240509 Sermon for Ascension of our Lord May 9, 2024

Rev. Michael Holmen's Sermons

Audio recording

Sermon manuscript:

If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be? Maybe some of you remember a commercial for the powerball lottery. In the commercial different people catch the powerball, which had lightning coming from it if I remember correctly. With that powerball in hand they could point to their regular looking house, and they’d have a mansion. They could point to their regular looking car, and they’d have a Ferrari. If you won the lottery, then you could buy a lot of stuff you can’t afford now. Would that get you what you want?

Winning the lottery, however, is not very likely. That commercial was a bit fanciful. In “real life” you have to keep your goals reasonable.

Since we are so used to living “real life,” it is easy to manage our expectations too thoroughly so that we don’t even begin to grasp the meaning of Christ’s ascension. We get so used thinking we can’t have everything we want—that’s fairy tale stuff—that we don’t believe in what the ascension means. The ascension means that Jesus is Lord. All rule and authority and power and dominion have been put under his feet. The inheritance we will receive from God because of Jesus is beyond our imagination. Paul says, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

Although we can’t fully grasp what God has prepared for us, it is important to try. If we don’t try, then we won’t get it. At best our imaginations will be limited to those powerball kinds of wishes, and those powerball kinds of wishes are not high enough. Eben the highest kind of wishes that you might have with the lottery aren’t high enough.

Suppose there would be some kind of lottery that would enable you to suck up every last cent and every last piece of property on this earth. All other human beings become your slaves. Nothing happens without your say-so. Even after winning this lottery so that you are some kind of god on this earth—that would not be good enough.

To try to grasp our inheritance we must think higher. We must think about God. There are many things we could think about with God, and they would all be good, but tonight I’ll limit myself to just a couple things: life and love. We’ll begin by talking about life.

Life comes from God. God is the creator. From the smallest thing to the largest thing—all things come from him. We might wonder at the power of the sun, the vastness of the universe—these things come from God. On a more personal level, we all have a craving for life, because whenever we have tasted it we have so thoroughly enjoyed it.

Another word for enjoying life is fun. Fun comes in different shapes and forms that vary with each person. One has fun with his or her mind. Another has fun with his or her heart. Another has fun with his or her accomplishments. Romance, friends, laughter, fear, pity, weeping—these are all interesting facets of life. People want to live rather than die because life is good. Life comes from God.

Love, also, comes from God. John in his epistle even goes so far as to say that “God is love.” Love draws people together so that they are one. Giving love is reaching out to bring in the other. Receiving love is when you have been accepted and brought in. We all know by experience how good this is. We also know by experience how bad the opposite of this is. We have all experienced rejection: “No, you aren’t one with us.”

Think of how this happens with children. Second, third, fourth grade—all of a sudden there are in-groups and out-groups. The in group is to be loved and admired. The out group is lesser and are given to know this by being shunned or mocked. The kids get shuffled and sorted, usually on the basis of things that they have no control over. Kids are just like us. They want to be recognized and admired. To be reviled and humiliated is painful.

What can be done about this? It’s unbelievable how common it is for people to believe that nothing can be done. People are just like that. There’s no other choice but to accept it. It’s along the same lines as winning the lottery. It is very unlikely that you are going to win the lottery, and so you must adjust your expectations accordingly. We live in the midst of so much that negates life and negates love, and the best that our smartest people can do is to throw up their hands and say, “So it goes.”

This defeatist, despairing philosophy is as powerful as it is unchristian. Despair is the opposite of faith and hope. To say that everything is just going to stay the same is a denial of Easter. It is a denial of Christ’s ascension to the right hand of God the Father.

I began tonight by asking, “If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?” We don’t take that question seriously. What if we did? You can have anything you want. That’s actually the meaning of Easter and the Ascension. You can have anything you want.

There’s a catch, of course, although it’s not really catch. You can’t wish to suck up every last cent and every last piece of property so that all people are enslaved to you and you sit atop the world as though you were some kind of god. God’s not going to feed you hog slop like that. Hog slop like that is reserved for the hogs. Nor is God going to make it so that you are better than everyone else, so that you can be worshipped with all of your magnificence.

But if you want good things—high things that have to do with life and love and all of the other marvelous attributes of God—if you want good things, then you can have anything you want. Jesus said, “I came so that you may have life and have it more abundantly.” Again Jesus said, “I have spoken these things that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Whatever you want is yours.

It’s just a matter of time. Maybe we will not have as much life and love and other divine things in this life as we would like, but that might be because we have not prayed for them like we should. But even in the worst case scenario, the maximum we will have to endure is probably 80 years. Most of us are much further along than that. Then we will have whatever we want, and what we will want will only be the good and high things instead of the gross and ugly things. Such is the power of our Lord Jesus Christ that is put on display with his resurrection from the dead and his ascension into heaven.

Jesus’s power is certainly a theme tonight with all of our worship. We have already sung, “Look ye saint the sight is glorious.” We’ve sung, “This is the feast of victory for our God.” We’ll thank God for Jesus’s ascension before receiving the Lord’s Supper. We’ll sing some rousing hymns about about crowns and glory during the distribution. These songs of praise are fitting for the Ascension of our Lord. Jesus is more powerful than everything and everyone except God the Father.

The rulers and authorities and powers and dominions would have us believe life is just the way it is, and we have to accept it. They are wrong. They are dead wrong. Things don’t have to stay the way they are. Things can’t stay the way they are. Jesus is risen from the dead. Jesus reigns and rules at the right hand of God the Father. You are on the winning team. You are baptized into Christ. When Jesus comes again you will be caught up into the air to live with him. Whatever you want will be yours, and only those things that are good will you want.

This is good news.