Ascension Day 2019

Ascension Day is a much overlooked but important day in the life of the church. On this day we remember Jesus ascending to heaven and in doing so, entrusting his work to his people on earth.

Of course, we are not to do the work alone, soon we shall celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit was given to the early church, the day that’s sometimes known as the birthday of the church. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift for us all – God wants to equip his people, his church…

In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles (1:1-11) we have this tremendous introduction to the life of the church – of how the disciples were to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then Jesus was lifted up from them and taken out of their sight…

It must have been incredible and it is perhaps little surprise that they were left gazing up into the sky, until two men in white robes came alongside them and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking upwards to heaven ? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’…

It is clear that Jesus had left the earth, but equally clear he would come back again and in the meantime his church is to be his body in the world, strengthened and empowered by the Holy Spirit to help transform individuals, communities, nations, even the whole world…

Ascension Day is the day when we are reminded of our responsibility to be the people that God wants us to be, people who are committed to proclaiming and being good news for all…

So what does that good news look like ? Well, I’d like to think of 3 things that this might entail…

The first is LIVING CONFIDENTLY. I’ve probably said before that too often our churches are full of worries, usually about money, about a lack of people or problems with buildings. The conversations are too often about what we need to do in order to keep going, without asking the question of what we’re keeping going for…

Well, that isn’t church – that’s a whole lot of human concerns brought together in a club that we’re determined to maintain. When Jesus ascended to heaven, when he gave his followers the gift of the Holy Spirit, he gave it to us so that we could be confident that we could live with his strength supporting and enabling us to do things which alone, we could never do…

A confident church is an attractive church, not just on the outside because it looks to be full of happy people, but on the inside as well as people in a confident church know that God’s strength is enough for any situation….

When we recite creeds about believing in a God who can even conquer death, who can look at each one of us and know us intimately and who loves us with an unbreakable love, shouldn’t we be confident if we really believe what we’re saying ? We worship an incredible God and we love him who first loved us….

A church lacking in confidence looks like a church without the faith to move forward, a church with confidence will know there is a future and that that future will never be restricted to a single building or a particular group of people, but to the kingdom of God growing and growing…

The second thing is LIVING TO PROCLAIM. In one of the most famous verses of the bible Jesus told his followers to ‘Go out and make disciples of all nations….’

The Christian faith is a faith which involves telling others about good news which is for all people. It’s really easy to ignore this, to put up excuses that talking about faith is for others, telling others about the impact Jesus has on our lives is for others, or perhaps that we’re not really clever enough to talk to others about our faith, or maybe the classic politically correct idea that we just shouldn’t talk about our faith for fear of offending somebody…

Jesus battled with authorities, he was tortured and humiliated and died on the cross for us – he didn’t worry about offending people, he worried about sharing good news, he worried about letting people know through his words and actions that he loved them and called them to love others… And when I politely use the word ‘them’, I actually of course mean ‘us’ !

Jesus didn’t say it would be nice if we told others about him, or it would be a good thing to do if we get the chance, Jesus said to go and do it !

A church that is not interested in growth, a church that is not shouting out good news for those outside it, is failing to be the church that God calls it to be….

And so we are to be confident and we are to be a proclaiming church, shouting out and being good news. And that leads me to the third thing and that is LIVING FAITHFULLY.

All the words in the world, however well scripted, will mean nothing if we are not living faithfully and by that I mean if we are not living out the life of Jesus, a life characterised by love, by a desire for peace, by the offer of hope… A life characterised by applying those principles to anyone…

A life lived like that will have an impact surely – a life lived like that will involve a care and concern for all who are around us, it will involve recognising that the walls of our churches are not boundaries but practical things to keep us warm in our worship !!

A life lived like that will involve living and working together with other Christians to reflect God’s love into the communities he has given us the privilege of being a part of, and those communities are not just narrow territories as our actions have the potential to impact people far and wide…

Sometimes in church as I said when I talked about living confidently, we simply battle to protect what we’ve got, to maintain our little part of God’s kingdom, but God’s kingdom doesn’t have little parts… When we create little parts, we create islands outside of what God surely wants…

God calls us to live faithfully, living out his love, living out his peace, strengthened and boosted and made alive by prayer and a real desire to get to know God better through study of his word in the bible…

God calls us to love Him and to love one another just as he loves us – in other words to break down any barriers we might create in our heads, for the good of everyone…

So we have three things, and there will no doubt be others – Living confidently, Living to Proclaim good news and Living faithfully….

I was reading a book a long time ago and it talked about the Church and its existence through the centuries – it suggested that a huge majority of what we do centres on 2 things, and they have nothing at all to do with the picture of a family living out the life of Jesus. 

Those 2 things are firstly, a desire and a need to pay the bills and secondly a desire to keep the current congregation happy.

These things have very little to do with the gospel, with being and sharing the good news of Jesus – I understand why we do them, but, important as they might sometimes be, they are not our priorities.

When they are our priorities we begin to look inwardly, even selfishly with our minds focused on looking after number one, looking after ourselves – this isn’t the gospel Jesus brought, it isn’t the gospel that his church can proclaim…

And so on this Ascension Day, let’s focus on the privilege we have of being called to serve God, the creator of the universe, who loves everyone of us and who knows us intimately… Let’s focus on the need to be people living out and speaking out the good news of Jesus… And let’s be confident, prayerful people, seeking to grow both spiritually and numerically as God’s kingdom is built here and now… AMEN