Ascension Day Transferred
Some Thoughts on Ephesians 1:15-23
"The final phrases of a Jewish-styled opening berakah prayer of blessing join in this text to a Christocentric thanksgiving in 'prayer report' form."
Commentary, Ephesians 1:11-23, Sally A. Brown, All Saints C, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.
"What meaning is communicated by the language of prayer not otherwise made available?"
Commentary, Ephesians 1:15-23 (Christ the King A), Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.
"Most of our prayers are taken up with ourselves or with those nearest and dearest to us. Needs of others occupy a small place in our prayer life. Paul’s prayers are included by the Holy Spirit as a corporate part of the epistle."
"The Calling and Design of the Church: A Study in Ephesians," by Lehman Strauss at the Biblical Studies Foundation.
Prayer
You have glorified your Christ, O God, exalting to your right hand the Son who emptied himself for us in obedience unto death on the cross, and thus have exalted all of us who have been baptized into Christ's death and resurrection. Clothe us now with power from on high, and send us forth as witnesses to the Messiah's resurrection from the dead, that, together with us, all the nations of the world may draw near with confidence to the throne of mercy. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
"Incarnate Love, Crucified Love, Risen Love, now on the wing for heaven, waiting only those odorous gales which were to waft Him to the skies, goes away in benedictions, that in the character of Glorified, Enthroned Love, He might continue His benedictions, but in yet higher form, until He come again!"
From the Commentary on the Whole Bible (Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, 1871).
"The mission of the church here is nothing less than to go into the world as God's people, and proclaim a subversive, transforming message about a suffering God who calls anyone without discrimination to respond."
Lectionary Commentary and Preaching Paths (Easter C7), by Dennis Bratcher, at The Christian Resource Institute.
Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text
Leading up to the passage chosen for Ascension day Luke is telling a very clear story. Jesus prophesied a coming reign of God. The empty tomb shows that the prophet king was telling the truth. The old prophecies made by the greater and lesser prophets of Israel telling about the suffering servant who will come to remake a new Israel are true. This is proved in the resurrection appearances. Jesus himself in life and post resurrection offering a new vision of life lived in the kingdom. He opens their minds to see what they did not see before. The disciples are eyewitnesses to the new reality and they are to ministers interpreting and retelling the story.(Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke, 405)
The disciples will not be left alone. God is sending the Holy Spirit. It cannot come and be fully in the world until he departs. Moses and Elijah who offered a vision of this new reign of God and have been part of the Gospel story throughout are reminders that the power of God is always passed on to the successor. (LTJ, Luke, 406) In these last paragraphs of the Gospel of Luke we see clearly that instead of anointing one with the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, the disciples as a group are to receive the Holy Spirit and pass it on.
These last verses of Luke's Gospel are pregnant with the clarity that we are the inheritors of the good news of salvation. We are to be the inheritors of the vision of a different reign of God. We are the inheritors of God's mission to the poor. We are the inheritors of God's prophetic voice which passes along to others what we have received.
You have glorified your Christ, O God, exalting to your right hand the Son who emptied himself for us in obedience unto death on the cross, and thus have exalted all of us who have been baptized into Christ's death and resurrection. Clothe us now with power from on high, and send us forth as witnesses to the Messiah's resurrection from the dead, that, together with us, all the nations of the world may draw near with confidence to the throne of mercy. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Some Thoughts on Luke 24:44-53
From the Commentary on the Whole Bible (Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, 1871).
"The mission of the church here is nothing less than to go into the world as God's people, and proclaim a subversive, transforming message about a suffering God who calls anyone without discrimination to respond."
Leading up to the passage chosen for Ascension day Luke is telling a very clear story. Jesus prophesied a coming reign of God. The empty tomb shows that the prophet king was telling the truth. The old prophecies made by the greater and lesser prophets of Israel telling about the suffering servant who will come to remake a new Israel are true. This is proved in the resurrection appearances. Jesus himself in life and post resurrection offering a new vision of life lived in the kingdom. He opens their minds to see what they did not see before. The disciples are eyewitnesses to the new reality and they are to ministers interpreting and retelling the story.(Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke, 405)
The disciples will not be left alone. God is sending the Holy Spirit. It cannot come and be fully in the world until he departs. Moses and Elijah who offered a vision of this new reign of God and have been part of the Gospel story throughout are reminders that the power of God is always passed on to the successor. (LTJ, Luke, 406) In these last paragraphs of the Gospel of Luke we see clearly that instead of anointing one with the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, the disciples as a group are to receive the Holy Spirit and pass it on.
These last verses of Luke's Gospel are pregnant with the clarity that we are the inheritors of the good news of salvation. We are to be the inheritors of the vision of a different reign of God. We are the inheritors of God's mission to the poor. We are the inheritors of God's prophetic voice which passes along to others what we have received.
Some Thoughts on Ephesians 1:15-23
"The final phrases of a Jewish-styled opening berakah prayer of blessing join in this text to a Christocentric thanksgiving in 'prayer report' form."
Commentary, Ephesians 1:11-23, Sally A. Brown, All Saints C, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.
"What meaning is communicated by the language of prayer not otherwise made available?"
Commentary, Ephesians 1:15-23 (Christ the King A), Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.
"Most of our prayers are taken up with ourselves or with those nearest and dearest to us. Needs of others occupy a small place in our prayer life. Paul’s prayers are included by the Holy Spirit as a corporate part of the epistle."
"The Calling and Design of the Church: A Study in Ephesians," by Lehman Strauss at the Biblical Studies Foundation.
Christ has been raised and now is elevated. This particular passage comes after the developed theme of the church as Christ's body. The elevation of Christ emphasizes the themes from Revelation that God has dominion overall and that the church is participating even now in the new kingdom. Christ is even now pouring himself into the new emerging Christian community. Together we are even now being drawn towards the fulfillment of God's desire to gather us in. We may, in fact, live in the not yet like Paul's own little faithful community, but the hope is present in the victory of Christ raising and his elevation into heaven.
Some Thoughts on Acts 1:1-11
"As you can see, Ascension Day, especially for us Protestants, is a hard sell, or perhaps better, well past its sell-by date."
"Speculators or Witnesses?" John C. Holbert, Patheos, 2012.
"The second coming, or Parousia, brings the ultimate closure to the story of the kingdom and the gospel. But that is not to be the focus of the disciples? attention. Instead, Jesus shifts the emphasis from speculation about the future to demonstration and transformation of the present. God's promise to revitalize Israel is not a matter of when (v. 7), but how (v. 8)."
Commentary, Acts 1:4-8, Gina M. Stewart, The African American Lectionary, 2008.
"You and I are the place of the promise of the kingdom now. Yet ultimately the kingdom is God's reign, God's effort, God's gift. We are not asked to usurp God, but to share his purpose and by his Spirit become his action in the world."
"'Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?' (Acts 1:6)," William Loader, Being the Church Then and Now: Issues from the Acts of the Apostles.
This passage is used in both the feast of the Ascension (A, B, and C years) and on Easter 7A. It is the prologue to the book of Acts. In it, Luke begins by writing to Theophilus and making it clear that the first books were about “all that Jesus did”. The second book though is about all that is done by God through the power of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles. This is a book about mission and how the first followers of Jesus chose to respond to the events of Jerusalem and Galilee. That the teaching, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus forever changed the friends of Jesus.
The resurrected Jesus appeared to the followers of Jesus in many forms. Jesus was ever more real and present after his resurrection than he was, in some ways, before his resurrection. And, that his promise was to be with them to the end of the ages, by virtue of the power of the Holy Spirit.
Luke understands this work as the great restoration of the kingdom of Israel. This was not a political kingdom or a coup of the existing reigning powers and authorities. Instead, Luke appears to grasp the great expansion of the kingdom from primarily an inheritance for the faithful family of Abraham to include all sorts and kinds of people. He has a vision, God’s vision, that his mission work is to offer the reign of God to all people in every land and of every nation. Here we see an expansion and glorious multiplication of invitation from the cross which echoes after the resurrection throughout the whole of creation to all humanity.
Luke does this through a weaving together of the past and an expansion of the present for the sake of the future.
Jesus like Elijah is to be taken up into heaven. Luke has cast him as Elijah but with a global prophecy.
Luke also builds this first chapter to echo the first chapters of his Gospel wherein the Angel promises that the reign of God, through Jesus, will be restored. “He will reign of the house of Jacob,” and, “His kingdom will have no end,” says the Angel. So the restoration is, to begin with the coming of the Holy Spirit after the ascension. What was foreshadowed in the Gospel will not be unveiled or unraveled in the Book of Acts.
Richard Hays, in Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, writes, “…the witness bearing of Jesus’ disciples that the nations are to receive the light of the revelation that Isaiah promised…” foreshadowed by Simeon and the whole of the Gospel narrative. (272)
We are of course always reading backward from our perspective. But Luke is careful to interpret the Old Testament prophecies, especially Isaiah, as always having meant that this light, this restored kingdom of Israel, is one that includes the gentiles.
The task here for the missional preacher is to think carefully about who we are speaking to in and what the invitation to us is. It would be normal for us to read back in that, in fact, we are the Gentiles and Luke’s prophecy, and the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit has been successful for here we are. Yet Luke’s missiological premise and our responsibility cannot be shirked so easily. The question for the sermon hearer and church goer is: who are our gentiles today?
It is my contention that we now hold the place of the religious in the Gospels or the disciples. We are the ones now responsible for answering the Holy Spirit’s invitation. The mission that once was to the “gentiles” is still held out to this church. It is an invitation to bear the light to all those who still live in darkness. And, to do so as disciples and bearers of that light. We were once far off, we were once the gentile, but no longer. Today we are the ones who shall be part of helping God in Christ Jesus restore the reign of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Whether we read this passage on the last day of Easter or on the Ascension, hear Luke’s invitation to tell the story of the risen and ascended Lord to the world.
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