Someone said to a preacher after worship on Ascension Sunday, “Pastor, that was the best ascension sermon I ever heard. Now, grant it, that was the only ascension sermon I ever heard.” This is not the case in the Amish tradition. Ascension day, is the biggest holiday of their year. They close all businesses. They close their schools. They picnic and worship and the like.

What is ascension day? It is 50 days after Easter and marks the ascension of Jesus as recorded by Luke in the book of Acts and the gospel of Luke.

Luke gives an account after the ascension. They worshipped him and they returned overwhelmed with joy. Our annual conference was filled with joy. A beautiful reminder of the work of God throughout our conference and beyond, of course. The bishop preached at the ordination service and asked us, “Where are you going to live? She said we live in joy, on the way to praise.” I like that. Living in joy on the way to praise.

I can just imagine what the disciples must have been feeling, when Jesus is no longer with them. They saw his resurrected body. And now he has ascending. What next?

They are told to wait. About 71 times the word selah is written in the book of Psalms. It is perhaps a pause. What do we do? We wait. In the end it will be OK, if it’s not ok, it’s not the end.

We wait, we pause, the spirit will come. They Spirit came to them with much flair. I think of our bishop when I think of flair. Many of you were here when she preached for us dressed in bright colors. The spirit came with flair at Pentecost, well we could never top that. Though some have tried.

We wait. We selah. We pause.

Now it doesn’t mean we wait inactively. We are not passive doormats as followers of Christ. We wait actively, but not simply reactively. We pause so we can respond, not react in a knee jerk fashion.

We live in joy on our way to praise.

Things are looking up. We do not ONLY look up, thinking heaven will bail us out when we are called to respond. We lift up our eyes to the hills and set out our feet on the way of peace. Some people keep us on our toes and some keep our feet on the ground.
Someone described elephants as earthbound clouds. I was so blessed to know a young woman who suffered with a rare disease in which her bones were literally disappearing. So much so after being an active teenager and a cheerleader and the like, she began to decline physically to the point of not being able to move except for her facial features. She was a delight to visit with. Her spirit soared. A friend described her as an earth-bound angel. She had no ability to get out of bed without help. Yet her thoughts and mind and spirit flew.

In the book and movie “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” Jean Dominique-Bauby suffered from locked-in syndrome. He said 2 things were not paralyzed besides his left eye lid: His memory and his imagination. The past, when things were free and movement came with ease, and the future someday we too will fly away.

We are not physically paralyzed like that young woman or the young editor of a magazine. We got ourselves to church today, or we clicked online and watched. Yet, we are often paralyzed in despair or resignation or fear.

We look up because we worship a God who has ascended. No longer bound by one place and one time. Our memory is alive, Christ has died, we do this in remembrance of him and what he taught and how he showed us we can live. Our imagination is alive, Christ will come again.

In addition to looking up, we look around. Jesus told us when we feed, clothe, welcome the stranger, visit the prisoners and the sick – we feed, cloth, welcome and visit Jesus. We look up because God is the source of strength and power and love. We look around because that is where God lives and breathes and has her being.

Many years have passed since Jesus ascended to God. We wait, we live, we share, we give, we act out of gratitude and joy.

Twice in this chapter in Luke it says, “he open the scriptures to us and he open our minds” hmm. Gathering, reading, meditating the text, that is how we see Jesus. We read in Ephesians of prayer that the eyes of our heart may be enlightened. Jesus has a ascended so that through the eyes of our heart we may see him.

We sometimes feel God is not here. We sometimes feel we are on our own. But we are never alone. God is with us.

Thanks be to God. May we live in joy on our way to praise.