Ascension Day is not one of the most-celebrated holidays in our corner of the Christian tradition. The festival is based on the accounts in several of the Epistles as well as the report at the end of the Gospel of Luke, repeated in the first chapter of the book of Acts. In both accounts, Jesus is taken up into heaven right before the eyes of witnesses. It is a scene that is difficult to imagine for several reasons. It makes it seem as if heaven is a physical place that is located above the clouds, as is a common image. I remember a conversation I had as a teenager with an elder member of our congregation. The US space program was nearing the first manned journey to the moon and the elder was concerned that all of the rocks were disturbing heaven. In the mind of this person, shooting rockets above the clouds was a physical invasion of a sacred space. I didn’t understand heaven in the same way and had no fears that we could somehow technologically create travel to heaven.

Ascension Day is the 40th day of Easter, and so lands in the middle of the week and not on a Sunday. The celebration of Ascension Day has never been a big part of the religious traditions in the congregations that I have served. I’ve never preached an Ascension Day sermon. But I’ve decided to break the tradition this year. On this coming Sunday I plan to depart from the lectionary and preach on the ascension, even though it will be three days late.

Ascension Day is a public holiday in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Indonesia, Luxembourg, The Netherlands , Norway, Sweden and Vanatu. Secular observances of the holiday focus mainly on the eating of spring foods: lamb asparagus, avocado and new potato salad. In Germany Ascension Day is also Father’s Day, sometimes called Men’s Day. The Thursday break from work is marked by a significant amount of drinking. One report states that alcohol-related accidents triple on ascension day. The tradition dates back to at least the 18th century as a way to celebrate Jesus returning to the Holy Father.

The theology of Ascension is a bit confusing. Most Christians understand the basic tenants of Christian Doctrine. In Jesus Christ, God came to the earth in human form. This divine embrace of humanity was so complete that Jesus suffered and died as a human. On the third day, Jesus was resurrected from the dead and appeared win bodily form to his disciples. So far most Christians follow the story of faith. But then what happens? Obviously Jesus is not present with us today in a physical form. The Biblical answer is that on the 40th day he was bodily transported to heaven. The resurrected Christ in bodily form was present with his disciples for a mere 40 days and then his body was gone from them with a promise of a return.

We live in that time between the ascension and the promised return. Jesus is not present with us physically.

In a sense, a celebration isn’t quite the right mood for the day of departure.

I’ve experienced enough days of departure in my life to know that such days are more likely to inspire tears than parties. I sometimes joke that my wife cried all the way home after walking our son to his first day of Kindergarten. She also cried all the way home after we delivered him to his college. The difference is that his kindergarten was a few blocks from home and his college was 1,300 miles from home. Days of departure are a challenge.

We experience departures in other ways. I’ve witnessed the emotional departures that accompany the breakup of a marriage. I’ve watched as loved ones slip away through increasing bouts of memory failure. I’ve been around as families dissolve into conflict over property and possessions. And I’ve been present at the moment of death of quite a few people. Except in the cases of sudden and traumatic loss, we don’t usually lose a loved one all at once. We lose them bit by bit. Maybe it starts with a decrease in focus, or a failure to remember a particular event. Maybe it starts with learning to accept a disability or a challenging illness.

Luke reports that Jesus left in the middle of blessing his disciples. “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.” (Luke 24:51) It is almost as if he departed mid-sentence. Did the disciples receive the complete blessing? Did some of them close their eyes and just not see what happened? Like so many biblical stories, we are left without all of the details and questions come to our minds.

What we do know is that this process of leaving is a part of our faith story. When family travels to a distant place and we have to say good bye, we learn a bit of leave-taking. Our faith teaches us that we are not the first generation to have experienced those feelings of sadness at the departure. The bittersweet feeling of love and loss lies at the center of our story and the core of our faith.

In Pennsylvania there is a church with a beautiful series of contemporary stained-glass windows depicting scenes from the Gospels. They are so beautiful that they invite those who see them to look at them individually and think of the biblical scenes shown. I was examining them one by one and came to the last, the ascension. I giggled out loud at the scene. In the window, all you can see is the bare feet of Jesus sticking out of the bottom of a cloud. The image seems almost like a cartoon at the end of this series of serious scenes. It is as if the artist is saying, “That’s all folks!”

Maybe the artist got it right. We can’t explain it. We are simply invited to accept it. And if we can do so with a smile and a laugh - all the better.

Copyright (c) 2019 by Ted E. Huffman. I wrote this. If you would like to share it, please direct your friends to my web site. If you'd like permission to copy, please send me an email. Thanks!