I got the chance to preach in my home congregation yesterday and wanted to post the text here. In high school, I competed in extemporaneous and impromptu speaking (these were two different competitions with two different formats in Kentucky speech and debate, so I’m not just rattling off synonyms). This is something which has really impacted my life in terms of teaching me how to think on my feet. In the context of giving sermons, I usually know more or less what I want to say within a few minutes of reviewing the passage that I’m assigned to, though over the days and weeks that follow, I spend a lot of time figuring out the details of what I want to say. I really felt that with this sermon: The text I used on Sunday morning was the third draft of a sermon, and I even made some last minute changes over breakfast. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out, though there are parts of previous drafts that I missed, too.

My practice with public speaking also came in handy when I showed up at the church building on Sunday morning to find that we had a few guests, including a couple of high-up church leaders I’d never met before. Even after setting aside the leader worship that I acquired in Mormonism, it could have been easy to get thrown off by having important guests in the pews while I spoke, so I’m glad for all the practice I got in high school (and have had in the years since) about focusing on the speech and not the audience.

introduction

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44)

These first words from Jesus in today’s passage are a reminder that Christianity has always been about waiting. Waiting for the fulfillment of the promises of scripture. Waiting for better times to come.

The New Testament authors, like many Christians today, saw Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection as the fulfillment of prophecies that had been included in the scriptures that they grew up with. They saw their people as having waited for years, decades, centuries for better times to come, and their experience with Jesus represented a major step forward in that experience.

Now, this is not necessarily as straightforward as we may have learned growing up—often, these passages of scripture didn’t originally have a Christian purpose, but they have acquired new meaning for Christians as we try to understand all of scripture and all of life through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Whatever the details of what is prophecy and what is reinterpretation, one thing is sure: As long as there have been humans, we have been hoping and waiting for better times. As long as there have been Christians, we have believed that that those better times have come and will come through Jesus Christ.

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Today, we celebrate the seventh Sunday of Easter. One of the great joys I have experienced in the last few years of my faith journey has been to better learn the Christian calendar: Not just the big days like Christmas or Easter Sunday, but the small observances and the whole seasons that are there to guide our faith if we will let them.

As I’ve been preparing this sermon, I’ve been thinking about what it means to have seven Sundays of Easter—to have 49 days of Easter, which started all the way back on Easter Sunday and go all the way until next Saturday. What does it mean to have a whole Easter season?

I know about Easter Sunday, about having one, big, exciting day to think about the better times that we hope for as Christians. It’s a day for shared meals and energetic singing, to listen to one of Karen’s great Easter sermons and to look forward to the day that everything is finally made better than it is now. We need that day every year, because things aren’t better yet, and having at least one day every year to exercise our hope that it will be is really important. What does it mean to have 49 of those days?

ups and downs

Maybe it’s because sometimes one day isn’t enough. Maybe we need 49 days to build up enough hope for the rest of the year. And that’s important, because while Easter is the promise that better times are coming, it is certainly not a promise that those better times are already here. Because they aren’t. And that, too, is part of today’s scripture passage.

Today is not just the Seventh Sunday of Easter. It is also the Sunday that we celebrate Jesus’s ascension into heaven. This is a real celebration of a story that is worth celebrating. Today’s scripture tells us that after the Ascension, the disciples returned to Jerusalem “with great joy.” But! I’ve been surprised over the past few weeks to find myself wondering if that story could have turned out differently—if the Ascension could have been a moment of disappointment for the disciples.

Let’s put ourselves in their shoes. The disciples have just lived through a very busy time with a lot of ups and downs in their journey of faith. This time begins with Jesus’s triumphal entry. He enters Jerusalem riding a colt, and the disciples are there shouting:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19:38)

They are convinced that the better times they have been waiting for are almost there. They’re not totally wrong, but they have no idea what is coming. They spend a few days enjoying Jesus’s presence and listening to his teachings, but then the unthinkable happens: Jesus is arrested, tried, and executed. Now they realize that they are still living in the not-yet-better times—maybe they even ask themselves if times could possibly get worse than they are right now. They spend a few days mourning Jesus’s absence and remembering his teachings, but then the unthinkable happens: Jesus rises from the dead.

Let’s remember how this all plays out, though—at least in the Gospel of Luke. The women go to the tomb and find it empty. The women go back and they tell Peter. Peter runs to the tomb and finds it empty. Peter goes back and is a little bit confused. Two disciples walk the seven miles to Emmaus and meet a stranger on the road. They invite him to dinner and realize that he is the risen Lord. They walk the seven miles back to Jerusalem (a nice after dinner stroll) to share what just happened to them. The eleven disciples are all there, and they have stories to share, too: Peter has seen the Lord just like they have seen the Lord.

Over the course of a few days, they’ve gone from the highest hope to the lowest despair, and now their hope is higher than where it started. And then Jesus appears to them and eats with them, and the hope is even higher still. Now they wonder again if those better times are around the corner—maybe they even ask themselves if times could possibly get better than they are right now.

the unfair Ascension

But then comes the Ascension. Now, it’s important to remember that sometimes the Bible tells us the same story in two different ways. That’s true of the Ascension of the Lord, which we can read about in Luke and in Acts. Just about everyone who studies the Bible agrees that Luke and Acts were written by the same person, but for whatever reason, that author tells the story of the Ascension in two different ways. In Acts, the disciples get to spend 40 days with the resurrected Jesus before He returns to heaven. In Luke, they don’t even get 24 hours.

In Luke, all of these Easter stories happen on the same day. Early in the morning, the women find the empty tomb. It’s a couple of hours after dinner that the disciples return from Emmaus to Jerusalem just in time for Jesus to appear to everyone. But after some talking and some broiled fish, Jesus takes everyone on another walk all the way out to Bethany. It’s got to be late, but they’re all so excited because those better times are on their way—but then Jesus “[withdraws] from them and [is] carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51).

So, I’m glad that the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy, but my reaction might have been a little different. Lord, you just got here. We thought you were gone, we thought we had lost everything, we thought those better times would never come. We just found out that you’re still with us, we just found out that we haven’t lost anything at all, we’ve just remembered that those better times are going to come after all. Why do you have to go, Lord? Why can’t you bring about the better times now? Why do we only get one day with you?

I’m sure most of us can think of Easters that have felt like that. Last year, I had a wonderful Easter Sunday with all of you and then with my family, but then my Easter Monday was awful—my mental health was in a bad place, and for that day, I thought that better days might never come. Other years, I’ve enjoyed spending time with someone on Easter Sunday only to unexpectedly attend their funeral before the 49 days of Easter were even up. 49 days to build up Easter hope is better than just one Sunday, but sometimes the not-yet-better times don’t wait for the Easter season to be over to crash down on us.

So maybe it’s not about having 49 straight days of Easter to build up hope for the rest of the year—maybe it’s about giving ourselves Easter moments throughout the entire year to keep us going. To keep us hoping for better days even while we’re living through the not-yet-better days.

bringing each other Easter hope

And, of course, there’s one more lesson that we can learn from today’s passage. Mareva Arnaud Tchong, our denomination’s presiding evangelist, had this to say in a story posted to the World Church website this morning:

In Luke 24, before ascending to heaven, Jesus blesses his disciples. He could have left in silence, but he chose to pass on to them what he carried within himself: peace, love, and mission. He did not promise them a life without hardship, but rather a constant presence—a living blessing that would go with them.

What if we are called to do the same? To be living blessings, even in uncertainty? To offer peace and hope, instead of waiting for life to be perfect?

With this in mind, let’s pay attention to some of Jesus’s words that I skipped over earlier:

“repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in [the Messiah’s] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24:47-48)

Jesus isn’t just assuring his disciples that better times will come; he is asking them to be witnesses of those better times, to be ready to proclaim those better times. Think about it. Our Easter hope as Christians today is not because we were present for that one very busy day where Jesus rose from the dead and then ascended to heaven, our Easter hope comes because generations of Christians have shared that story and shared that hope.

Maybe it’s important to have our Easter moments—whether it’s 49 days in a row or scattered throughout the year—not to build up hope and joy for ourselves but so that we can find those who are going through not-yet-better times and we can make things a little bit better for them.

So, I can’t promise you that your last six days of this Easter season are going to go perfectly, that all of them will be filled with hope and joy in the way that we’d like. But these last six days of the Easter season are an invitation to look for hope and joy whenever we can, to build ourselves up on the foundation of Easter promises of better time to come. And as much as we do find that hope and joy, as much as we are able to build ourselves up, these last six days are an invitation to look for those who are struggling to believe in better times to come, and to lift them up through our love and our words and our actions, just as generations of Christian witnesses have done before.

Thank you.

• Ascension
• Christian calendar
• Easter
• hope
• joy
• Community of Christ
• Mareva Arnaud Tchong
• Richard James