Last Sunday in Eastertide / Ascension Sunday, Cycle B

Text:  Psalm 24:1-6

The earth is the LORD's and all that is in it,
the world, and those who live in it;

for he has founded it on the seas,
and established it on the rivers.

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD?
And who shall stand in his holy place?

Those who have clean hands and pure hearts,
who do not lift up their souls to what is false,
and do not swear deceitfully.

They will receive blessing from the LORD,
and vindication from the God of their salvation.

Such is the company of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob.  Selah.

Though Psalm 24 is not the appointed text for Ascension Sunday, its meaning is the same.  The appointed texts, both from Acts, and from Luke, utilize a little more Lucan magic to depict the tradition that at the end of Jesus’ Easter appearances among the disciples and elsewhere, he was swept up into the heavens in the full sight of believers, as if by some divine Hoover machine.  Hence, the name of this Sunday, “Ascension”.  However, we must ask, as in the Easter story itself, what is the point, here?

There would appear to be at least two: one would be the attempt to make of Jesus some sort of latter day Elijah, sweeping him into the clouds while his many Elishas (read: “you and me!”) scurry around wide-eyed at what is happening in their midst.  This should not surprise us.  Matthew, of course, has made Jesus into Moses, by having his family scuttle him away to the swamps of Egypt in his infancy, various of the gospels make him into various of the prophets which he quotes with considerable familiarity, and his name, itself, is a contraction for Joshua, he who fought the battle of Jericho..  The early New Testament writers were anxious to portray Jesus as, at the very least, the sum of all that had gone before.  So, turning him into Elijah was just one more literary conceit.

However, there’s a deeper theological meaning than this to the story of the Ascension.  It is a story replicated at the end of the liturgical year, when, on the Sunday before the First Sunday in Advent, we remember the notion of Christ Reigning from the Cross.  By hauling Jesus up into heaven, Luke makes him “Lord of All”.  Luke thus affirms what John Calvin saw as the primary tenet of the whole Bible:  that God, and no earthly power, reigns; that it is blasphemy to suggest otherwise, no matter how much evidence one may marshall to the contrary.   This fundamentally Protestant idea changed the world!  It is the reason for our country.  “If God reigns, and not the king, why shouldn’t we come here?”  It is the reason for the renowned ingenuity of the people of this land, “If God reigns, why should our thinking be limited to outworn categories, outworn inventions, outworn views of the universe, outworn political philosophies, outworn institutions, encrusted customs?”  “If God reigns, then the future should be limitless.”

There’s a reason, too, why Ascension, turns quickly to Rogation, prayers for the soil, the earth, the sunshine and the harvest:  You want to teach a child the majesty of God, take the child into an open field and let him or her watch the majestic clouds fly past, ever changing in their shapes, beasts and faces morphing into ephemeral castles and thrones, only to morph again into something else.  Keep the child there to see the building of a storm and hear the distant thunder.  Find good shelter and let the child watch the approach — the lightning strike and instant report, the invisible wind wafting like curtains through the grasses, and whirling with power, bending trees half over.  This is the merest evidence we have of the footsteps of the Creator.  If you want a child to know that God is all-powerful, expose him or her to this, and from above it comes.

As Calvin reads the Bible, all the quotidian concerns of humanity fall away and what is there for all to see is that God’s reign is supreme from Genesis to Revelation.  Why is the apple sacred in the garden?  Because God said so.  Why does God choose wheeler-dealer and swindler Jacob over his honest brother Esau, because God does!  Why do disasters happen?  Because of God’s agency; why does Jesus go to the cross? because it is God’s will, why is he brought up from death and out of the cave wherein he was laid, because God sochooses.

And that, finally, poses the problem that confronts us.  The ills that our ours in the twenty first century, just as they were in the first, boil down to one thing, in such a view, and that is blasphemy.  You want to criticize the invasion of Iraq?  The truth is, it is blasphemy for this, our empire, to presume control of God’s world. You want to complain about corporate control of our food?  It is blasphemy when God has created for our enjoyment all the grasses and plants of the field, for us so artificially to manipulate the genetics of plant structure so that all species are turned into one.  It is blasphemy to deny God’s diversity.  It is to presume to take into our own hands that which belongs only to the Lord.  You’re concerned about climate change?  Let’s be real.  It’s human beings who are the cause of climate change, but to whom has belonged the seasons from time immemorial?  What are we messing with, here.  You’re concerned about war upon innocents in Gaza or Iraq or Somalia or Afghanistan?  It is blasphemy to contend that it is the province of human beings to take innocent life.  You’re concerned about the fact that, armed to the teeth, the world now stands with the nuclear clock at a mere few minutes to midnight?  It is blasphemy to assume that the end of the world belongs to anyone but God, god’s self.  It is blasphemy, for God reigns supreme.  It is a rich irony that it is blasphemy that was the trumped-up charge put to Jesus.

“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”  This is contended by communities of faith everywhere.  It is taught to our smallest children, and a matter that is rehearsed in faithful lives everywhere; it is an assertion that hopefully, accompanies in the hour of our death as each of us returns to our maker.  And today, in a special way, we will remind ourselves again, of the chart of our salvation, or that fundamental assertion that God is in control, as we perambulate our property, giving God thanks for the diversity within it, giving God thanks for the signs and the seasons, that separate for us, summer and winter, that allow the earth to sleep and wake again.  Giving God thanks for the beauty and the joy with which God, in God’s almighty time and power, cloaks the earth.  Let us, this morning, renew our love for the gentleness with which God deals with us. The gentle rain, the gentle petals of the flower, the gentle caress of the wind by the shade of a tree, the gentle differences in the colors of the rocks, the gentle green of the grasses, and the gentle beauty of the garden.