June 1, 2025
Easter 7/Ascension, Year C
2 Kings 2:1-15; Acts 1:1-11; John 17:20-26
Epiphany, Winnipeg
1 Sometimes there’s too much going on, and we can’t hang on to it all all at once. So I’m going to distribute things here and there, things for you to hold on and remember and even pray for while we wander through these next ten or twelve minutes….
Here goes. This is for you down the middle to hold on to for us. It’s Pride season in Winnipeg, and right now, even as we speak, the Pride parade is underway. It’s a big celebration, where there’s so much joy and fun for so many people. And for some people, it still seems kind of weird. However you feel about it, keep it in mind for us all, OK? Hold up the fun of it all, or the weird of it all, and remember too that a lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community are genuinely afraid, on both sides of national and provincial borders. A party in downtown Winnipeg can be so much stronger than all of that fear though, even if the fear comes back. So you hold onto the pride thing, OK?
On this side over here hold on to this: in the ELCIC and the Anglican Church in Canada today is Jerusalem and the Holy Land Day. Remember and pray for our Lutheran and Anglican companion churches throughout that troubled part of the world. Call to mind the people of Gaza who are living through a disaster that just doesn’t seem to be close to ending…and don’t forget about everyday Israelis who are angry or afraid. So you on this side hold onto all that, OK?
Over there, on the north side of the church, you keep in mind the news that we’ve all been consumed with this week while northern Manitoba is on fire. And Eastern Manitoba. And Saskatchewan too, and…well, you know. Thousands of people evacuated and communities in the line of fire, and all that. Remember Pukatawagan, where evacuation is so slow. Remember Flin Flon, where some of us or someone we know might have roots or friends or family. It’s so much. So you over there make sure this doesn’t get forgotten, OK?
Back there doing sound and you two playing the music, hold on to this: There have been a lot of tears shed over this week. Last weekend was my father-in-law’s funeral weekend, and yes, tears were shed. On Wednesday we gathered with family and a few close friends for Emilie Hack’s funeral, and tears were shed, along with laughter and good memories. Our good friend Gene won’t be joining us in the usual pew today, and there are tears being shed for Gene, and there will be more. So you back there and right here remember that sadness that so many are feeling (and maybe you are too?). But at the same time there’s been gratitude and good stories and laughter because the people we mourn, with names like Milt and Emilie and Gene - and who else - these ones have just been such a good gift to us. Hold that up too, OK?
Look at that: In just a few minutes, we’ve gathered up so much of what life seems to be like. None of us can handle holding up all the things and remembering them all on our own. so we hold them up, piece by piece, together.
2 Hang on to all that while we go back a few days. Thursday was Ascension Day, a day that for most of us goes largely unnoticed, but in places like France and the Netherlands and Namibia and Haiti and Indonesia and a lot of other places it’s a national holiday. It happens forty days after Easter, when as we heard the story in Acts today, Jesus was taken up into the clouds. His closest friends are gathered together with him; they’re a mix-and-match collection of people with all sorts of lives. They’ve have experienced so much over the past forty days: The grief of seeing their friend put to death and the wonder and confusion and joy of hearing and seeing that he’s alive again. They’ve felt fear when they were sure it wasn’t safe for them where they were, and a lot of them knew the lonely experience of fleeing and hiding. The’ve all tasted the gift of being able to break bread with Jesus again and have the whole gang back together around the table. They’ve had forty days to carry around and sort out trauma and the beginings of healing, and joy and confusion and safety again. Forty days to settle into life with Jesus being back with them, and then one morning, he just kind of goes away. Maybe someone said, like we do, “Jesus is risen!”, and then he just kept on rising. They watch as the clouds take him away, and then they’re alone again.
It’s strange, you know. All these things going on – pride, Gaza, fire, sadness and gratitude and joy too – and in the middle of it all is a festival where we remember and somehow celebrate…that Jesus went away. It almost seems like Jesus is getting out of this messy world. As though the world is something to be escaped rather than embraced, left behind rather than loved, renounced rather than remembered.
Here's another Ascension story: on Thursday morning a handful of us – eight, I think – went for a walk at King’s Park. We were trying out what in The Netherlands and other parts of Northern Europe is a really big tradition on Ascension Day, a tradition called Dauwtrappen, which in English would be something like “Treading the Dew.” I’m still not sure what an early morning walk in the grass or on a paved path has to do with the Ascension story, but there was something Ascensiony going on that day. Here we were, just a small group, a mix-and-match collection of people with all sorts of lives. All of us there had experienced so much over the past forty days. Some of us had experienced grief, and for some of us it was still pretty fresh. We all knew some of that joy and gratitude that can also come along with grief when we remember people and places we’ve left behind or who have left us behind. I think we probably all had wildfires somewhere in our minds, and for some of us Pride Week and the parade today were there in our thoughts somewhere because that’s just life. It’s close to home for us and for people we love. We’d all known fear sometimes and my guess would be that it wasn’t just me in that group of dew treaders who would some days just rather hide somewhere alone. We all had our stuff going on. Some of it we talked about, and some stayed in our hearts.
And we were close to that first Ascension Day. Jesus told that mix-and-match group of people who had gathered with him that they would be his witnesses all over the whole world. Over the next months and years they would tell two friends what they have seen and heard, and those two friends would tell two friends, and they’d tell two friends, and it wouldn’t take long – two thousand years is a really short time in a billions of years old universe – it wouldn’t take long until there would be people walking in a park on the other side of the world, all because Jesus and his friends gathered on a hillside and watched while a cloud took Jesus away.
Did you notice what happened next in that first Ascension story? A couple of strangers suddenly show up, and they say to the disciples gathered there, “Why are you looking up to heaven? Jesus was taken up into heaven, but don’t worry – he’ll be coming back.” So they stop looking for Jesus in the sky, and they go back to their lives – back to being together and praying together. They return to their daily lives, and we did on Thursday morning and we do the same today. We return to our daily lives of being fishers or carpenters or tailors or farmers or engineers or clerks at the Coop or lawyers or bus drivers or homemakers or pastors or students or retired.
We walk back through the morning dew to the lives that we know, where places like Gaza and Pimicikmak and the people who live there are on our minds, and where we walk in Pride Parades or other places where celebration and joy are so much stronger than fear or disdain; where we’ve all known something of all kinds of grief and we’ve known gratitude and we’ve received comfort and care from the ones around us. And we walk together as the ones whom Jesus prayed would be one – a mix-and-match of all kinds of everything who are held together as one people by the Spirit of Jesus who has lived among us all these centuries and centuries; a mix-and-match who are held together by the love of God that has been all around us and in us through all of the centuries and millenia and eons that there ever have been.
Happy belated Ascension Day. The big event is Jesus being taken up into the clouds, but the really big event is all of us being sent out into our lives in the world. Ascension sets us free from looking to the sky or just wondering about heaven. This feast of Ascension sets us free to go into the world. And so we started the day today setting out in the morning dew. We’ve trodden or driven or pedalled our way through it and ended up here. We’ll have a breakfast of bread and wine, and we’ll set off into the world that we pray for and where we belong…speaking and living good news in a place that is so filled with the love of God…so filled with the Spirit and love of Christ who will be here, among us, in the fresh morning air of every new day.