Barneyisfat

I've always been a little confused by this scripture.  As a child, I remember thinking - we made it through all of this, and Jesus waits until the last minute to let them know that he has the super power of being able to fly.  It just seems like something that should have come up in conversations before.

"Let me go get the ladder so I can change this oil lamp"
"Oh, it's ok - I got it" replies floating Jesus.

You know, it's easy for us to read this scripture passage and to really concentrate on the idea of Jesus being lifted up and flying away to heaven.  In fact, as I was thinking over all of the sermons I've heard on Ascension Sundays past, I think they all basically focused on the idea that magic Jesus swims through the air.
And as odd as it might sound, I don't think that's the point of this scripture.

I think the fact that they physically watched Jesus on his ascent to heaven is just a side detail in this story.  We can't see the forest because of all of the trees.

Jesus is surrounded by the disciples.  In this chapter they see him, they feel him, they feed him - they know that Jesus has risen from the dead.  They have all of the proof that his spirit and his body have resurrected from the dead.  But, it seems that they still don't quite get it.  Two disciples had walked with Jesus along the road to Emmaus - and until he broke the bread, they didn't recognize him.

It's easy for us to get that smug - "well, think how stupid those disciples were" ideas ... but we're still there.  We still miss the point, we still get things wrong, we still make mistakes, we're all pretty blond sometimes when it comes to understanding the words of Jesus.  And we get so stuck in our ways - we think that anyone who disagrees with our political views or our interpretation of the Bible must just be an idiot to not understand it the way that we do.

We must continually pray that God will open our eyes and our minds that we would better understand the scriptures.

Jesus calls his disciples to go out into all of the world - to spread the Good News of what they had seen and experienced - and as they continue to follow him, he leaves them.  He leaves them in the most dramatic way possible.  Jesus looks around at his disciples and he lets them know that there is work to be done - and then as he ascends to heaven - they understand that it is there job to do the work.

Friends.  It's our job to do the work.  

It is easy to find ourselves doing church work instead of the work of the church.

Jesus calls us move beyond these walls and to go into all nations.

There are so many wonderful details in this story - details that we miss because we're so busy picking our chins up off the ground after seeing Jesus float away.  Here's my favorite:

Jesus tells the disciples that they will share the Good News with the whole world beginning in Jerusalem - and then he leads them out to Bethany.

Bethany wasn't so far from Jerusalem.  Jesus has a long history in the village of Bethany.  The story of Mary and Martha, the sisters who struggle over how best to serve God, well that happens in Bethany.  And Lazarus, their brother, died and was buried in Bethany.  For three days they mourned his death in Bethany and it was there that Jesus called him out from his tomb and into new life.  Bethany was the city where Jesus' feet were anointed with oil.

And scholars have argued for decades and decades about what the name "Bethany" meant.  And if we have anyone named Bethany in the congregation, she should probably cover her ears or side with the less accurate scholars.  Because Beth Anya means "House of Misery or House of Poverty"  In the way that Beth El was "the place where God lives - Beth Anya meant - the place where misery lives.

When Jesus rode the donkey through the parade of palm leaves on his Triumphant entry into Jerusalem, he was coming from Bethany.  When Jesus led his disciples out of Jerusalem, he led them back to Bethany.

Because Bethany was home.

Bethany was a village founded by Galileans.  In the same way that Chicago has a huge Ukrainian population and Ukrainians who come to America go to Chicago first - in the same way Pittsburgh has Polish Hill and New York and San Francisco boast their China Towns and Little Italy's - when Galileans came to the big city, they stopped in Bethany.  As Jesus' disciples were mostly all Galileans, this would have been their natural stomping ground.  They would have found community, friends, familiar dialect, and comfort in Bethany.  This village was known for and even named after the shelter it provided for the poor and the suffering.  There was plenty of opportunity for the disciples to do good right where they were.


And Jesus leads them there - to this place that holds so much of their history and so much of who they are - and he leaves them from there.

But he told them to leave it.

He had told them to go back to Jerusalem.

And from Jerusalem to go to all the nations.

Jesus pushes us out of our comfort zones.

[Here I'm going to tell some story from my experience in Ukraine.  To be honest, my comfort level with the congregation will guide which stories I share.]

These four walls, our church buildings, our communities, our families - all of these things provide comfort and safety and peace - but Jesus calls us to leave them behind.  And there is a lot of good that we can do right here, but Jesus also calls us to leave this place and to go out into all the world to share the Good News.