Second Sunday of Easter (Year 2, NL)

The preacher faces several challenges in these Ascension texts. How can we present Jesus’ departure from the earth as an occasion for not sorrow but celebration? How to translate the kingship and hierarchical language into imagery that speaks to a world no longer governed by kings and monarchs?

Feminist biblical scholars note a third challenge: How can we counter Luke-Acts' use of the Ascension to exert a degree of social control?

What is it those angels invite us to see on the earth from the Mount of Olives?

Once I finished working with this week’s gospel text, I went back into my files to see how many times I’ve managed to preach on it in my seven circuits through the lectionary. I found that I’ve missed it more often than not—no surprise there, as it falls at a convenient time of year for that. And when I have preached on it, the sermon has always been on one half of the text or the other—either on the scene in the Nazareth synagogue or on the sending of the disciples. I have never written a sermon that dealt with both stories.

A few homiletical observations on Acts 1:6-14:

• Luke is always concerned about place. Now, oddly, when it comes to Jesus' ascension, he's not.

When Acts says Jesus is "taken up to heaven," this is not a spatial claim.

The villagers of Nazareth knew Jesus, and they thought him to be nothing special.

Rejection has been the traveling companion of the gospel from the beginning.

Even with Paul's wish to serve, even with his good motives, the Lord does not answer his prayer as he asked or expected.

Just like that, Jesus is gone. He reappears just long enough to say goodbye. Like a wraith, like a dream, he leaves behind no children, no estate, no writings, no trace of himself except this feeling that his presence was real, that his absence is temporary. Christians have this uncanny feeling that he was just here. He must have just stepped out.

I kept losing track of what I was going to say next. Yet it may have been my best sermon.