May 17, 2026
Easter 7 Year A
Acts 1:6-14;
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
This past Thursday was Ascension Day, which always falls forty days after Easter, two Thursdays before Pentecost Sunday. We heard a version of that Ascension Day story a few minutes ago, as disciples and some more women and Jesus’ mom and brothers watch him as he’s taken up into the clouds.
So let’s try this: Christ is ascended! Christ is ascended indeed! Hallelujah!
Be honest now: how many of you took note that this last Thursday was the feast of the Ascension? I’m guessing that most of us didn’t really take note. There were five of us who went for an early morning walk in King’s Park on Thursday, which I’ve always said is following a Dutch tradition of an early morning walk or bike ride on Ascension Day. A Dutch friend of mine told me about it, but this last week, one of the people in our walking group asked a Dutch friend of theirs about the tradition, and their friend didn’t know what they were talking about.
Early morning walks or not, for most if not all of us there was no Ascension cake and there were no Ascension cards. We couldn’t complain that Easter Sunday was barely behind us and they’ve already got the Ascension decorations up at Canadian Tire….
It's not like that everywhere. In a lot of countries, like the Netherlands and Norway and France and Colombia and Namibia and Indonesia and Haiti, and more, Ascension Day is a public holiday. Kids get the day off school, some people get the day off work….It’s a big deal.
But around here Ascension Day is more commonly known as Thursday. Usually sometime in May.
So what about Ascension?
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in September of 1981 my parents drove me to Camrose, a small city or big town in Alberta, to drop me off at Camrose Lutheran College, where I would begin my university studies. I was seventeen, I was a bit excited….and way more nervous or afraid than excited, to be honest. I was pretty sure that this was somehow the beginning of my adult life, and I was pretty sure that adult life was probably a good thing, but still… I was in a community of around eight hundred students, and I knew precisely seven of them. High school studies had come easy to me, but I knew that in university I’d be a lot more on my own, teachers wouldn’t guide me along in the same way and there would be a lot lot more work. I knew that I was likeable enough and I’d probably make some new friends, but I also had that nagging worry that now, in a new place, new people might just find out the truth that I was actually kind of a dud.
And then, just after supper on that September Sunday, dad gave me one last great piece of advice - “Don’t take your studies too seriously for now” – and then mom and dad said, “Bye Paul, we love you, call whenever you want, see you at Thanksgiving.” Then we hugged, and I watched mom and dad, who had always looked after me, get into our family’s gigantic Buick LeSabre and drive away. Just like that.
And I wasn’t so excited any more; I was kind of scared. There I was, having to figure out my life. What’s next? How do I do this? And forty-five years later I ask the same question, and maybe you do too.
Maybe it’s a bit like that for these disciples of Jesus, standing out there in the field on an Ascension morning. They’ve sort of grown up with Jesus, or at least been with him and seen and heard all kinds of things that will stick with them and change their lives and change ours too…they’ve mostly just followed Jesus around and looked and listened or looked away and just not paid attention – like a seventeen year old in Camrose in a lecture theatre… They’ve followed and just kind of done whatever came along next, and they’ve never been in control of the agenda or the plans or the day’s events.
They’ve been through the awful trauma of watching everything fall apart as Jesus is taken away and tried and killed. They’ve lived with their own shame or guilt of fear and loss in the days after he died.
They’ve been knocked over and picked up again by the crazy surprise of that resurrection that changed everything. In the last forty days those disciples have gone for long walks with Jesus, maybe in the morning dew. They’ve eaten with him again – more bread and fish! – they’ve touched him and listened to him and they’ve grown close and they’ve been forgiven for their part in whatever had gone wrong . It’s been a bit like it was before but it’s all just so brand new.
And they’re never in charge of the day’s events. No plans, no agenda, they’re just living with whatever comes next, and figuring out how to live again now that Jesus lives again.
And now, it’s forty days after Easter. They’re expecting great things to happen, so one of them speaks for all the others and asks, “Lord, is this the day when you’ll restore the kingdom to Israel? When you’ll make it like when David was king?” You know, when you’ll make our nation great again? And Jesus says, “It’s not for you to know the right times and places. But you’ll receive the Holy Spirit in awhile – soon - and then you’ll be my witnesses.” And then he disappears. They all stand there looking up at the clouds, and two men in white show up out of nowhere and say, “Why do you stand there looking up to heaven? He’ll come back, the same way you saw him go away.” Then they disappear, and all those people who had been there with Jesus all that time are left on their own again. There’s no timeline for when he’ll come back…unless “soon” counts as a timeline. Just, “He’ll be back.”
So they go back to the house…and they pray. They’re kind of left hanging again, with no plan, no clear path, not quite knowing where all this is going. Just waiting for what they’ve been told will happen.
And they pray.
That whole thing is our story too. For two thousand years now we’ve had to figure out our life together without anyone telling us to do this and then do that in any great detail. It’s almost like Jesus said, even to us “I love you, call anytime, I’ll be back,” and then was driven away in the Buick and now we’re on our own.
Oh, and he said this too: Just before he pulled the door shut and was driven away (sorry, I’m kind of liking that image), Jesus said, “You’ll receive the Holy Spirit, and when that happens you’ll receive power. Not power to win or to dominate, not power to get rich or succeed, but power like I’ve got. Power to love, power to forgive, power to care, power to serve, power to lose life, power to receive life. And you will live and speak that loving and caring power wherever you go. Right to the ends of the earth.”
And that’s all we need. The presence of the Spirit. The presence of the Spirit of the one who said, “I’ll be back.” The presence of the Spirit of the One who said “Love like I have loved.”
We live in a timeline over which we have no control. We as a church set goals, we put together vision statements or strategic plans, and that’s all fine but we really, really, really cannot control the timeline of our life together. We’ll plan for the future and try to be responsible with our money and with all the gifts we’ve been given, but we don’t know the timelines of our own life or of any of the life around us. We don’t know where this neighbourhood is going or what our country’s future is, or when Gaza will just get to be Gaza again or when we will see what reconciliation in this land really is. We don’t know the times or ways that things will be made right again. All we know is that this is where we are called to be. And the Holy Spirit calls us into the world, with love and life to share.
We’ve got these lives to live, this life to live. We don’t know the timelines or the outcomes of what we’re doing. But there’s something beautiful, something gracious, something life-giving, about not knowing the timeline – or as Jesus says, “Not knowing the times or the periods, not knowing the day or the hour.” When we don’t know the timeline, we don’t need to try to control it or pretend that we do. What did the disciples do? They went to the room and prayed. Later on we’ll hear that they shared all their stuff, and that they broke bread together. And then they went into the world and spoke of resurrection, and talked about Jesus, and they taught and healed and shared their bread and decided to welcome people they never would have welcomed before. They got arrested and had debates, they lived and they died and trusted the word that they would live again….
They became a community, we are still becoming a community, where all the great and strange and wonderful and weird variety of humans can come together and belong. They didn’t need a timeline. We don’t need a timeline. We’ve just got this crazy good news that Christ is risen and life wins, and because Christ is risen life will always and finally get the last word.
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. There’s our timeline. And in the meantime, Christ is ascended! Christ is ascended indeed.