Luke 24:44-53

Alleluia! Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia!

A few months ago, a group of us from Gloria Dei on a trip to Egypt, rose long before the sunrise to be in ascent as the rays of sun made the Valley of the Kings glow in glorious morning light.

If you’ve never been in a hot air balloon, there’s a roar of the flame, maybe a blast of heat, which captures your attention. You wonder what it will take to get this balloon and basket of twenty people up in the air, and then you realize you already are. The takeoff is silent, no one holding a rope while the heated air muscles its way out of gravity’s hold, no g forces pushing you back in a seat as you barrel down a runway, no gulp as you might when looking over the edge of a cliff. Just this slow ascent that even the most nervous among us described as surprisingly NOT scary; but stunningly beautiful.

Of course, who would have thought we’d run into him:

Image on the screen of a hot air balloon shaped like Jesus.

Just kidding. We didn’t see a Jesus hot air balloon in Egypt. It’s just my favorite Ascension Day photograph.

Image on the screen of a hot air balloon shaped like Jesus floating into a Hubble Space Telescope Picture.

We don’t always know what to do with this story. It’s embarrassingly premodern. We know heaven isn’t just on the other side of that cloud that “took him out of sight.” If we took it literally, we would expect to catch this photo from the Hubble telescope.

At a literary level, it does answer a logical question. If Jesus was raised from the dead, why aren’t we still running into him in locked buildings or at the lake when fish is on the grill? The Ascension answers that question, but who goes to the Bible to answer logical or scientific questions?

Luther himself said that this story is no good as history, unless its for the sake of showing how Jesus ends up on the right hand of God, ruling over all history, just like in the story of Daniel, where one like a human is next to God.[1]

In the 21^st century, however, we’re squeamish about the throne room scene. We understand the impacts of rulers who build golden palaces, whose minions set up golden statues. As billions on the planet groan from the impacts of runaway global capitalism, we’re ready to throw domination and endless expansion out of the balloon’s basket; metaphors like upward mobility, pinnacles of success, rising prospects, ascendant races, apex predators, being the greatest—all turn out to be the language of one giant pyramid scheme that leaves most everyone ripped off, particularly the one body that is forced to fund it all: Mother Earth.

I think it’s the directionality that has bothered Lutherans. Theologically, we’re much happier with the stories that proclaim God’s grace coming down toward us, not stories that draw us upward–higher, holier, better, as if our determination to be morally good will ensure our ascent into heaven. Those kind of stories confirming the prevailing views of Christianity that so many have:

God is up there and is more meticulous with lists than Santa Claus.

Some get there; those who accept, who open their hearts for Jesus.

But a lot don’t, like everyone in different religions or that voted for the other party.

Spirit is good. Bodies are bad, or, at least, problematic and kind of dangerous because of their desires which are always on the edge of being out of control.

Heaven is elsewhere.

Being saved is getting out of this mess.

And increasingly in this country:

America ascended to greatness because its exceptional, a gift from God to white people because they earned it and were strong enough to take it.

And because the world will come to a fiery end anyway in God’s righteous judgment, who cares about the next generation. Take what you can now. God wants you to have it.

Maybe by now, you’re saying, “Now wait a minute, pastor, enough hot air. Weren’t you listening to the Prayer of the Day?

Almighty God, your blessed Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things…that he might fill all things. In the book of Acts, in the Ascension story, there are two figures in white robes that say, “Why are you standing there looking up?” Turns out the Ascension is the counternarrative to our ascending paradigms. It didn’t turn the followers of Jesus away from life but sent them back into it.[2]

In that way, you can say that Jesus’ ascension was a real historical experience, not necessarily on outside Jerusalem, but in their collective hearts, a shared enchantment, an outsider might even call it a mass hallucination if it didn’t have such an impact on the real history of the world. Where did Jesus go? He opened their minds to God’s presence and activity from the beginning to the present. He went into their imagination; becoming part of their deepest yearnings and most hopeful dreams; soaking into their images and metaphors; into symbols that pulsed with transformative power—the simplest things, like water, could do things like make you new, remove millennia of accumulated evil grime, provide you a community, an identity, a fresh start; they could feed your deepest hunger and turn out to be enough. And from there grace upon grace, love upon love, overflowed into a movement that did spread to the ends of the earth, created art, and architecture, it built hospitals and retreat centers, leaving behind a trail of sacred healing and visions of equality that founded movements, even nations, was built into civic infrastructure that dared to benefit the common good.[3]

It even takes the metaphors of royalty and turns them. When we sing Crown him with Many Crowns at the end of the service, don’t think of it as confirming the powers that be, but as a surprising revelation about who will end up ineffably sublime–the ones that are still being crucified by the powers that be; the ones wounded and set aside; the things that are hardly noticed but have cosmic significance, that glow with a glory that cannot be owned or hoarded, only held in awe and wonder.

At synod assembly yesterday, where a bishop, a new ruler, was elected, the following prayer was read just before we announced the name of the bishop elect. It was, as if, we wanted to make sure the new bishop was set in a wide circle or glory, not elevated above the spheres. We prayed in gratitude that there are newts in this world:

Because, c’mon, wouldn’t it be less of a cool world if there were no newts? And tree frogs? And pipits and damselflies? And kindergarten kids on rainy days with every color and style of rubber rain boot you can imagine? And Van Morrison? And parrots and herons? And teachers who look at kids and see that they have not slept right because their gramma just died and the teacher gives the kid an extra two days to turn in the paper but doesn’t make a big deal out of it? And priests who don’t give you advice but just listen? And cheese sandwiches and tea when you have walked for five miles in the wet woods up and down through ravines and thickets and meadows and copses and tangles and you stop for a late lunch, and isn’t that the best thing you ever ate in your life and whoever invented hot tea with honey is a saint? And mockingbirds and newspapers and godparents and ale? And ponytails and pigtails and crew cuts, and turquoise earrings worn by women with piercing laser eyes so bright that they ought to have to get permits for their use in the daytime? And footballs and teenagers and rivers roaring with snowmelt? Am I right? Do we ever stop and pray enough for the wealth of small things that are not small at all? We do not. But we do now. And so: amen.[4]

Alleluia! Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia!

[1] WA 37:395, as quoted by Rev. Aaron Moldenhauer in The Reformers on the Ascension.

https://lutheranreformation.org/theology/the-reformers-on-the-ascension/#_ftn2 May 25, 2017.

 

[2] ELW Prayer of the Day for Ascension: Almighty God, your blessed Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things. Mercifully give us faith to trust that, as he promised, he abides with us on earth to the end of time, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

[3] Walter Wink, The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of Man, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002, pg. 149-161

[4] Prayer of Gratitude that There Are Newts in This World, Brian Doyle, A Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebration of the Miracle and Muddle of the Ordinary, Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2022, pg 120-121.