Sunday after Ascension Day
Sunday 24th May 2020
As public worship has been suspended in a bid to limit the spread of the Coronavirus the service was recorded and made available online. That can be found here.
Sunday after Ascension Day
Acts 1.6-14
Dr Ken Scott
When will it come to an end is a phrase we hear increasingly now. Now in our 8th week of lockdown we long to see some sign that it will end. And the first small glimpses are appearing. Of course, everything does eventually end and then something new begins in its place. When and what we don’t know at present, however. This Sunday is the one following Ascension Day on Thursday and in a sense that day marked an ending and the start of a new beginning.
It was absolutely necessary that Jesus should leave this physical world and his followers, and that required a final end point to his earthly life. His life could not just peter out and he could not stay forever. Luke is the only writer who gives us this story and he does it in his Gospel and here in the Acts of the Apostles which we had read today. We must remember he was writing in an age where the world was considered flat and heaven was above the sky; not a concept we would recognise now. So, Jesus is described as ascending to heaven. One translation of the episode says he withdrew from them, maybe we find that easier to handle. He moves from a physical to a spiritual world.
It is of course the start of a new era for his followers and for the church which developed from them. And it came with a wonderful promise that he would return; an event still to come. In the meantime, he would be with them forever in spirit, not gone forever. This would be confirmed dramatically in the next days at Pentecost.
The reaction of his followers is threefold. They returned to Jerusalem with great joy, they met together in their upstairs room and they prayed. That seems a pretty good example for us in our situation today. We need to realise the joy of the resurrection which completely changes our view of life and death. We share that joy with our fellow Christians; we have been doing that over these past weeks by telephone, by video, by our online worship together. This different form of church has brought us together in new and enjoyable ways. And of course, we always need to pray for ourselves and for others. This tight- nit little group of men and women in that room all those years ago was soon to grow enormously and we are the inheritors of that growth. So, Ascension Day brings us a hope for a new beginning that can help us to get through the most difficult times in our lives and we surely need that hope now. We are not on our own. Jesus last words to the disciples before he left, recounted by Matthew, were “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”.
That’s a promise worth clinging on to at all times, and in all situations.