The End is the Beginning
Ascension Sunday
May 20, 2007
Rev. Samuel Schaal

Acts 1:1-11
Luke 24:44-53

I grew up in the age of television. In fact, the first television station in my hometown of Lubbock, Texas, became operational on the same month and year I was born, so I feel a little like Forrest Gump because I was there as the TV age dawned in the Panhandle of Texas.

Though I certainly don’t remember how it changed things, as I wasn’t around before the age of television. As I grew up and understood that there was a time when television was not, I had a hard time understanding what in the world people did in the evenings to entertain themselves without it. I can’t imagine what life was like before television. Television marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.

I do remember life before and after another cultural shift, though. I am now old enough to remember life before computers. In my earlier business career, I witnessed our public relations department going from everyone using IBM Selectrics (remember those?), to sharing one large, hulking and very noisy word processor, to finally getting personal computers where we would write and rewrite at will. Now I can’t imagine being without a computer. Even we ministers spend most of the day in front of a computer screen writing and responding to e-mail, writing sermons and articles, and even doing theological research on-line. So in my life I’ve seen the ending of the typewriter age and the full expression of the computer age.

These shifts toward the age of television and computers are only a couple of the shifts we’ve experienced in our culture, though note that both are communication-oriented, which gives us a clue on the evolving of our culture to one that is primarily information-based, not primarily industrial-based. We’ve all seen the end and the beginning of various eras around us and we’re familiar with how uncomfortable this shifting can make us feel, how this can make us yearn for the good old days, the days when we knew more clearly what was going on.

We see another shifting of eras in today’s lessons from Luke and Acts on the ascension of Jesus. It is a time of transition—marking the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and the beginning of the disciples mission.

The ascension is important to Christian theology in several ways. It points to three things: to Christ himself, to us, and to the church.

First, it points to Christ’s role, and validates that he is God’s Messiah. The ascension is the crown of the resurrection gospel, where Christ is now relevant universally to all aspects of human life.

Second, the ascension points to us, as it signifies that Christ’s human nature was taken up into heaven, so now divinity is linked to humanity in new ways, as Christ’s humanity as well as Christ’s divinity dwells in the Godhead.

But third, and perhaps the most dramatic of this theological significance and what I want to talk about today, is what it says to the church, to the community forming around the Christ event. Over the ages the church has celebrated the ascension of Jesus as one of its major feast days, but its focus has been on Jesus and yet this is really not the focus of the Biblical witness. The Biblical focus is on the church.

Let’s go back to the time of the ascension and think for a moment about how the disciples must have felt over the previous three days, through all the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Over those three days, their emotions had been all over the place. They were afraid of being arrested with Jesus, then they witnessed the incredibly cruel execution by crucifixion and the death, not only of Jesus, but of their dream. Their small community disbands, and the disciples go back to their old lives as fishermen. Then their beloved Master reappears several times and at times the gospels tell us they were afraid when they first saw him. Then, in this morning’s lesson, they witness the disappearing of Jesus right before their eyes.

Those few days comprised a strange and difficult and wondrous time. But by the end of the Gospel of Luke, this time their reaction was not fear, not astonishment, but rejoicing. “They returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they were continually in the temple blessing God.”

And yet this ending of Luke still leaves us hanging. The disciples still don’t have everything they need to be church. They are still waiting on the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise: “Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” So the story doesn’t end at the conclusion of the Gospel of Luke. The church is actually formed at the coming of the Holy Spirit in chapter two of Acts which we’ll read next week. At the end of Luke the disciples are waiting, but waiting in faith, as they experienced an end and a beginning, and as they finally “get it” and are in the temple, meaning not merely that they are in the building, but also they are in the consciousness of God, in the presence of the Most High, knowing they would get what they needed—knowing they were entering a new age of the Spirit.

* * * * *

Twenty centuries later we are still in that new age of the spirit that begins to begin at the Ascension, and really begins at Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Over those twenty centuries, of course, humanity has seen all other kinds of eras shifting, ages that ended, ages that began. Today in our fast-paced world we are seeing these cultural shifts even more rapidly, as I’ve suggested.

I think in some ways we are in a transition today, here in our wider community. In the paper last Thursday (in the Wauwatosa NOW section of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel – formerly the News-Times) there was a story about how Wauwatosa is changing. Our population is shrinking because of smaller families, our schools are becoming more racially diverse, the community is becoming more racially diverse, there is increasing demand for closer-in homes in Tosa. The demographics of Wauwatosa are changing.

In our wider community of Milwaukee, we see the city struggling to make a transition from the industrial era to the information age. In the business press there’s been lots of talk over the difficulty of some companies to attract enough young professionals, the so-called “creative class” of folks needed in our modern information-based economy. Richard Florida is a business consultant who has written The Rise of the Creative Class which details his idea of the “creative class” and in the various appendices of the book he notes that Milwaukee is growing in its share of the creative class, from 124th to 108th in about five years. (This book is available in our church library.)

The world is changing. Perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worst; most likely some of both—though among us we might quibble on what constitutes the good and bad of it. But the world is changing. Our era in this cyber-accelerated world, is shifting. The church, it seems to me, should be able to keep up with these shifts.

In a greatly historical religious tradition such as Congregationalism, with our roots going back to the early history of society on this continent, it’s a temptation to see ourselves as a living museum—an historical force that has molded the life of a great nation. And indeed we have been that. But what of our future? Not just us in this congregation, but across our association of Congregations? How do we stay rooted in our tradition, and yet meet evolving human need, meet our evolving understanding of how God wants us to be in ministry? How do we remain open to the Living Word that is Christ, how do we remain open to more light and more truth for our generation today?

Notice in both scripture lessons this morning how Luke moves from the past to the future. Jesus begins by summarizing the Scriptures. He points to the religious past of Judaism, how it points to his own Passion. You are witnesses, he tells the disciples (and thus tells us, his modern disciples) and shifts their thinking from their tradition which remains valid, to how they are to proclaim “repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations.” That is, that their faith will grow from Jerusalem to encounter the world. The world! And he says, in essence, “Don’t worry. I’ll give you what you need from the Source itself, from the Creator God, so stay here until God gives you the power you will need.” And they respond by praising God. In other words, it wasn’t up to them. God would give them what they need.

Our tradition certainly remains our foundation. It is who we are. But who are we becoming? How do we respond to the changing demographics of Wauwatosa, Milwaukee, the world? We pray for guidance. We wait for the spirit of the Lord to come upon us. We open ourselves to be used by God. We bless God, continually, in the temple.

In some literal way we are waiting this next week for Pentecost next Sunday when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the church. In a broader way of course we are waiting for longer than just next Sunday. I think we are in a time of waiting in our congregation, a time of transition to something which we can’t yet quite see, a time of discovery through prayer and study and spiritual practice, a time to see what God wants us to do as church.

We don’t know exactly where we’re going and that’s a good thing. For that’s not up to us to decide. That’s up to God. Our task is to follow Christ. For the Christ we follow is not merely a Christ of history. As today’s lesson shows, he is a Christ of the cosmos, reigning over all creation, bringing all creation to a time of ultimate salvation and good.

He is the living one we follow—alive in a different way than when he walked the earth for he no longer walks the earth, but God has given us the power – God will give us the power – to be his body on the earth. To walk with confidence from the old dispensations of the age that’s ending, to the glories of our new beginning with Christ.

More on this next week. Please come back.