A Gaze Interrupted!

Text:  Acts 1:6-14

Theme:  "A Gaze Interrupted"

7th Sunday of Easter

June 1, 2014

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

⁶ Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

⁷ He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

⁹ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

¹⁰ They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ¹¹ “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

¹² Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk^[a] from the city. ¹³ When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. ¹⁴ They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

The newspapers of last Thursday made no mention of it -- and I checked them while grabbing lunch at Starbucks:  the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Record Chronicle.  As best I was able to detect, there was no comment offered on social media.  For all intents and purposes, the day -- which used to be a festival on the Christian calendar -- was off the radar screen.

I speak of the Ascension -- the feast of the Ascension of our Lord.  It marks the occasion, forty days after rising from death, that the Lord Jesus withdrew His bodily presence from earth.  They couldn't see Him anymore.   "He ascended into heaven," as we've confessed it for years in The Apostles' Creed. 

What was "trending" on Ascension Day this year was more fallout from the stabbings and shootings in California.  Mitigating that somewhat was word of the death of the poet, Maya Angelou.  Much was said,  positively, about her life and work -- and rightly so.  She was, for instance, invited to speak at a presidential inauguration.  In 1993, for Mr. Clinton's swearing in, she recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning.

Here's a snippet:

Here on the pulse of this new day 
You may have the grace to look up and out 
And into your sister's eyes, into 
Your brother's face, your country 
And say simply 
Very simply 
With hope 
Good morning.

"Grace to look up and out," she says.  The disciples of  the Lord -- the "twelve", as they've been called -- certainly experienced that grace of looking up, and it was not at an inauguration but at the ascension.  Luke reports that "They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going."

 Just minutes prior to this, they weren't gazing up at all.  With the death and resurrection of Jesus forty days or so in the rearview mirror, they had slipped back into political mode.  It's very easy to  do -- even in churchs. They had a question for him that was fraught with political significance.  "Lord, are you at this time going to overthrow Obamacare?" Whoops!  No, that wasn't it. (I was just trying to see if you were listening!)   It was this:  "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" Modern questions are similar:   "Lord, are you at this time going to bring America back from the brink of disaster?"  "Lord, at this time are you going to throw the nasty ones out of Washington and give the American workforce a living wage?" 

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  They were as political then as we are now -- and vice-versa.  They had -- and we have! -- "hotbutton" issues.  Then just as now, they sought to recruit Jesus and have Him endorse and do what THEY wanted done.

Jesus, as is His way, shifted their attention.  He didn't scratch where they itched.  He said:  "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority." 

Now -- wait for it! -- here comes the shift:  "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

That power, eventually, made it all the way to the new world, to America, to Texas, to Denton, to First Presbyterian Church.  We are here because of the Holy Spirit.  What we are to do is be a witness. 

While all of that was sinking in, He ascended into heaven.  They looked up to the sky;  they gazed intently upon him.  With eyes fixed on Jesus who was going up, up, and away, they didn't notice that two men dressed in white had joined them.  It sounds suspiciously angelic!

The men in white interrupted their gazing.  They had a question of their own:  "Men of Galilee, why do you stand here gazing into the sky?  This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way that you have seen him go."

After that, our reading reports, they returned to Jerusalem.  They didn't stay around for some conversation in the narthex before heading out for Sunday brunch.  They, together, went to the room at Jerusalem where they were staying.  And Luke says that they were "constantly in prayer." 

We did some of that constant praying yesterday at the presbytery meeting at First Presbyterian in Dallas.  We prayed for new inquirers and candidates to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. We prayed in thanksgiving for years of service rendered.  We prayed for those honorably retired. We prayed for the multitude of ways the church of Jesus Christ does its thing in our own day.  We prayed over the food we were about to receive -- and it was quite good:  a boxed lunch from Central Market.

Yes, those first disciples worshipped and prayed and waited. Then, added to all that, was the gift of the Holy Spirit and the power to witness to Jesus.  What you see emerging in the Book of Acts is a theological instagram, a snapshot of the church:  they worshipped, prayed, and, empowered by the Holy Spirit, they gave witness.  They didn't endorse candidates.   They shared, to the ends of the earth, that amazing grace.

As I mentioned earlier, the press didn't give Ascension Day any coverage.  But we've given  it coverage today. 

You may be wondering:  what's the moral of the story?  What is the benefit of the  Lord's ascension into heaven? What's the good stuff? Fortunately, our Heidelberg Catechism asks precisely that question.  More specifically, we read:  "What benefit do we receive from Christ's ascension into heaven?"

The catechism's answer goes like this: 

First, that he is our Advocate in the presence of his Father in heaven.  Second, that we have our flesh in heaven as a sure pledge that he, as the Head, will also take us, his members, up to Himself.  Third, that he sends His Spirit...by whose power we seek what is above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God, and not things on earth.

With all those benefits, it's a good thing their gazing into heaven was interrupted! They might still be straining their necks!

 "On Christ's ascension I now build the hope mine ascension," said the hymn-writer nearly four hundred years ago.   Why is there hope?  Because You've got a friend  -- and Advocate! -- in high places!

Amen.