Sermon for Seventh Easter (Ascension)

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on May 9, 2016
Scripture: Acts 1:1-11

This past Friday, midway through my Stay-cation week, Sarah, Emily, and I headed out to Reading for the graduation ceremony of Reading Area Community College. Emily’s biological father, Kerry, was graduating with an Associates in Accounting and we were there to celebrate with him. So there we were, in the hustle and bustle of a whole slew of excited people ready to embark on the next chapter of their lives and all that goes with it. Celebration, yes, but also trepidation. Oh my God, now what?

Back in 1999, the band Semisonic released their one and only hit song: Closing Time. Written by the band’s singer about the experience of becoming a father, the song speaks to that reality with the odd metaphor of people in a bar looking for hook ups.

Closing time
Time for you to go out to the places you will be from.
Closing time
This room won't be open 'til your brothers or you sisters come.
So gather up your jackets, and move it to the exits
I hope you have found a friend.
Closing time.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

That last line has always stuck with me ever since I first heard the song over 16 years ago now. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. So it is with every child born into the world, for both themselves and their parents. So it was with the graduates on Friday. So it will be for our graduates here (looking at you Anna, Peeps, and Nate.) And so it was for the disciples on the mount of the Ascension.

There’s always a shock when that moment of transition comes. Oh my God, now what? I have to face the world. What I was, the world I lived in before, no longer exists. I can’t go back. Things have changed. We may respond to that change with disbelief or surprise, but it has come regardless of our feelings. And so it was with those disciples. They’ve had a lot of moments like this lately. They didn’t see the crucifixion coming. Jesus told them, but they didn’t believe him until it happened. They didn’t see the resurrection coming. Jesus told them, but they didn’t believe him even after it happened. Now the moment of ascension has come and they didn’t believe this would happen either. And yet it has. Time for the Church to grow up and face this new reality.

Of course, that’s precisely what happens in those moments. You have to grow up. You have to face the future. The old beginning is gone and now you are in the new.

And that is not an easy thing to face.

A prime example of that is our election this year. “Make America Great Again” is fundamentally a call back to a mythical past where everything was better, an effort to return to an old beginning that is now lost to time. The others in the race are not so different.
Although not an overt part of her platform, it is clear that part of Hillary’s appeal is the popularity of her husband’s time as president. Let’s go back to that. Or Jeb when he was in the race; same thing. Let’s go back to when my brother or father was President. But we can’t do that. And no matter how grandiose the promises, whoever next occupies the White House will face new challenges and new opportunities that are not from the past, but from our future. We have to grow up, whether we like it or not.

And as much as we might tease those who stare up into the sky at Jesus as he floats away, we are not so different now in the Church. All too often we’re trying to go back to the past, back to some halcyon time when pews were full and no one worried about the budget. You know the biggest sin of that mindset is how we want to go back to a time when we can be lazy. When we don’t have to do anything to make the Church work. People just come to us and we don’t have to do anything except show up on Sunday morning, hear an inspiring message, and go home again.

That was never what the Church was meant to be. And if we’re expecting that to come about again, I think God is going to disappoint us. Those apostles on the mount of Ascension did not fall into a time of quiet rest and leisure. No, they went from there to Pentecost, when God both literally and figuratively set them on fire for the Gospel. A fire that compelled them to GO, out there into the world. They had to grow up and do what God had called them to do and be who God had called them to be.

You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

Back to that song again. But this is where we are now. We are so like those on the mount of Ascension. The world has changed and it’s not going back to what it was before. We are a Church that struggles with empty pews and small budgets. And we are a Church in a world increasingly filled with hate, mistrust, prejudice, and fear. We are a Church in a world filled with people hungry for the Gospel and for a decent meal. We are a Church in a world filled with people without homes, the sick without medicine, children without parents, and the poor without help. We are a Church in a world lost in the midst of its new beginning.

In many ways, this new reality is nothing new at all. These things have always been true, whether we remember them as such or not. Christ came into a world that didn’t look so different, filled with hungry and desperate people, all filled with fear and trepidation. He went to a cross and rose again for a world so plagued. And he calls us to take his promise of grace, mercy, and peace into this generation.

That’s the new reality. We cannot stay on the mountaintop and expect God to spoon-feed us religion. Our religion is out there, in a broken world that needs us.

Time to grow up, my friends. Time to grow up and get to work. Amen.