I begin today with two stories about Ascension:

Story One:

Larry Walters was a truck driver, but his lifelong dream was to fly.
When he graduated from high school,
Larry joined the Air Force hoping to become a pilot,
but his poor eyesight disqualified him.
So when he finally left the service,
Larry had to satisfy himself with watching others fly the fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over his backyard.
But even so,
as he sat there in his lawn chair,
Larry still dreamed about the magic of flying.

Then one day, a brilliant idea dawned on him.
Larry went down to the local Army-Navy surplus store and bought forty-five weather balloons, and several tanks of helium.
Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn chair.
He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep,
and inflated the balloons with helium.
Then he packed a few sandwiches and drinks, and a loaded BB gun,
figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to return to earth.
His preparations complete,
Larry sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord.
His plan was to lazily float into the sky, and eventually back to earth.
But things didn’t quite work out that way.

When Larry cut the cord, he didn’t float lazily up;
he shot up as if fired from a cannon!
And he didn’t stop at just a couple of hundred feet either.
No, Larry climbed and climbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet! At that height, he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons,
lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying.
So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen hours,
totally at a loss about how to get down.

Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles International Airport.
A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet, with a gun in his lap,
Now that would have been a conversation I would have given anything to have heard!
As dusk fell, Larry began drifting out to sea.
At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him,
but the rescue team had a hard time getting to him because the wind from their copter blades kept pushing his home-made contraption farther and farther away. Eventually, they were able to hover above him and drop a rescue line,
with which they gradually hauled him back to safety.

As soon as Larry got his feet on the ground, he was arrested.
But as he was led away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out,
“Sir, why’d you do it?”
Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly,
“A man can’t just sit around!”

Larry Waters, it would seem, could give mainline churches a lesson or two in getting off their collective rear ends and doing something about fulfilling their primary task as Jesus outlines it in today’s readings from the gospel and Acts.
But before I go into this too much,
let us review story two from Acts .

This story is several hundred years older than the story of Larry Waters.
In it, Luke mentions that a group of disciples had gathered together with their teacher who had died on a cross,
but who was now mysteriously with them as a risen presence.
Recall the passage that was read just a few minutes ago,
and how Luke describes what happens.

So when they had come together, the disciples asked Jesus,
“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.”
When Jesus had said this, as they were watching,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven,
suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.
They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?
This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven,
will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Now there are a number of observations we can make about this story,
one of which is that even after more than three years of hearing Jesus teach and preach,
the disciples still don’t get it.
They are still expecting Jesus to do all the work,
and in this case that means setting up an earthly kingdom with him as emperor and them as his princes.

Lord, are you going to do now what we have been waiting for you to do all along?
Will you finally make things the way they were for us in our glory days under King David?
Will you make it all right for us again?
make us a strong nation once more?
and make your people,
your chosen people,
into the powerful and privileged people that chosen people should be?

Yes, we know about those dark days of your death,
and we have heard your teaching about suffering and cross-bearing,
but enough is enough, already.
It’s time to get down to the bottom line.
So Jesus, what are your plans?
What are you going to do now?

And in reply Jesus simply tells them that he is leaving,
and that now they have work to do.
In Luke’s gospel Jesus puts it this way:
You are witnesses of these things,
and in Acts he adds:
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.”

But even though Jesus is quite clear about the disciples’ new job description,
when he leaves,
they just stand there, gawking up into the heavens.
They don’t even think about moving until two angels tell them to get going.
If it hadn’t been for that, they might still be there today.

And that brings me back to the present time and today’s church.
Most mainline churches are struggling to stay open,
let alone thrive and grow.
Oh, they may claim to want growth,
but the fact is that they really do very little to make it happen.
And it’s not that they aren’t busy,’
but they are busy doing all the wrong things.
When it comes to being witnesses of Jesus and his life and love,
they become strangely immobile.
They may say all the right things,
but they do little or nothing to fulfill their primary calling and purpose.

They remind of one of the characters in a favorite show of mine from years ago,
the Andy Griffith Show.
In one episode Andy and Barney are sitting on the front porch swing.
It is a quiet night,
but a little hot and so after a few minutes of silence,
an eternity in TV time,
Barney slowly says,
“Well, you know what I’m gonna do Andy?”
No, what’s that, Barn?
Well, I think I’m going to get up,
walk down to the drugstore,
and get me a sodapop.
Yep. That’s just what I think I’m gonna do.

You know what happens?
Nothing. Barney never does get off that swing.
He just sits there,
much like so many churches today.
And the sad thing is this:
when the church doesn’t do it’s job,
it is not the only one that suffers.

There is a legend that tells of Jesus and a conversation he had with the angel Gabriel following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.
Gabriel approached Jesus and said, “
Master, you must have suffered terribly down on earth.”
Jesus replied that he had indeed suffered a great deal.
Gabriel then asked,
“And, do all the people know and appreciate how you loved them and what you did for them?”
And Jesus answered,
“Not yet. Right now only a handful of people in Palestine know.”

Gabriel was perplexed. He asked,
“Then what have you done to let everyone know about your love for them?”
Jesus replied, “I’ve asked Peter, Jame

s, John, and a few other friends to tell other people about me.
Those people will spread the word, too.
Then, ultimately, all people will have heard about my life and what I have done.”

Now, Gabriel frowned and looked rather skeptical,
for he knew the stuff of which people were made.
He said, “Yes, but what if Peter and James and John grow weary?
What if people who come after them forget?
What if people in centuries to come don’t tell others about you?
What will you do then?”

And Jesus answered,
“I haven’t made any other plans.
I’m counting on them” (“Parables”, Jan 1984).

When Jesus ascended into heaven to be with his Father,
he left the church with us.
We are His body.
There is no alternate plan.
And as a part of Christ’s church,
we at FUMC either share the good news of the Risen Lord, the Ascended Christ,
with those around us,
or we fail in our primary calling to be his witnesses in the world.
And though we can sit around or stand around as though we don’t have a call to fulfill,
the price we will pay is continued decline and increasing irrelevancy.
Others will heed the call to be Jesus’ witnesses,
and we will simply die.
It need not be like this, of course,
for as Jesus said, and I repeat once more:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Writer and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor has imagined those apostles standing on the Mount of Olives looking up into heaven. She writes:

No one standing around watching them that day could have guessed what an astounding thing happened when they all stopped looking into the sky and looked at each other instead.
On the surface, it was not a great moment:
11 abandoned disciples with nothing to show for all their following.
But in the days and years to come it would become very apparent what had happened to them.
With nothing but a promise and a prayer,
those 11 people consented to become the church,
and once they did that,
surprising things began to happen.

They began to say things that sounded like him,
and they began to do things they had never seen anyone but him do before.
They became brave and capable and wise.
Followers became leaders,
listeners became preachers,
converts became missionaries,
the healed became healers,
and disciples became apostles,
witnesses of the risen Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That probably was not the way they would have planned it.
If they had had their way,
they would probably have tied Jesus up so that he could not have gotten away from them,
so that they would have known where to find him and rely on him forever.
Only that is not how it happened.
He went away – he was taken away –
and they stood looking up toward heaven.

Then, they stopped looking up toward heaven,
looked at each other instead,
and got on with their commission of being Christ’s witnesses,
Christ’s body on earth.
To this day, too many Christians still stand staring up in heaven,
or worse yet, sit around doing little themselves,
waiting for something to happen,
waiting for Jesus to do something about the church, the world, our own lives,
when we ought to be getting on with the commission we have clearly been given, of being Christ’s witnesses,
of being Christ’s body, his hands and his feet, on earth.
We must finish the work Jesus began.

Some of you have probably heard of Giacomo Puccini,
an Italian composer who gave the world some beautiful music.
But in 1922, only 64 at the time, he was diagnosed with cancer.
Though very ill, he continued to work on the opera Turandot,
which many people consider to be his best.
Some tried to convince him not to waste his limited energy on a piece he could not
possibly finish but he pressed on.
When he death was near, he said to his students:
“If I do not finish Turandot, I want you to finish it for me.”

Puccini did not finish the opera,
and after his death his students gathered together all of the scores and his notes, studied them with great care,
and then finished the opera.

The opening performance took place in 1926 and was conducted by one of Puccini’s students.
When he reached the place where the his teacher had stopped composing the conductor put down his baton,
turned to the audience and said to them,
“Thus far, the master wrote, and then he died.”
No one moved and no one made a sound for several minutes.
Then the conductor picked up his baton again and said,
“But his disciples have finished his work.”

On the day of his ascension,
Jesus disappeared in a cloud before the eyes of the disciples and is finally hidden from their sight.
The disciples just stood there looking intently into the sky and they hear voices from two men dressed in white saying,
“why do you stand here looking up into the sky?”
Now though we may laugh at Larry Walters because he did such a drastic thing without thinking it through,
it is the same message that came to the disciples,
“A person, even a church, can’t just sit there” or even “stand around” as the case may be.

Let us pray:

Risen, ascended Lord, how you trust us.
You have handed over your ministry into our hands,
and we are often so feeble, frail, and sinful.
Yet, you trust us to continue it.
Forgive us when we have failed you,
when we have not followed through with the mission you began.
Help us to so know your mind and spirit, O Christ,
that we can continue your work in the world around us today.
In his own name we pray.