Luke’s greeting to Theophilus (Loved of God), the same dedication he makes in his gospel. We don’t know if Theophilus was an actual person or simply a vehicle Luke uses as one to address his recollections of events.  Luke does a quick recap of the life of Jesus here, and then he gives a lengthier description of the Ascension.

The Church celebrates the Ascension, a major feast, on the 40th day after Easter, with Pentecost, another major feast, following ten days later. Luke has Jesus instructing the disciples to stay in the city (meaning Jerusalem) until “they have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). So, for ten days, there they are, in the temple, doing their thing.

It doesn’t sound like long to wait, right? Those of us on this side of things know what’s going to happen on Pentecost. These disciples do not. They had six weeks of at least a few experiences of the risen Lord, and now he is gone.

Well, it isn’t like he didn’t warn them. In our reading from John (which, by the way, is indisputably the latest gospel to be written), Jesus is coming to the end of his farewell discourse, and he says, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you” (John 17:11). Jesus is coming, or going, to God, and the disciples are left here to carry on. If I were one of them, I would be looking around asking, “What are we supposed to do now?” And they do exactly what he said: they stayed in Jerusalem, and I imagine they were prepared to stay for as long as it took.

We live in something like that time between Ascension and Pentecost. Jesus is not where we can physically see him. And he has not yet reappeared in glory, making real the reign of God that is promised. We have been waiting a bit longer than the ten days those disciples waited, right? But we know that the Holy Spirit blew through the people, empowering them to go into the world. This little, insignificant band of misfits changed the course of history.

We may not be able to see and touch Jesus, the nail holes in his hands or the spear wound in his side, but we see and hear and touch Jesus in the broken bread and wine we bless at this table, in our encounters with each other. We are in the world, just like those disciples, and it’s the only place we have to live as followers of Jesus, to follow his way of love, and to love and serve our neighbor. And we all know that the definition of “neighbor” is whomever is right in front of us.

The disciples gave us the model to follow. Pray, praise, and, empowered by the Spirit, go into the world to proclaim the Good News.           

I don’t know when Jesus is coming again. I don’t know when God’s reign will be fulfilled. All I can do is the part I have been given, to love God and love my neighbor and all y’all, and to do what I can to make this world more the way God wants it to be. And I know God is with us, because Jesus prayed, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:11).  We are one, with God and with each other. Thanks be to God.