Mooroolbark Uniting Church (St. Margaret’s)
Celebrating the Ascension of Jesus

17 May 2026
Sermon

The Rev’d Howard Wallace

We Christians in the western world are a strange lot. The vast majority of us live
quite happily in the modern world. We share in the advances of modern science and
engineering in our medical system, and in the appliances and machines we use
daily. With the development of technology and AI it is as if we are swept along by a
tide of scientific thinking. Maybe we watched the recent rocket launch that sent 4
astronauts around the moon and many would remember that day in 1969 watching
on an old black and white TV, a human setting foot on the surface of the moon. And
we can only marvel at the immensity of space that we now know lies well beyond the
moon.
And yet we gather here each week to listen as scripture is read, to sing hymns and
hear a sermon, maybe even to pray, using words and concepts that come from
another world, one in which kings ruled with supposed divine authority. The royal
houses that survive today are not even a faint shadow of their ancient predecessors
in terms of power and authority. What’s more we sing and speak about a threefold
universe – heaven up there somewhere, below the netherworld, and earth stuck
between the two. We seem to live in two worlds. Our readings today accentuate the
issue. After Jesus has been raised from the dead, and as if that is not something to
cause us to ponder, we are told that he is taken up into heaven where God is. It is a
strange, anachronistic tale to read and celebrate in the C21st. Another oddity about
the story of Jesus’s ascension is that it is told only in the gospel of Luke. So why
make the story the centre of worship today?
We could just jettison the story from our lectionary or dismiss it as quaint and
unbelievable in the C21st. But would we miss something in doing so? Maybe the
story has something to say to us about our faith if we can but get beyond the
differences in world view we have noted.
As I said, the story appears only in Luke’s Gospel, right at the end. But then it is
retold with slight variations right at the start of the Book of Acts, also written by the
writer of the Gospel of Luke. So, the story of the ascension is a lynch pin uniting
these two works. It is the story that unites the story of Jesus in the Gospel with the
story of the church in the Book of Acts. At the same time as we read of Jesus going
up to heaven, we also read of two men in white robes (i.e. angels) saying Jesus will
come again from heaven. Thus, the story not only joins the story of Jesus to that of
his followers, the church, but it also links heaven, God’s habitation, to earth where
the church lives and works.

Before we come back to that, we should look at the conversation between Jesus and
his disciples before he leaves them. In the Gospel he tells them: ‘Stay here in the city
(Jerusalem)’ and in Acts he says: ‘wait for the promise of the Father’, i.e. wait for the
gift of the Holy Spirit. Before the disciples move out into the world to preach and
continue the work of Jesus, they are to wait.
The disciples ask Jesus: ‘Lord, is this the time you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’
They are told it is not for them to know the times etc. Several things are going on.
The disciples are impatient. They seek some understanding of their future; some
control over their life and task. But Jesus tells them to wait and stay here, what will
be will be made evident in God’s good time. They are to take their lead from God’s
action in the world. In other words, the future church is not left to its own devices and
it will not be in charge of its task and destiny. So waiting and patience make up the
first step in the life of the church.
Note also, that the disciples ask if Jesus will restore the kingdom to Israel. This is the
language of an old view of the Messiah. Messianic hope among many Jews had
been in terms of a restoration of political independence and economic power for
Israel, particularly as they had been living under the rule of the Romans and other
powers before then. But had not the death and resurrection of Jesus witnessed to
another type of messiah. The disciples look back to an old hope, to their past, as
they imagine their future. If only the past could be restored then they would know
how to live into the future.
But something else is going on here as well. Two men in white catch the disciples
looking up to heaven following where Jesus had gone. They were literally ‘turning
their eyes upon Jesus’. The two men say that looking toward heaven is not the way
to follow Jesus. The way for them into the future, the way to be the church, is not
simply a matter of gazing heavenward, to a place beyond where they live, beyond
the troubles of this life, beyond their experience. That may only be part of the story.
Put in a more positive way, for Luke the way to be the church and to follow Jesus
can only be found within the sphere in which we struggle with the issues of earthly
life. Turning one’s eyes on Jesus involves as much of looking around us to see what
is happening as it does to look upward toward heaven. In Acts the disciples are told
to wait to receive power from on high, i.e. the Holy Spirit. Whatever energy the
church has for its task is not simply its own. It does not go under its own steam, and
as an aging church we know too well the limitations of that. The church cannot
address the problems of the world simply through its own efforts. What it is called to
do is witness in word and deed to the heavenly tasks made evident in Jesus: the
possibilities of repentance and forgiveness in life, of truth being proclaimed and
reconciliation embraced. Is this not what Pope Leo has been doing in his public
comments on the wars and social problems in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere as

even the leaders of our own church have been saying. We are to witness to the fact
that in God’s freedom, as one theologian (Karl Barth) has said:
There is the possibility of the coming of a very different humanity, taking on a
new nature, of a miraculous inner change, a wonderful new birth; for what is
usually thought of as the last thing in life, namely death, becomes in a
wonderful way what is truly first.
He is, of course, speaking metaphorically of dying to old and debilitating ways and
taking on a new nature.
Let me sum up what I think this strange story of Jesus’s ascension into heaven has
to say to us in spite of its form. The story relates to the junction between the story of
Jesus and that of his followers in the church. In our terms it speaks to the
relationship between the church in its life and work and the ongoing resurrected and
ascended life of Jesus. Like the disciples of old, the church today sometimes does
not know where to look for guidance or strength as it struggles to witness to Jesus
and do his work in this world. The story of the ascension gives some guidance. It
urges us not to look to the past for a way forward. Yes, that past has shaped who we
are and there is a lot we can learn by reflecting on it, but it will not give us all the
direction we need for the future. Nor should we simply gaze up to heaven, especially
not to seek some escape from the world and its issues. Our gaze into heaven, like
our time spent in worship here each week, is a way of glimpsing again something of
the fullness of God’s life and love. Nor should we constantly look upon the earth in
the context of some frantic activity drawing on our own power to bring about the
kingdom of heaven. The point of looking to the world is to consider prayerfully where
God is working in the world, or grieving its condition and to seek to follow.
The story of the ascension, of Jesus’s rising into heaven, of the promise of his
coming again, is a way of uniting the life and work of Jesus with that of his followers,
the church, us. In that context it brings together heaven and earth and encourages
us to see our life together as the church, as a continuation of the work and life of
Jesus, guided by God’s Spirit, witnessing to the intermingling of heaven and earth,
letting the possibilities of love, truth, compassion, peace and all the other qualities of
the heavenly world be known in a world too often wracked by hurt and pain.