Luke 24:45-53 "Beaam Me Up, Scotty"

SHOW STAR TREK CLIP - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ODrdBEztyY

         Even in our modern day, Jesus stands in good company when it comes to unusual ways of departing from this earth.  For him, it meant severing his physical connection to the disciples while at the same time cementing that bond eternally with God.  In Star Trek, this sort of exiting is fondly recalled by the line that was never actually used in the original television series: “Beam me up, Scotty”. 

         Here in the church, we call Jesus’ exit simply the ascension.  It is that rationally impossible, pragmatically inconceivable, fantastically incomprehensible event that the Gospel writer of Luke includes in his narrative to end the story – in addition to beginning its sequel, which is the Book of Acts.

         The Gospel writer positions the ascension forty days after Easter, which, for us in 2018, would be last Thursday.  Let’s look back for a minute however.  Remember?  The despairing women had found the tomb empty on Easter morning.  No one, of course, believed their cockamamie story that Jesus was alive.

         Then the extraordinary appearances started happening.  And for the next nearly six weeks, through those appearances, Jesus tried to prove to his followers that, first, he really did die, and, second, neither was his body stolen, nor was he returning as a ghost to chide them for their abject failures or just to wander aimlessly about in this world, unable for some reason to move on to whatever it is that comes next.

         These astounding appearance stories are scattered throughout the final chapters in all four Gospels.  In each of them, Jesus goes to great lengths to convince his followers that he lives, albeit in a mysterious way that neither he – nor we – will ever fully understand. 

         And so we find him slipping through keyholes into locked upper rooms located down winding side streets and back alleys in Jerusalem.  Once inside, he offers peace to a bunch of his friends who feared more for their own lives than for his in the days surrounding his gruesome execution.  He even allows Thomas, who insists more than the others on visceral proof, allows him to touch his scarred hands and poke around inside the spear wound on his side. 

       He cooks breakfast on a beach  - and nibbles on freshly broiled fish prepared in that same upper room. One time he looks like the cemetery gardener.  Another time, he passes for a fellow traveler as he listens compassionately to Cleopas and his sidekick on the road to Emmaus and then breaks bread with them at suppertime – only to vanish when they finally recognize who he is. 

         And when those forty days filled with intentional appearances are up, according to the Gospel writer of Luke, Jesus gathers his disciples about them and one last time instructs them on the meaning of the Jewish Holy Scriptures.  However, this time was unlike all the other teachable moments when his followers just did not get it, all those times over the past three years of his ministry when no matter what Jesus told Peter, James, John, and the others, they could not comprehend who he was and what he stood for. 

         As Episcopal priest David Sellery notes, “Luke describes one of the truly transformative events in human history. Suddenly it all made sense. Jesus had told them over and over that he had not come to overthrow God’s covenant but to fulfill it. He was the answer to the prophet’s prayers. He was literally the embodiment of God’s love.
      How many times had (Jesus) taught this to these unschooled manual laborers? How many times had they struggled to understand? Now they knew the answer. They knew Jesus as they had never known him before.”

         According to the Gospel of Luke then, the disciples got it this time - finally.  They got that Jesus embodied in his own person God’s dream for a world that was founded on justice and grounded in reconciliation and compassion – no matter how far from those noble ideals their world seemed to be.  They got that Jesus was everything God wanted them to be:  loving, kind, outwardly focused.  They got that they were the ones challenged to preach and live that message of love to people everywhere for all their days. They got that Jesus was daring them to dance again – with new steps and a new rhythm.  

         And we know they got it because here we are more than 2000 years later still sitting in church on Sunday morning when we could be doing a host of other things.  Here we are still envisioning God’s dream for the world - a world founded on justice and grounded in reconciliation and compassion.  Here we are – knowing that Jesus is everything God wants us to be:  loving, kind, outwardly focused.  Here we are  - knowing that we are the ones challenged to preach and live that message of love to people everywhere for all our days. Here we are - knowing that Jesus is daring us to dance again with new steps and a new rhythm. Here we are still listening for the pulsing beat of love, still daring to dance where Jesus leads, still striving to wrap our minds around him and all that he stood for. 

         And when (or perhaps because) they finally understand, Jesus invites his disciples to come on out to Bethany, a village about a mile and a half east of the Jerusalem city gate, on the southeastern slope of the Mount of Olives.  And there in the fading light of day as the shadows inched their way across the land, we are told that Jesus raises his arms and blesses these folks who are his closest friends. 

         I like to think his hands touched each one of them – just as his hands had once touched the eyes of the blind and the tongue of the mute and gave them sight and speech, just as his hands had once touched the lifeless hand of a little girl and a mother’s only son and brought them back to life, just as his hands had once reached out to grab hold of Peter when he was close to drowning in a stormy sea, and once, in what seemed now a lifetime ago, when his hands lifted up a little boy’s lunch of bread and fish and fed 5000 people.

         And there in the shadow of the Mount of Olives, Jesus blessed his disciples and, in doing so, brought the lives they had shared together full circle.  Forgiveness was complete.  Healing was complete.  The dance steps had been taught.  The words had been spoken: 

Now I've had the time of my life
No I never felt like this before
Yes I swear; it's the truth…

         Then he gives them their final instruction:  Go back to Jerusalem, he says, and wait.  Wait for the Holy Spirit – for it will come.  And when it does, watch out! 

         Its power will make your heart burn like it is on fire.  Its strength will feel like a mighty wind that will knock your socks off.  It will grab you and toss you and shake you – and through it all, you will find that you cannot stop your feet from tapping.  Its pulsing beat of joy and rhythm of love will overtake you – and, with the Spirit as your partner, you will dare to dance again.

         And then, the Gospel writer tells us, Jesus ascended to heaven, as the creeds declare, to sit at the right hand of God.  “Beam me up, Scotty.” Yes - Jesus is in good company.  Not only is there Star Trek, but there is also Glinda the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz who leaves as a glowing pink ball, with the munchkins cheerfully waving goodbye.

         Yes, Jesus is in good company – Biblically speaking as well.  There is Elijah, the Old Testament prophet who rode off into eternity in a flaming chariot, and there is Enoch, great-grandfather of Noah, who, mythology has it, fathered Methuselah and went on to live for 365 years before moving in with God.

         But really, face it!  What ever are we – in our post-modern metaphysical days - to do with this rationally impossible, pragmatically inconceivable, fantastically incomprehensible tale that we have the hutzpah to compare to a 365 year old man who sired a son who lived to be 969 years, a flaming chariot, a beloved science fiction TV series, and a good witch?

         For me, this is one of those stories where I have to look beyond its historical verification.  It is a story where, for me, literal truth is really immaterial because there are deeper truths that are so much more important, deeper truths that end up being hidden when we dwell on the story’s historical accuracy – or lack thereof. 

         There are at least three certainties we can tease from this story of the ascension.  First, Jesus left his disciples with a mission, a mission that has been told and retold for over 2000 years until it has come to us.  When Jesus blesses his followers on that last day in that last chapter in the Gospel of Luke, he commissions them to be his hands and feet in the world.  They are to love rather than fear.  They are to forgive rather than resent.  They are to welcome rather than turn away. They are to serve rather than be first in line. 

         In short, they are to be the church because that is what the church is supposed to be about – loving, forgiving, welcoming, serving.  And so it is for us.  Jesus commissions us to be the church – to be loving as he was loving, to be forgiving as he was forgiving, to be radically welcoming as he was welcoming, to serve as he served.     And if that seems so much more than we can ever do or be, then take note of what one blogger I read this week wrote: “It remains for us to realize that the power that is at work within us is the same power by which Christ was raised from the dead.”  We are challenged to really be the church and to dare to dance again.

         Second, Jesus did not leave his disciples bereft, alone to figure out the ins and outs of being the church – nor does he leave us that way either.  The Holy Spirit is coming, he told them. 

         The Holy Spirit has come, he would tell us.  It is waiting in the wings, here, right here, to tap within us the rhythm we need to keep on dancing.  If we forget the steps, the Spirit will teach them to us again and again and again.  If we stumble or feel like we have two left feet, she will lead us back to the dance floor again and again and again.  If we find ourselves as wallflowers or hiding in a corner, she will extend her hand to be our partner and dare us to dance again and again and again. 

         And finally, one last thing we learn from this story of the ascension is that it is an opportunity to re-imagine heaven, which was where, in the story, Jesus went. Lutheran pastor Luke Bouman puts it this way, “The problem is that we think of heaven as another place, as there are places in the world. If Jesus ascends to heaven, then he must go to that other place, is the logic that many might follow. But that does not appear to be the case.

       In Luke’s Gospel, the Kingdom of God, what many people assume to be heaven is portrayed not so much as a reality in a different place (located up in the sky somewhere) but rather is God’s future that in Christ’s death and resurrection has broken into the present. Understood this way, we have a new possibility.”

         I like that idea of heaven: God’s future – God’s dream – broken into the present through the life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.  I like it because that is what Easter and the Easter season is all about.  

         Heaven is within our grasp (How exciting is that!) because the power of love has overcome even the power of death.  Because that is so, the future is now safe in Jesus’ hands (How comforting is that!)

         Such is our hope for tomorrow, and it is a hope that surely has the potential to give us courage for today – courage to do more than just sing hymns and listen to sermons on Sunday morning, courage to begin to bridge the political divide and find common ground with those who see life differently than we do, courage to try our hand at filling the emptiness that lies all around us, courage to mend broken lives with forgiveness, courage to stand up and speak out against injustice, courage to be peacemakers, courage to dare to dance again – to dance as the church into God’s future, whatever it might be.