Podcast: Heaven and Earth Meet in the Waters of Baptism

Jesus’ baptism was the central, but not only time, that heaven and earth met with extraordinary result.  This meeting of heaven and earth is what Jesus taught us to pray for when He said, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Heaven and earth will ultimately meet again finally and forever when all things are made new.  Because of the unique experience of Jesus’ baptism, our own baptisms become the meeting place of heaven and earth, too.

Here’s the link to the sermon I preached on Sunday, January 8, 2012, Heaven and Earth Meet in the Waters of Baptism:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/chuckwarnock/Heaven_and_Earth_Meet_in_the_Waters_of_Baptism.mp3

Rob Bell’s New Story Challenges Evangelicalism’s Party Line

Rob Bell’s newest book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And The Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived sits at number three today in Amazon’s book sales list.  Love Wins will no doubt hit the New York Times bestseller list this week.  Bell obviously has churned up tremendous interest in the Christian doctrines of heaven and hell, but is that what Bell intended?

If you read Bell’s book as doctrine you are missing the point Rob Bell is making.  In short, Bell is taking on the evangelical establishment.  And while Bell asserts ultimately that Love Wins, it remains to be seen if Rob Bell will.

Rob Bell’s hell book appearing here soon

Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived is already generating tons of controversy. Harper One is sending me a pre-publication copy to review. I also hope to snag an interview with Rob about the book. The book hits the stores on March 29 and I hope to have a review up before that. Until then, watch this promotional video and tell me what you think? Is Bell just teasing us, is he a heretic as some are saying, or is this just good PR for the book? Let me know what you think.

Sermon: What Are All These People Doing In Heaven?

Heaven is going to be filled with people from every nation, tribe, race, and language — shouldn’t we get to know each other now?

What Are All These People Doing In Heaven?
Rev 7:9-17

9After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.” 11All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,12saying:
“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”

13Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”
14I answered, “Sir, you know.”

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15Therefore, “they are before the throne of God 
and serve him day and night in his temple; 
and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. 
 16Never again will they hunger; 
never again will they thirst. 
The sun will not beat upon them, 
 nor any scorching heat.

17For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; 
he will lead them to springs of living water. 
 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Heaven is a Big Place

A man arrived at the gates of Heaven.
St. Peter asked, “Religion?”
The man said, “Methodist.”
St. Peter looked down his list and said,” Go to Room 24, but be very quiet as you pass Room 8.”

Sermon: I Believe in The Life Everlasting

I Believe in the Life Everlasting

John 6:53-68 NIV

⁵³Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. ⁵⁵For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” ⁵⁹He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

⁶⁰On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

⁶¹Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you?⁶²What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! ⁶³The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. ⁶⁴Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. ⁶⁵He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”

⁶⁶From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

⁶⁷“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

⁶⁸Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

The Last Line of the Apostles’ Creed

We’re almost there!  Today we look at the last line of The Apostles’ Creed — I believe in the life everlasting.  And so the Creed that began with Creation — I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth — now ends without an end.  We affirm our belief today that this life is not all there is, that there is a life that extends beyond our ability to see or know completely and that is the life everlasting.

You will remember that last week we spoke about the resurrection of the body.  We discovered that we are not disembodied spirits — that’s Greek or Roman thought, not Christian theology — but rather we are given new bodies, changed bodies, spiritual bodies unlike anything we can imagine.

Some scholars speculate that this line of the Creed was added at a later date, and that is entirely possible.  The reason it was added, some think, is because in both Greek and Latin the word for “resuscitatation” and “resurrection” are the same.  But there is a big difference in the two ideas.

Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, was resuscitated.  Jesus brought him back from the dead — and he really was dead and everybody knew it.  But Lazarus died again.  So, perhaps some of Jesus’s followers were confused at the idea of the resurrection of the body.  It’s great to be raised from the dead, but were they going to die again?

This last phrase clarifies and expands on the phrase we looked at last week — “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”  So, not only are we going to be raised from the dead, we aren’t going to die again.  That’s the whole point of “resurrection” — resurrection is the defeat of death and the triumph of life, and this phrase in the Creed affirms that the resurrection life in Christ goes on forever — everlastingly.

But what of this life everlasting?  The renowned skeptic and atheist, Bertrand Russell, said that the worst thing he could think of was an eternity that did not end because it would be incredibly boring.  I must agree with Russell in the sense that I do not look forward to eternity either if it’s going to be boring.  Fortunately, the life everlasting is not boring.  Let’s take a look at what we can find out about it from the passage we read today, and from others as well.

The Life Everlasting Is Given by Jesus and Sustained by God

Jesus is teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum, the city he went to after he was rejected in his hometown, Nazareth.  There is some support for the ancient belief that Simon Peter’s house was in Capernaum, and that Jesus stayed there while in the city.  In Capernaum the ruins of a 4th century synagogue were found about 1900.  But, it was almost 100 years later that archaeologists discovered that the 4th century synagogue had been built upon the foundation of a much older structure from the 1st century.  That foundation was most likely the foundation of the synagogue in which Jesus delivered this “Bread of Life” message.

This is very early in Jesus’s ministry, and his references to eating his flesh and drinking his blood are totally lost on the disciples.  His hearers still don’t get it even when he says —

“This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”

They do understand the reference to manna in the desert.  This of course was the way God provided, the way God sustained the lives of the people of Israel during the 40-years they spent wandering from the captivity of Egypt to the promise of the land of Canaan.

You know the story — because they are nomads, pilgrims, they cannot stop to plant and harvest.  God provides from them each day an amount of manna which was sufficient for that day’s provision.  On the day before the Sabbath, God provides two days’ worth so they do not have to do the work of gathering on the Sabbath.

Now flash forward to the New Testament, to Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray.  We call it The Lord’s Prayer, and in it Jesus tells us to pray for God to “give us this day our daily bread.”  Just as God had sustained Israel in the desert one day at a time, Jesus reminds us to pray that God will do the same for us.

And, that daily sustaining comes from God, both now and in eternity.  Jesus is the Bread of Life, and God sustains us in eternity through the work of Christ on our behalf.  In other words, the life everlasting is a life provided by Jesus and sustained by God.  The life everlasting is similar to God’s provision for Israel, but something greater and more lasting than the manna.  After all, those who ate the manna all died.  Those who partake of the life of Christ all live.

The Life Everlasting Is a Difficult Idea

Some of those who heard Jesus had real problems with what he was saying, and John says “many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”  They turned back to what?  To their old beliefs, to their old way of life, to their old ideas and old fears.

• They turned back because they could not believe that anything greater than the Exodus experience could ever happen to the people of God.
• They turned back because they could not believe in life that goes on forever.  After all the first century was a difficult time.  Life was hard, conditions were rough, mortality was high, hope was in short supply.  This business of another life, a life eternal, a life everlasting was too mystical for them.
• They turned back because they missed the real work of God.

And, here’s where we need to spend some time.  Here’s what most of us have heard and believe:

• God created and loves us, and God has a wonderful plan for our lives.
• Sin has separated us from God.
• God sent Jesus to die on the cross and rise from the dead to bring us salvation.
• Trusting in Jesus is the way to gain eternal life.

Basically, what I have just outlined for you is “The Four Spiritual Laws” or the plan of salvation, as it was called years ago.  And, that’s what we believe.  That’s what I believed when as a 6-year old Primary boy I gave my life to Jesus.  That’s probably what you believed, too, when you accepted Christ and became a Christian.

And, there’s nothing wrong with that.  But there is a more complete way to look at what God is doing, and why we have or need eternal life.

First, eternal life isn’t an after-thought, as in, “Oh, now I’m saved, and so I guess part of the deal is I get eternal life.”  Eternal life is the main thought.

The only problem with the Four Spiritual Laws approach is its like looking through a microscope at a tiny part of the universe.  You can see that part really well, but you really should be looking through a telescope to get the big picture.  Here’s the telescope view of what God is doing and why we need and want life everlasting:

• God did create us, but God also created the world, the universe, the Garden of Eden, all the plants, animals, the earth, the sky, the oceans, the fish, the air, all living things, and us — human beings.  So, we are part of and one of God’s creations.
• Everything is going along just fine in this new world that God has created.  So well, that God sees everything God has made and says after each and every creative act — “That’s good.”
• And when God creates humankind, Adam and Eve, we are the high point, the culmination of creation.  We are uniquely made in the image of God, and God breathes into us the breath of life.  The word for breath and spirit in Hebrew are the same, so in essence God breathes the Holy Spirit into us this new creation we know as mankind.  So far so good.
• God places Adam and Eve in a lush, wonderful fully-stocked garden.  They have to do a little caretaking, but basically all their needs are met, including companionship with God. Everyday, God meets them in the garden.
• Until one day, Adam and Eve don’t show up to walk with God.  God goes seeking for them, finds them hiding because they are ashamed at their nakedness.  God knows what has happened, but God leads Adam to confess that he has sinned, he has disobeyed God.  Adam confesses that he sought to be god himself, rather than obey God.  Of course, Adam tries to lay the whole business off on Eve, but God is having none of it.
• So, everything God has done is messed up.  The Garden of Eden is now off-limits to Adam and Eve.  They whole deal is thrown off track because of the sin of disobedience to God.
• So, God sets about reconciling creation back to God.  God calls people to help accomplish this task.  God calls Noah to save enough of creation so God can begin again.  God calls Abraham to be the father of a great nation.  God calls Moses to lead God’s people out of bondage in Egypt.  God calls David to be king of Israel, and on and on.
• God also calls prophets so God’s voice is always heard, even when the people disobey.
• Then God sends Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, Immanuel, God-with-us to reconcile creation.
• Jesus lives, dies, God raises him from the dead, Jesus ascends back to heaven, and sends the Holy Spirit.
• Jesus calls followers to help proclaim God’s new creation, the new people of God, the new Kingdom of God.  Jesus teaches the disciples to pray “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
• God is clearly reconciling creation back to God.
• And then, God plans for all of creation to be back in fellowship with God — to be in God’s presence as Adam and Eve were in God’s presence in the Garden of Eden.
• So, we get a glimpse of eternity in several passages of scripture, and one of the more interesting is in Revelation.

“So, what’s the difference in the Four Spiritual Laws, and this?” you ask.

Just this — the Four Spiritual Laws approach focuses the microscope on us — God loves us, our sin is the problem, God sent Jesus for us, God will save us.  And that’s true.

But, a better perspective is the telescope view — Here’s what God is doing.  God is creating, reconciling, and redeeming.  God is at work on the whole of creation, not just us.  God is putting everything to rights again.

Jesus says in the Book of Revelation, ”  Behold I am making all things new.”  Jesus doesn’t say, “Behold, I am making all new things.”  No, Jesus is making all things — all of creation — new again.  Just as it was in the Garden, just as God intended.

Our own personal salvation is a microscopic part of God’s greater plan to fix everything that went wrong.  And we find ourselves being invited to get fixed, and get in on what God is doing for all of creation.

So, I’ve said all of that to say that eternal life doesn’t start when we die.  Eternal life started when God created the world.  We did not exist before our birth, but when we make our appearance on God’s stage, that is when eternal life begins.

The Life Everlasting Isn’t Just About Time

But, the life everlasting, eternal life, isn’t just about time.  We tend to think that eternal life is just about life going on forever.  But it’s more than that.

Eternal life is about life with God.  In Revelation 21:22, John says, “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”  In other words, God is right in the middle of his people.

And, this is the New Jerusalem, the New Heaven and the New Earth.  This is creation made again into what it is supposed to be.  But this time, we’re not in a Garden, we’re in a city, a gigantic, three-dimensional city that sings!

And, in the words of the Isaac Watts’s Amazing Grace —

When we’ve been there ten thousand years

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days, to sing God’s praise,

Than when we’d first begun.

No, everlasting life isn’t about time, it’s about life with God.  It is everlasting because God sustains it.  It is everlasting because the giver is The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End.  It is everlasting because His Kingdom shall know no end.  It is everlasting because there is no place else to go, and nothing else to do.  When you’re in the presence of God, there is no other place to be.

And so we sing with the saints who have gone before us —

Come and go with me to that land,

come and go with me to that land,

Come and go with me to that land where I’m bound.

No more crying in that land,

no more crying in that land,

no more crying in that land where I’m bound.

Come and go with me to that land,

come and go with me to that land,

Come and go with me to that land where I’m bound.

Sermon: I Believe in the Ascension of Christ

Why We Need The Apostles’ Creed series continues with this sermon, I Believe in the Ascension of Christ, from Luke 24:36-53.

I Believe in the Ascension of Jesus
Luke 36-53

³⁶While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

³⁷They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

⁴⁰When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. ⁴¹And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate it in their presence.

⁴⁴He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

⁴⁵Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. ⁴⁶He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
⁵⁰When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. ⁵¹While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. ⁵²Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. ⁵³And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

What Do You Do With The Body?

A favorite part of just about any murder mystery is what to do with the body?  You know how those stories go: first,  the murderer kills the victim.  The details of the murderer — is he or she an escaped convict, a deranged lunatic, a jealous lover, or a scheming con artist?; and, the victim — is the victim an unfaithful lover, a double-crossing partner, an innocent bystander, and so on — change with the particular plot line, but the basics of the story are the same — one person kills another.

This story is as old as Cain and Abel, and the problem of what to do with the body of the victim is as old as the murderous act itself.  Cain apparently buried his brother Abel in the same field where he killed him, and when God asked Cain “Where is your brother, Abel?”  Cain replies, “I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper?”

Nice try, but it didn’t work.  God tells Cain that the blood of Abel cries out to God from the ground.  In other words, I know what you did with the body.

Same thing happened to Moses.  Moses is rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter from among the bulrushes of the river, and eventually is raised in Pharaoh’s household.  But somewhere along the way, even though he looks and dresses like an Egyptian, Moses finds his Hebrew identity.  He is outraged at the treatment the Hebrews are receiving under Pharaoh’s regime, but there’s not much he can do about it. Until one day, he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew.

Moses anger swells, and before he knows it, Moses kills the Egyptian.  Which is sure to be a big problem for him with Pharaoh and his henchmen.  So, Moses buries the Egyptian’s body in the sand to conceal his crime.  It doesn’t work, however, because someone saw Moses do it, and so he has to flee to the backside of the desert, which is a long way off.

But with the story of Jesus, we have a different problem.  The Apostles’ Creed has us affirm —

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth,
And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead and buried,
He descended into hell.

On the third day He rose again from the dead.

Now, the problem is this — Jesus has risen from the dead.  That’s Easter, that’s the resurrection, that’s the moment in which God breaks the power of sin and death, and the life of Jesus becomes the prototype for all humanity, for all life to come.

But, what do you do with the body?  The empty tomb is mute evidence that Jesus is not dead.  Jesus appears to the disciples for a period of 40-days between Passover and the coming of the next big Jewish festival, Pentecost.

But, this is a big problem now.  Jesus appears about 11 times to various individuals and groups of followers.  And, he is very much alive, not a ghost like they imagine in the passage we have just read.  In his appearances, Jesus does several things:

1. Jesus encourages some of the disciples to touch him, Thomas being the first case in point.
2. Jesus walks with the disciples.  The most famous episode being the walk on the road to Emmaus with two followers of Jesus.
3. Jesus breaks bread with his followers.  Again, the road to Emmaus story.
4. Jesus cooks breakfast.  He makes fish and bread, which is not something you would expect the resurrected Messiah to do.  But, it probably reminds the disciples of the time Jesus fed 5,000 with fish and bread, and this is just as real.
5. Jesus eats with the disciples.  John has him eating fish, and so does Luke.
6. Jesus speaks to the disciples and others.  Apparently he speaks in his normal voice, not some kind of heavenly booming bass profundo.
7. Jesus commissions the disciples to carry on his work in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
8. Jesus blesses his followers.
9. Jesus gives them instructions, telling them to wait in Jerusalem for power from on high, the Holy Spirit.

So, Jesus does at least 9 things, and maybe more, that show he is a real, live person, not a ghost, a vision, or an apparition.  But, then what? What do you do with the body of Jesus, even if He is alive?

Getting Off The Stage

When I was in high school I got involved with the drama club, and we put on several plays of somewhat uneven quality, I must admit.  But, we learned a great deal about what actors call “stage craft” — the business of acting.  One of the big moments in any play is an actor’s entrance.  So, if you’re coming through a door, you make sure the door knob turns, or the door doesn’t get stuck, so your entrance is smooth and doesn’t become a sort of comedy of errors in itself.

But just as important as getting on the stage, is getting off.  Again, if you’re going through a door, you want to check ahead of time to be sure the door opens, or the knob turns, or whatever needs to happen, happens.  An actor wants his exit to be important, but not awkward.  If you aren’t in the right position on stage when you need to exit, things can get very awkward.

And, in one way, that’s where we find Jesus.  In a place on the stage of history that no one has ever occupied.  His entrance was to be born.  That, of course, was pretty dramatic in itself, for he was “conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary.”

Pretty amazing stuff, and in terms of stage presence, Jesus had that too.  He went about healing people, feeding people, teaching, raising the dead, and training a band of followers who continually seemed not to get what Jesus was trying to teach them.

But, the story takes an distressing turn for Jesus’ followers.  He is opposed by religious leaders, eventually arrested, beaten, tried, and sentenced to death by crucifixion.  Then, he’s crucified.  When he dies, he’s taken down off the cross, and buried.  And here is where the story might end, because all the other stories like this, or even close to this, have ended this way.  The hero gets killed, the body buried, and that’s the end of the story as his followers slip away into the darkness.

But not this story.  In this story, the hero doesn’t stay dead.  In some inexplicable, supernatural event, Jesus rises from the grave.  And, in case there is any doubt about His resurrection, the massive stone gets mysteriously rolled away from the mouth of the grave, the grave clothes are lying neatly folded, and angels announce the news that “He is not here, He is risen from the dead.”

But, now what?  How does Jesus get off-stage, so to speak.  Most of us exit through the door of death, but for Jesus, death was just a revolving door — in and then out again.  How does this story resolve itself.

I suppose Jesus could have just hung around.  But that wasn’t the plan.  The plan from the beginning was that Jesus enters the human realm, does what only God-Incarnate can do, then goes back to his throne in the presence of God the Father, but in His place sends the Holy Spirit.  So, that’s the plan, but how does Jesus get off-stage, so to speak?

Who Comes Down Now Goes Up

We have the old saying, “What goes up, must come down.”  That’s called the Gravity Creed.  But, in Jesus case, what, or better, who came down to earth, must also go back up into heaven.

In the 19th century, theologians got really upset that Jesus ascended “up” to heaven.  Some even said that the idea of heaven being “up” was an outmoded, primitive idea which proves that the story about the ascension couldn’t be true.  Heaven wasn’t up, they said, and so Jesus would not have gone up to go back there.

Well, they’re batting .500 — they got it half right, in other words.  Heaven isn’t up.  Heaven is the presence of God.  Heaven is no more “place” as we know places than God is a man as we know men.  But we speak in the only words we know, and in the first century their idea was that the living were on the earth; the dead were in the pit, or the underworld, or the land of the dead which was under the earth; and, that heaven was above the earth.  Theologians call this a three-tiered cosmology, which is pretty much how we still think of life, heaven, and hell today — here, up from here, and down from here.

And remember, the Bible tells stories with a theological point.  Which doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t go up, but it does mean that there is a deeper meaning to “up” than we might think.

The Significance of Up

The Bible uses this “up-and-down” language to represent a lot of theological ideas.  Here are some of them:

• Adam and Eve are told to go “down” from the Garden of Eden after they sin.
• The Tower of Babel is a failed attempt to “go up” to God and heaven.
• Noah and his family are preserved by the ark’s ascent on Mt. Ararat.
• Moses goes up to Mount Sinai to speak with God and receive the Law.
• Mount Zion, the mystical dwelling place of God, is reached by “ascending” the hill of the Lord.
• At the Transfiguration of Jesus, Jesus and three of the disciples go up on the mount where there Jesus is transformed, and speaks of his coming death with Moses and Elijah.
  • Moses has gone up to be with God on the mountain several times, including right before his own death.
  • Elijah is taken up by God into heaven by a fiery chariot.

So, the people of God revealed in Scripture understand that one goes up to God, and down to sin, death, and the grave.

One way or the other, Jesus is going up to God, to heaven, and to the right-hand of God for eternity.

Going Up Doesn’t Mean Going Away

But, just because Jesus goes up to God at the ascension, doesn’t mean Jesus goes away.  Jesus goes up, so the Holy Spirit can come down to Jesus’ followers.

Jesus has already told his followers that he’s going to send the Paraclete, the One-Called-Alongside, to help the disciples.  They’ve seen the power of God in Jesus’ healing and other miracles, and Jesus has promised them that they will do the same things, and greater than He has done.

Jesus has already breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  That in itself was a theological act, and act reminiscent of God’s act at creation, breathing into Adam the breath of life.  Only this breath of life was the life of the Spirit.

Jesus had told the disciples that all authority was given to him, in heaven and earth, and that they were to wait for the Holy Spirit.

And, so they waited.  For days.  In fear.  In Jerusalem.  Uncertain what would happen, or if they would even know it when it did.

And then, all heaven broke lose.  The wind blows with a mighty rushing sound — the presence of the Spirit.  Tongues of fire — another manifestation of the Spirit appear on the disciples heads.  The disciples speak in languages they have never learned, a reversal of the confounding of languages at the Tower of Babel.  And Peter, inspired by the Spirit, says, “This is what the prophet Joel spoke of.”

The Spirit comes, the church is born, the followers of Jesus are empowered, Peter preaches and three thousand who had great doubts about the man called Jesus were converted in an instant and were baptized.

Going up doesn’t mean going away.

We Are Living The Story

We tend to think of all these things as past-tense:  Jesus lived, Jesus died, Jesus rose again, Jesus ascended back to heaven.  The Holy Spirit came.  End of story.

But it’s not the end.  It’s the beginning for us.  The beginning for the church.  The beginning of witness.  The beginning of the faith.  The beginning of the good news which would be carried to all the world.  Jesus is alive, and what’s more, He’s seated at the right hand of God the Father.

It has pleased God, the Bible says, to put all things under Jesus’ feet.  In other words, Jesus is in charge.  Jesus reigns.  Jesus is the Lord of All.  Jesus sends the Spirit to us.  Jesus is still active in this world that he came to live and die for.

We are living the story of God’s redemptive love.  We are the present actors in this great drama written and directed by God.  Jesus the Messiah has made his entrance as the most helpless of humanity — a tiny baby.  He has lived his life as the most unusual of men.  He has died a horrendous death.  He as risen victorious from the grave.  He has resumed the mantle of heaven and ascended to his rightful place.

But here’s where it really gets good — He’s left us to represent him here in this world that he loved so much he gave himself for it.  And, we’re not alone.  He sent the Holy Spirit to fill us, gift us, guide us, and empower us.  We are living the story of Jesus, in the power of His Spirit, for the life of His creation.

That’s what the ascension is all about.  Not just a clever theatrical trick to get Jesus off-stage, but a dramatic theological transition, a moment that transcends time and space, where heaven received in victory the risen Christ, and earth received in gratitude His ever-present Spirit.

As we gather at His table today, He is present with us.  Theologians have argued for almost 2,000 years about “how” Jesus is present in the broken bread and poured out wine.  The church was split, denominations formed, and wars fought over the “how” of Jesus presence at this table.  But that misses the point.

Our concern today is not “how” Jesus is here.  Our concern today as we gather at this table is that He is here, and we are present with Him.  Had he not come, he could not have gone.  Had he not gone, he could not have sent the Spirit.  Had the Spirit not come, we would not be gathered here today.