Acts 1:1-11 and Luke 24:44-53 • A cloud took him out of their sight. Ascension Sunday, Memorial Day Sunday • May 24, 2020 Arnolia United Methodist Church • Rev. James McSavaney Today is Memorial Day Sunday. It’s usually a time when you see flags at cemeteries, and make plans to grill burgers and hotdogs if the weather’s nice. But, when my wife was speaking to her boss the other day, and he said, “I’ll call you tomorrow, but not Saturday or Sunday, because it’s the weekend,” she replied, “And not Monday either, because it’s Memorial Day.” He had forgotten! A lot of our holidays and special occasions, our way of marking the passage of time, have become less prominent as each week passes, and we find ourselves getting used to a new pattern, where days look alike, and changes are slow. It feels like something’s missing. Today is also the Sunday that we mark Jesus’ ascension into heaven, where he sits enthroned in power and honor at the right hand of God. Christ is exalted, vindicated, confirmed, and accepted beyond all doubt. That’s what the scriptures tell us. The disciples, for their part, face a feeling of loss, grief, and uncertainty about what to do next. But their’s isn’t a story of defeat. Jesus’ ascension is a transitional event in the early life of the church. It’s the story that ends Luke’s Gospel, and that same story begins Luke’s next book, the Acts of the Apostles. The disciples from the Gospel of Luke are no longer followers of an itinerant rabbi. In Acts, they are now witnesses to the world of God’s unyielding love and grace, and they are given a Spirit to proclaim truth to power, reconciliation to those in conflict, and hospitality to those wary of newcomers. They preach the good news that Jesus taught, and it spreads beyond Galilee and Jerusalem, to the corners of the known world. The Apostles preach a new name for God, that Jesus Christ is the deliverer of salvation to the world. Our names for God often reflect who we believe God is leading us to become. To some, God calls them to be holy, to be a shining example to the world, that all might forsake evil and turn to righteousness. So, they call God the Holy One of Israel. To others, God calls them to welcome everyone into the church, so that we would be authentically hospitable and reconciling. So, they call God the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords. Some are drawn to study the teachings of the early apostles, in order to have the same deep faith they had. So, they might call God eternal and everlasting, perfect and unchanging. All three of these tendencies are good; they’re marks and signs of the Church. The Church is holy, catholic, and apostolic. But the fourth mark, that the Church is one, is something that no individual can accomplish by him- or herself. It’s something that requires all of us to make an effort to preserve. Before his ascension, before his resurrection, before his crucifixion, Jesus prays that we all may be one. And, as if in anticipation of our question, “What does that look like?” Jesus clarifies that we should be able to reflect each other in our own actions, just as Jesus reflects the quality and nature of God to the early church and to us. W ould that we could all reflect that Spirit of God, that life, that freedom and light, in our everyday lives. Would your days look any different from how they appear now? What outlook or attitude might you be able to change in order to live that kind of life? The hard part about staying together is that, as people, we disagree on a lot of things, even under normal circumstances. The trouble with a crisis is that it amplifies our tendency to disagree: Our divisions deepen. And it turns our frustration at a pandemic into something worse. Because you and I can’t do anything to find a cure or a vaccine. What we end up doing is vilifying people who bother us, people who offend us, people who want to reopen economies when we don’t want to sacrifice lives – or, conversely, people who want to condemn us to poverty when they are too scared to leave the house and go to work. Which side of the argument are you on? And is winning the argument worth losing friendships? We think that it is, because we feel powerful when we put others down. When we say, loudly, that the problem is this person over here, or those people over there, when we become filled with rage at someone and keep telling ourselves the same tired story, that they’re the aberration, that if they would have just gone away, then we’d end up where we want to be. When we keep our attention focused on whatever shortcomings we can see in others, then we’re able to blind ourselves to the pain and weakness we have within us. We’re able to ignore for a while the uncomfortable truth that we don’t have it all together; we aren’t invincible; we aren’t perfect, and our lives aren’t perfect. And that’s the allure of living a combative life; everyone else is incompetent and at fault, and we are never in the wrong. The trouble with finding fault in others, though, the problem with casting blame, is that it hampers our ability to find or offer solutions. It destroys our teams, it sows suspicion among people when what we need is trust and goodwill, and it leaves us hoarding resources and protecting our own interests, which historically have prolonged and deepened a crisis rather than help people recover and move forward. And conflict isn’t limited to people who are working and trying to lead in the world. It’s also in the church. Just this month, the Council of Bishops released a statement affirming an aspiration of The United Methodist Church which goes back almost 50 years: [They] affirm the 1976 General Conference Statement of The United Methodist Church and Race that states unequivocally: ‘By biblical and theological precept, by the law of the church, by General Conference pronouncement, and by Episcopal expression, the matter is clear. With respect to race, the aim of The United Methodist Church is nothing less than an inclusive church in an inclusive society. The United Methodist Church, therefore, calls upon all its people to perform those faithful deeds of love and justice in both the church and community that will bring this aim into reality.’ 1976 was when that statement was made by our denomination, almost 50 years ago. Still, you can look at the comments on the Council of Bishops’ statement on Facebook and see the discord. Commenters – these are churchgoers – are angry that our church leaders would point out that racial animus may have motivated the attack on Ahmaud Arbery. Ironically, those who object regularly pray to Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who became incarnate, unmistakably, as a brown-skinned, brown-eyed, Jewish Palestinian. This is the image of God for us. And hardly any of us remember that when we commission stained glass windows in our churches, or proudly hang devotional oil paintings in our homes, or envision in our minds the One to whom we are praying. And that ties in to the ascension of Christ, the end of Jesus’ time on earth. When God became incarnate in a baby, God took on flesh and tabernacled among us. In an uncertain and inhospitable world, God’s love and grace took the form of an infant, who taught us to focus on the gift that today brings and the potential that tomorrow holds. God came into the world, unexpected and inconvenient. At the birth of Christ, God’s only means to affect creation was to cry for help, and God’s only defense was to disarm those nearby with a gaze or a giggle. The Son of God came into the world, truly meek and mild. Whatever you want to say about God, I pray you remember that God does not come demanding us to live in a certain way or forcing us to give up a certain thing. God comes into our lives to be loved, without coercion or manipulation. And God accepts us so much that God becomes like us. God affirms our humanity in the incarnation. And in the ascension, when Christ is taken up by the clouds, God accepts Christ. God accepts the brown-skinned, brown-eyed man whose feet are covered in dust and dirt, with scars unhealed from wounds inflicted out of hatred and oppression. In the ascension, God accepts humanity in its frailty and embraces the stuff we are made of – the clay, the earth, the world, in all our imperfection, all our particularity – that whether we are male or female, young or old, brown- eyed or blue-eyed, able in one way or another – we are accepted by the One who was rejected by the world, and we are embraced with a love that will overcome every difference, reconcile every hostility, welcome every single redeemed child of God, no matter what. That’s what the ascension means. No amount of politics will limit God’s love for you. No amount of discrimination and strife in this world will stop God from welcoming you to join with Christ in celebrating the salvation of the world. Nothing the world can throw at you will hinder God’s grace in your life. No amount of trouble will get in the way of God making something new in you, something to amaze you, something to give you hope, something to fill your heart with joy and love all over again. Because God’s promise will never be broken, and it’s a promise of inclusion, acceptance, guidance, and empowerment toward a church that welcomes all, heals and perfects all, and nurtures faith in all – until at last with Christ we all get to heaven. And what a day of rejoicing that will be. Alleluia. Amen.