Year B
Acts 1:1-11
Psalm 47
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53

Jesus said…  I am sending you…  what my Father promised…  you will be clothed with power from on high when the Holy Spirit comes upon you…  and you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem…  but to the ends of the earth…   and lifting up his hands…  he blessed them…  and he continued to bless them…  he didn’t stop blessing them…  even as he was carried up into heaven…  even as he blesses us…  and those two men in white robes stood by them…  and asked…  Men of Galilee…  men who have been with Jesus all along…  why do you stand looking up toward heaven…  the Redeemer who has left you…  will return as the Sustainer…  but perhaps it was because…  even though Jesus said he would be with them always…  they felt as though Jesus was abandoning them…

Many of us have our own stories about feeling abandoned…  and sometimes the origins of those stories aren’t self-evident…  some of them take years of unpacking…  when I was maybe about nine years old…  when my parents decided we didn’t need a babysitter anymore…  they would go out on Saturday night…  and my brother and I would head off to bed at maybe 10:00… Steven’s head would hit the pillow…   and he’d be out like a light…  me…  not so much…  I was restless…  I had this vague –– you couldn’t put words to it –– feeling…  that they wouldn’t come home…  that something terrible would happen…  and I’d wait by the window…  and watch…  and when I’d see a car turn the corner…  and the headlights turn into our driveway…  I’d jump into bed…  feel relieved as I heard keys in the door…  and their hushed voices as they came upstairs and got ready for bed…  and it was then that I experienced that all was right with the world…  it was then that I could fall asleep…

There was no rational basis for me to behave this way…  but there may have been an irrational one…  the workings of our hearts and minds are so subtle…  in therapy years later…  I related these feelings and behaviors…  this distrust that all would be well… to the circumstances of my birth…  because when I was born two months prematurely…  I weighed little more than three pounds…  and so for about two months I remained in hospital…  in an incubator… and regardless of how often my parents came…  my raw unfiltered experience…   was that I had been abandoned… that the physical connection I had to my mother had been disrupted…  and now… during the weeks before I left hospital…  I was without them more than I was with them… 

But as I worked through some of these issues…  I began to understand that my parents had always been with me…  in the genetic coding they passed on to me…  in their felt prayers when they were at home…  and later on in the values they instilled in me…  in the unconditional love they poured out on me…  in the ways they held me accountable… and none of those things could ever be taken away from me…

Benjamin Dueholm…  pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Dallas, Texas writes…  the Feast of the Ascension commemorates a striking and emotionally complicated moment…  when the followers of Jesus experience his absence and presence in a new way…  Jesus was here…  he was taken or lifted up…  and he was gone… ] and the focus of the story seems to be much more on the hopes and expectations of the disciples themselves…  is this… finally… the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel…   they ask in today’s Acts version of this story…  “Well, no…”  the disciples are to go to Jerusalem and await the coming of the Holy Spirit… when they will be clothed with power from on high…  and rather than patiently waiting for Jesus to come back and finish that Messianic task…   they are to be his witnesses…  and the Gospel account specifies that this witness is to include the proclamation of repentance and forgiveness of sins… 

Since 2007…  Marvel Studios has produced and released twenty-three superhero films…  and fifteen more are in various stages of development…  it’s the most lucrative film franchise of all time…  and has grossed over 22.5 billion dollars at the worldwide box office…  and it seems to me that these films do several things…  they give voice to the tension between good and evil in the world…  and when we see good triumph over evil we believe God’s will is being done…  but they also make superheroes…  who possess various kinds of super powers…  responsible for healing ourselves and our society…   because if Superman…  or Batman…  or Iron Man…  or Spiderman…  or the Hulk…  or the Black Panther…  speaks truth to power…  and fights crime and corruption…  and stands up for the marginalized…  stands up for the rights of all people…  if they proclaim the need to turn from destructive ways…  if they hold all of us to a higher standard…  if they hold evildoers accountable…  ] well then…  we don’t have to…  and it becomes easier for us to allow the experience of these fantasies to inform our sins of omission… however irrational they may turn out to be…   and so we ask…  how have we made Jesus our super-superhero…  so we can sit back…  and do nothing… 

St. John Chrysostom… the 4th Century Archbishop of Constantinople… said… those whom we love… and lose… are no longer where they were before… they are now… wherever we are…  this is true when a loved one dies…  but it’s also true about Jesus’ ascension…  because we who are passing through this earth… who sometimes act like abandoned orphans…  are anything but… though our baptisms…  we too have ascended with Jesus… we too have been lifted up… to glory and eternal life…  

ELCA Pastor Bradley Schmeling wrote: maybe the Ascension teaches us to trust these moments… these spaces between experiences… as the place where new history is possible… if we can let ourselves be suspended in that moment… maybe even let our mouths fall open for a moment in astounded disbelief… we may find ourselves beginning again… changed and maybe more mature… there are times when Christ has to leave us so that we figure out how to carry the light ourselves… we need his absence to discover the power of Easter life within us… there is both loss and power… death and resurrection… in this mysterious realization that incarnation includes us…

And Assisting Bp. Skip Adams said at Thursday’s Ascension Day service…  the Ascension manifests the movement all of us are always a part of…  and that is the movement from death into life…  even a cursory hearing of today’s news events gives us glaring pictures of death…   acts of non-love of the highest order…  we discover betrayal…   broken relationships…  violence…  the language of hatred…  separation…   and drawing lines in the sand…  war…   genocide…   and the degradation of the beauty of mother earth…  in our baptismal vows we promise to do everything in our power to work against anything that corrupts…   holds captive…   and destroys God’s people…   God’s earth…  everything that conspires against God’s love for all as God’s desire to set us free…

Yet… yet… on this same earth… we discover life… beauty… re-creation… possibility… hope… healing… love… restoration… justice… peace… and all things being made new…  we think of front line health care workers and support staff… scientists developing vaccines… miniature helicopters flying on Mars…  dam removals [on the Elwha River] setting free salmon runs for the first time in a hundred years…  and those risking everything to dismantle the structures of racism…  it is the ongoing presence of God who promises to restore the earth… and establish his reign of love through us…  

Sometimes all we want…  is a superhero to set things right…  but we need to hold each other up…  we need to look in mirrors…  and see the superheroes we are… remember that God never has and never will abandon us…  and claim the power from on high that has been made available to us too…  as we do God’s work…  with our hands…