Looking Toward Heaven
“Looking Toward Heaven” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! It is good to be back with you this morning. This Sunday, in case anyone is counting, is the seventh and last Sunday of the Easter season — Easter was six weeks ago. A lot has happened at Creekside and with Creekside leadership in the past six weeks, especially with our garden ministries: the Prayer Garden has been tidied up and the stream is running between the ponds, a memorial bed has been planted, and as of this weekend, tomatoes, peppers and potatoes have been added to the cabbage and onions which were already in the garden on the property, and about 30 containers have been planted and distributed to neighbors and friends of Creekside. All of this is in line with the season and this being the Sunday before Pentecost. Pentecost was a Jewish harvest festival, 50 days (pente- means “five’) from Passover, or seven weeks or 49 days from Easter. Of course there was a lot going on in the life of the disciples since Easter which had nothing to do with planting or harvesting. The gospels are all a bit vague about what specifically Jesus was up to or an exact timeline for the weeks following Easter, but there seems to be agreement that within a few weeks of his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven, and was no longer physically present on earth. We probably get the clearest timeline from Luke/Acts.
The title of this sermon “Looking Toward Heaven” may be an indication of where my thoughts have been lately. Some of you know that I had a birthday this past week, and as I get older, I find I am spending more time thinking about the hereafter. Mostly I walk into a room and think: now what was I here after?
Meanwhile, back in the text. The last verse of Luke, chapter 24 verse 51 has this fairly optimistic tone, “While he was blessing [the disciples], he withdrew from them and was carried into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” And then we go to Acts, which references the first book — the gospel of Luke — and re-narrates Jesus’ ascent into heaven and the disciples’ return to Jerusalem. The action is the same, but the tone is a bit different. The book of Acts is setting up the drama of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
The disciples, understandably, are eager for Jesus to restore the kingdom of Israel — the political solution which Jews had been straining toward and Jesus had been resisting. Jesus dodges a specific answer about when that will happen, but gives some specifics about how it will happen. In verse 7 Jesus days, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth.” And then Jesus is lifted up and a cloud takes him out of their sight. And the disciples are left staring into heaven, a little like watching a long fly ball hit toward the left field fence — he’s going, going, and Jesus is gone. What now?
And while the disciples are looking up, two men in white robes appear — you can’t help but think of the white-robed folks at the empty tomb — and they say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” It isn’t exactly a rebuke to the disciples, but the implication is Jesus just told you that you were going to have the power to be his witnesses everywhere — why are you standing around here?
It is difficult logic to ignore, but what I want to explore today is how we can look toward heaven and still be witnesses on earth; or to put it another way, how we can keep our eyes on heaven and keep walking without falling all over our feet. First of all, I think the guys in white were kind of hard on the disciples. At least, if I had seen my Lord and Savior taken up into heaven in a cloud, I’d certainly be craning my neck to figure out what just happened. Of course looking toward heaven is a natural response — not only to big supernatural things but even to more natural things, such as discerning what we should do next, looking for guidance in times of doubt or trouble, or looking for comfort and promise in a time of loss. Heaven should be a source of guidance and hope — and it’s hard to get too much hope.
On the other hand, if we are spending all our time standing around looking toward heaven, we’re probably not making much progress toward Jesus’ charge to be witnesses in Jerusalem and everywhere else. The Holy Spirit’s power, I believe, is intended to help us do stuff for the kingdom of God. It isn’t an either/or, it’s a both/and: we have both the hope of heaven and the charge to be Jesus’ followers on earth. There is a healthy tension here which I believe is part of being a Christian in a world where the kingdom of God is not yet fully realized; we are always between the here and now and the not yet, rejoicing in what we have been given and longing for what is still to come. This tension, I believe, gets at the purpose of a Christina life. And while that purpose may be manifested differently with different personalities and different gifts, it must, I believe, include loving God and working for the mission of God in the world. When those things get separated, we get, in the words of Christian activist Shane Claiborne, “activists who are unbelievers and believers who are inactive.”
Looking toward heaven for comfort, for guidance, for hope is a fine thing to do. But if we get so caught by what’s in heaven that it doesn’t change anything about what we do on earth, that comfort, guidance, and hope doesn’t benefit anyone but ourselves. The reason to work to make earth a place of justice, compassion, and discipleship is because that benefits me and my neighbors. Jesus is coming back here and is sending the Holy Spirit to give us power for the work until he does, and the kingdom is finally complete. We cannot bring about the kingdom of God through our own work, but with the help of the Spirit, we can work to make things better while we’re here. The Spirit does more than make us feel good and console us in our grief that Jesus is no longer physically with us.
If you read the rest of Acts chapter 1 you see that the disciples do indeed return to Jerusalem, along with other followers of Jesus — about 120 people, including Jesus’ mother Mary and his brothers. They devote themselves to prayer, but part of that prayer is discernment about how and whom to call as a disciple to take the place of Judas, who took his own life after he betrayed Jesus. This may not seem like a significant step — although I’m sure it was significant for Matthias, the newest apostle — but I think it is significant that Jesus followers are moving forward in prayer, not simply waiting for something to happen to them. They are not only looking up, they are moving forward.
So, men and women of Elkhart — and wherever you are joining us from on our livestream — it is good to look toward heaven. We hope heaven is our final destination, and there are people whom we love there, and a whole eternity to praise God and not worry about the future. We are on our way, but we are not there yet. And there is a whole lot of stuff in our world which is not even close to looking like the kingdom of God: we can’t simply stand in one place and look up, as Christians we are called to look around and ask, What would Jesus do? What did Jesus do? What is the Holy Spirit empowering us to do? What are our gifts and our passion and how can those intersect with the needs of our neighbors? We need to look to God, but keep our feet moving forward.Next week we are going to hear more about Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit to the believers in Jerusalem, and what that meant for what they did next. If you don’t already know that story, I invite you to read Acts chapter 2 before next week. Wear red, orange, yellow, or white as a sign of the Spirit’s presence among us, and we’ll be doing lots of singing next week and calling the Spirit of the Lord to come down. My prayer will be for all of us that we look toward heaven but keep our feet moving. Amen.