Ascension or Memorial, May 24, 2009

Matthew 28:16-20
Acts 1: 1-11

Show of hands this morning:
How many of us believe there is a God?
How many believe Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior?
Regardless of how, do you believe in the miracles, that he fed 5000 with loaves & fishes?
That people believed and were healed of leprosy, of being deaf, or lame?
We have evidence he suffered and died on the Cross and being dead was buried.
How many believe the tomb was empty on Easter morning?
So having acknowledged all that, how many believe Jesus stepped onto a cloud and ascended?
The Gospel affirms that among the 12 Disciples, some doubted.
They stood looking into heaven, wondering: What just happened?
And among the disciples, not even Peter asked Should we build a marker that will identify this mountain? For the point was not which mountaintop. The point was not the empty tomb. The point was not death or flying on a cloud. Faith is not a Memorial Society to a Dead Savior.
Quite simply, the point of ASCENSION is that he lives. The God who loved the world so much God gave God's only begotten child, the God who raised Jesus from Death to Life, demonstrated
that there is no longer a gulf between heaven and earth.
NOTHING Has ever, Could ever separate us from the Love of God, that is Christ, not even death... so even with our doubts we can never give up on one another.

As human creatures we seem to have limitless ideas and imagination, but a limited capacity to store information. Some of us have what we affectionately call “SENIOR MOMENTS” when we simply cannot seem to retrieve that name we know. At other times, we merge ideas and distill the basics we want to remember making sense by letting go what does not seem to serve. We know Jesus was born and lived and died and rose again, sitting at the right hand of God. SO facts like the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples for 40 days following Easter, often are lost on us. Ascension Day is the claim and assurance that although 2000 years and more have transpired, we know he cares and is close.

Karl Barth, the great theologian of the early half of the last Century described this time, the time between Easter's Resurrection and the day of Pentecost, as A SIGNIFICANT PAUSE, when we are commanded to WAIT and to PRAY. To a computerized, fiber-optic, push-button people, waiting is ONEROUS. Faith is not a Philosophy you can learn, or an accomplishment to be mastered. The commandment to WAIT & PRAY is a realization there are things outside our control. There is a spirit, a power, a maturity that cannot immediately be grasped, we need to wait, to pray, to reflect, to reconsider.

The wonderful part of Matthew's Commissioning is that the Disciples were commanded to GO, to Baptize and to Teach; not that Baptism was only for those who fully understood, not a graduation, but rather the starting point, for those that want to believe, and struggle with our unbeliefs and doubts. Ironically, Matthew does not Command that the disciples PREACH, not that we proselytize, but rather that we live our faith, as a community of caring.

Years ago, we had been teaching the 3rd Graders how to use the Bible, that there are two Parts Old and New, that there are 66 Books, and Chapters and verses so as to find your way. We gave to each of the children a Bible of their own, and that morning their teacher asked them to turn to the Book of Acts, to read. A moment later, one of the children spoke up saying, “I don't have the Book of Acts”. Imagining the child had not found the book, the Teacher listed off the books in order, and the child said, “But I do not have the Book of Acts”. Trying to get through this, the teacher called out the Page number, an d still the child protested, so the Teacher stopped teaching and went to see. Sure enough, in the binding, the publisher had all of the Old Testament, all the Gospels and Epistles, but somehow had missed including the Acts of the Apostles. Which makes one wonder: If we had the whole of the Old Testament, and the whole of the Gospels, the instruction and teaching of the Letters, but we were missing this narrative description transitioning from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, to explain how the Church came to be, how the Word of God was taken from a small group of twelve to all the world, would it matter? I think so, because what happens in the Acts of the Apostles, is that we shift from a small group who have first hand experience, to people sharing with one another their interpretations of life and their relationships of faith.

We have made a tragic mistake in this time of waiting. In our society we have become so jaded and offended by those who force their faith on others, that we imagine there is only one kind of EVANGELISM, knocking on doors to proselytize. We acquiesce that this church stands for this cause, and that church for that movement, rather than being a community of caring for each when in need.

Yet this week, we witnessed one example of faith, one circumstance of God's love, after another. Different from a Viewing or Visitation, we had an opportunity for all those family & friends who knew a young woman and her family to come to the Fellowship Hall for an Open House. In 3 hours over 600 adults and over 300 kids came, to share, to support, to be the Church community. Some brought cookies, some played basketball, others brought cookies, some drew pictures for her children, some reflected on the artwork she had created over a lifetime, others brought more cookies, some described her battles with Cancer, and how her prayers and her friends got her through the worst, and gave them hope. Others brought more cookies.

On Friday we celebrated a wedding. One of the joyful parts of this was that other than the couple, not a single wedding guest was familiar to us. Neither of their parents were still married to each other, but we listened and worked with them, so that the Groom could be escorted by his mother and his father, she could be escorted by her mother and grandmother. They needed the Church, they wanted a place for a wedding, and we were here for them. In the midst babies started crying and parents got up to leave in the midst of the wedding, and you all know what happened.

Saturday, we gathered at the home of the one who had died. And there were tears for our losses, but there were also laughter and remembrances, and interpretations of a lifetime that gave others hope. The husband who remembered their wedding in this same yard, and the adoption of their children. The nephew who remembered 79 bonfires. The friend who recalled going to treatment together, then allowing her to sit in the midst of a Lilac bush.

It would have seemed possible for the Disciples to have stayed a Memorial Society, who gathered to grieve the death and Empty Tomb, but their faith was raised up, they were called to something higher. They interpreted the events of their life, his teachings, their calling to give others faith.
SO when is the last time, you shared with someone from your faith?

This is also Memorial Day Weekend, a time when we have perhaps forgotten why we remember. We confuse this holiday at the beginning of summer, like a bookend with Labor Day as being a National Day off. A day to wait to picnic. We know that Memorial Day has something to do with death, so many of us make trips to the Cemetery. We know Memorial Day has something to do with Veterans, but we also have a Veterans' Day in November. I think the remembrance of this day was best summed up by President Lincoln in the Address at Gettysburg, we all remember the quote “Four Score and Seven Years ago”. The great irony is that what that speech described was “We have not come here to Dedicate, to consecrate, we cannot hallow the ground, because the brave men and women who struggled here consecrated the ground far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, to be dedicated here to their unfinished work, that they shall not have died in vain – that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.