Ascension –– 7th Sunday of Easter, Year A –– 28 May 2017

The challenge of the message of the ascension is to realize that God's healing and redemption of humanity has begun. Our humanity has been brought into the presence of the glory of the almighty God in Christ's ascension, and by virtue of this all humanity has been validated. For this reason all human beings having been created in the image of God, have had their humanity validated.

Those of us who bear the mark of Christ by virtue of our baptism must continue this ministry of validating the humanity of all people. This has direct implications on how we minister to other people. Poverty, human trafficking and slavery, genocide and all of the other realities that dehumanize people in our world, directly contradict that value and glory that God has bestowed on all people. How can we respond when the problems are so large and complex?

This week we are invited simply to gather. . . as the community of [the] faithful, whoever we may be, and cling to the hope and promise of the risen and ascended Christ, awaiting the giving of the Holy Spirit which will empower and gift God's people to respond to the needs of the world, all to the glory of God. –– Todd E. Johnson

GOSPEL READING: John 17:1-11

Year A (this year, vv 1–11) emphasizes Jesus' prayer for himself and his disciples; Year B (vv 6–19) emphasizes Jesus' prayer for the disciples; and Year C (vv 20–26), what might be called the whole people of God. All three, however, bring together, in glorious though penultimate conclusion, the first reading we all heard on Easter Day, namely that God shows no partiality and that Jesus, ascending to glory on the throne of the cross, is precisely concerned that his disciples live that nonpartiality out (as they will be empowered to do on Pentecost). . . .

Both the prayer and the energy for responding to the prayer are properly the work of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, work that has been fulfilled for us already. The task of disciples, and of the universal church, is not to effect or confect this, but to live it. –– Amandus J. Derr

FIRST READING: Acts 1:6-14

St. Irenaeus famously wrote in the second century that the glory of God is a person fully alive, or as one translator interpreted, “humanity at full stretch.” Today's texts are about our humanity as much as they are about Christ's divinity. They invite us to consider our glory as well as Christ's. Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, has been resurrected and glorified; now we humans by virtue of Christ's ascension have had our humanity glorified as well. To consider the incarnation is to consider the reality of God joining with humanity in Christ. Christ's ascension should not be understood as the separation of Christ's divinity from his humanity, returning each to their appropriate place. Instead, Christ's humanity was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven, and with it all humanity ascended. The glorification of our humanity has begun. –– Todd E. Johnson

EPISTLE READING: 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

In keeping with the thrust of the Epistles –– which is to help the church look to its furthest goals, its ultimate calling –– this passage tells the church to expect struggles and, in the face of them, to rejoice. The church is to endure hardships with humility, casting anxiety on God, for after a time “God of all grace, who has called you into eternal glory in Christ, will restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.”

                          

Amandus J. Derr is senior pastor of St. Peter Lutheran Church (ELCA) in New York City.

Todd E. Johnson is associate professor of worship, theology, and the arts at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Homily Service 41, no. 2 (2007): 172-182.

Being the Church – 17 May 2015 – Seventh Sunday of Easter

Lest we forget, being followers of the risen one has never been without peril. Believers have been persecuted, killed, ridiculed, shunned, and critiqued from the beginning. We make a strange assertion – Jesus was raised from the dead! – in a world that mostly cannot believe such a preposterous thing.

This Sunday – the last Sunday before Pentecost – makes clear that holding the church together has always been a struggle requiring the help of the triune God. Jesus prays for the church in the name of the One who sent him, and the Spirit enters into even the choice of new leaders. The church exists because of God’s work in our midst.

Where is God at work in your midst at this time? What can you point to as a challenge or a change in your community that has been guided by the power greater than any human achievement?

John 17:6-19

Following the final discourse before his arrest, Jesus makes an extended and moving prayer to the Father regarding the disposition of the apostles.  . . . Significant is Jesus’ understanding that those who have followed him belong to him and thus no longer belong to the world. Jesus asks three things: that [God make them] one … keep them from the evil one, and …  consecrate them in the truth. – Mary Katharine Deeley

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

In many ways the Ascension is the necessary predecessor to Pentecost and the birthday of the church. With the ascension Jesus leaves matters squarely in our laps and sends us to wait on the power of the Spirit. Even after the resurrection, waiting is part of the plan. And if waiting weren’t enough, the way ahead still is unclear and requires faith to interpret and discern. Jesus leaves in order to make way for his body, the church, to take its needed place. – H. Gregory Waldrop

Jesus ascended in order to be everywhere present and available, nudging and comforting.

That Christ is praying for us, his church in our time, is certain because we live in dire need of the truth that sanctifies. The church in contemporary society is so weakened and indistinct from the culture about us that it practically fails to exist. As some witty Christian—I can’t remember who—said, “Our church, in leaning over to speak to the modern world, fell in.”

Christ prays for us, because he has called us out of the world and its penchant for lies into a community of troubling truth. This means that the church has always had troublers—people who take convictions seriously enough to bring them up when nobody wants them to.   

. . . Troublers ask us to think about who we are and how we are different, and the reasons why we do what we do. The church has an opportunity to make a lot of money by investing its funds in profitable companies, and think of the great good it can do with the earnings. Yet, these companies are tied to practices and ways that are in conflict with the church’s own witness and values. Some are tied to defense industries and war.  . . . Some have poor labor practices, using people to the point of slavery. . . .

Some of the church’s own practices are less than true. There are those willing to compromise the message for the sake of winning new members, market the church . . . and turn the church into another entertainment industry for the sake of fitting into the culture and being user friendly. Then comes the troubler who asks, “Who is Jesus after all, and do we really want to advance the church in these ways that so compromise Christ and his message?” – John E. Smith

The church is called to live in the truth. Those who complain about the church’s actions (or our non-involvement in righting what is wrong in the world) are helping us to see how very much we are in need of Jesus’ prayer. How is the Christ who prays for us helping your community notice where its accomodations to cultural values reside? 

Mary Katharine Deeley is the director of Christ the Teacher Institute of the Sheil Catholic Center, the Roman Catholic campus ministry at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. She is the author of many books, a frequent speaker on diverse topics, and a pastoral advisor.

H. Gregory Waldrop was baptized in Mayfield, Kentucky in 1954 and ordained in Atwood, Tennessee in 1981. He is a United Methodist pastor serving Fountain Avenue United Methodist Church in Paducah, Kentucky.

John E. Smith has served as a United Methodist pastor for many years.

Homily Service 39, no. 6 (2006): 31-40.