Category: Sermons

May 29, 2022

Ike Kennerly

Today is called Ascension Sunday in the church calendar.  It acknowledges the final earthly words of Jesus to his followers, his leave taking and his commissioning of his followers to continue the work he has begun.

The picture that is drawn for us in the words of Luke is prime fodder for the artist and the film maker.  Many artists have painted their understanding of this event.  It always includes clouds and angels; Jesus is slowly ascending into this mysterious heavenly scene.  Left behind in these paintings are the disciples, some shrinking in fear, others gazing upward to get one last glance, all have a sad countenance at this leave taking, this disappearance of Jesus.  You can see how the film maker can take such a scene and do a Cecil D. DeMille thing and create an astonishing visual image of Jesus ascending to return to God the Father.

Unfortunately, you can miss the point if you become preoccupied with the “how”.  All these visual images of the ascension obscure the central message which is: Jesus had to depart.  It was necessary for Jesus to leave.  In order for the followers to assume their designated part in the unfolding drama of God’s redemptive action Jesus had to depart. He had to get out of the way.  Otherwise, the followers would have been glad to stand to the side and let Jesus do his ministries, sit at Jesus’ feet and listen and be bathed in the glory of God, follow and never have to lead.  The Ascension, the leave taking compelled the followers to get on with it.  The followers became the messengers of God, the bringers of wholeness and acceptance, the bearers of God’s mercy and love.  “The eyes of their hearts were enlightened”, according to Paul, and they knew the hope which lay before them.  Jesus had to leave so the followers could get on with it.  

The Ascension account in Acts is often coupled with the gospel story in Luke that talks about the Road to Emmaus encounter.  You probably remember this story: Discouraged and saddened followers leave Jerusalem after the crucifixion and on their way they encounter a person who accompanied them who did not seem to know what had happened in Jerusalem over the last few days. The followers told this stranger about Jesus, sharing all that Jesus had said and done.  When they arrived at the little village of Emmaus, they encouraged the stranger to rest with them, eat with them, for he seemed to be continuing his journey.  He accepted their invitation to join them. He took bread and broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew him.  And at that moment of recognizing their Christ, Jesus, he vanished. (Ascended?).  And they immediately hit the road again, traveling back to Jerusalem to tell the followers what they had seen and heard.  They could not keep silent about what had happened to them. 

These two accounts of leave-taking, Jesus leaving, end differently.  They are both from Luke – one from the gospel and one from the Acts of the Apostles. The response of the followers is in severe contrast.  In one there is unbridled joy and great excitement – the Emmaus followers could not keep quiet about Jesus coming to them even though he vanished from their sight. 

In the other, the followers show subdued wonder.  They stood looking up to heaven where they had last seen their Jesus.  They had to be prodded, “Why are you standing here looking up to heaven?”  In other words, quit just standing around, get on with it.

Followers, Jesus’ followers, have to decide what kind of response they are going to make when the eyes of their hearts are enlightened, when Jesus is recognized once again in the breaking of bread.  Unbridled excitement or subdued wonder?

I think Etowah is at such a point in its life and history.  What kind of response are we going to make to this Jesus who has come into our lives?  Are we going to sit and wait, hoping someone will enter into our lives and church and discover by coming that we are indeed followers?  Or is our joy and contagious love going to be seen wherever we are seen and thereby Christ is known.  This is not a task peculiar to Etowah.  Christendom is at a great determining time.  In those places where Christians have been the largest part of the religious community churches stand empty and indifference is the common response to the church’s mission.  The “nones” meaning no religious affiliation are the largest group – indifference and no thought of the church being relevant in their lives is the present reality.  The church has diminished, Covid did a number on us. Many people did not come back from the Covid fear.  They could quit – without explanation, sneak out the back door with no questions asked.  And they did.   The Christian Century reported about 47% of folks had returned after it was safe to do so. Now the church, the followers who hung in there, have to decide what’s going to happen now; lament what once was in former days or anticipate what is next what new thing God has in store for us. 

The ascension is a part of God’s intention for God’s people. Jesus had to leave so followers could do the work that Jesus had given to them.  We do not have the luxury of standing around, even if are standing around looking up into the sky hoping to see Jesus once again, hoping to see Jesus somehow returning.  Acknowledging that Jesus has gone is necessary.  It says it is time to get on with it, get on with being the hands and feet, the heart and mind of God as we live our lives, as we live in our community.

One of the important reminders of the Ascension, Jesus last words to his followers is this:  “Go ye into all the world and make disciples baptizing, teaching  And remember, I am with  you always.”   This great Commission as it has become known to us encourages us to get on with it with its strong “Go!”.  Jesus does not say. “Wait until the right or convenient time.” or “Hide out in your religious buildings.”  Jesus says, “Go!”  and so, as followers that is what we must do.  Will it be with unbridled joy or subdued wonder?  In either case we are called to get on with it.

By Ike Kennerly

May 15, 2022

TEXTS: Acts 11:1-18   John13:31-35

If you had one last message, piece of advice, direction to offer to those you love before you left, to see them no more, one last instruction what would it be?  Would it have to do with personal business, where important papers like the will, insurance policies, passwords, things like that could be found?  Or would it be about the things you regret in your life – what you wish you had done differently?  Or would it be how you hope the people you loved would treat each other, how they would hang on to the love they had and not let that be lost?  What instruction would you offer to those you love if time was running out and the end was near?

This is the situation we find Jesus in this morning.  He has had the last meal he will have with his followers, what we celebrate as the last supper. He has a not-so-clear conversation with Judas.  Judas leaves and even if the disciples do not know what Judas is up to Jesus does and we as well for we know the rest of the story.  Judas goes out to betray Jesus.  The end is near – Jesus says, “I am with you only a little longer.”  And then Jesus gives them this one last word of instruction:  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I loved you, you should love one another.  By this everyone will know you are my disciple.”

What is this love like that Jesus instructs them to engage in? We are helped by understanding what they expected and what Jesus offered.  There is a big difference.

The followers of Jesus had expected Jesus to be the new ruler – a King over God’s people, Israel.  And as that ruler Jesus would love them by protecting them from foreign powers – he would raise and equip an army.  He would love them by providing for civic order.  Laws would be established and maintained that would guide their daily living.  The least fortunate among them would be cared for; widows and orphans, the sick and the poor would be cared for by the king who would provide a safety net for those who lived on the margins. This idea of a benevolent loving king was not new to the people of God, Israel; it was just that no king had been able to fully live up to these expectations, no king had ever been able to love the people that much, self-love had always interfered with the best intentions. They longed for a king that loved them that much.

And what is new about this commandment–to love one another as Jesus has loved them–is found in his act of love to them as they gathered for the last meal together.  Jesus takes a towel and a basin and begins to wash their feet.  What king would ever engage in such servitude?  What group of followers who had high ambitions for their King would allow such servanthood?  That is why Peter objected so strongly to letting Jesus wash his feet.  Peter had not signed on to washing dirty feet.  He had dreamed of a loftier vision for Jesus and for himself as a Jesus’ follower. Jesus describes by his actions that night what this new commandment is like.  Love is serving others.  Love is an act of service. 

And so, we live into that new commandment in our own day: “Love one another. Just as Jesus has loved so we are called on to love.”   The difficulty for us is the same as for Peter and the others in this first disciple band!  We enjoy looking up to a heaven visualizing a place of glory rather than the ugliness and dirtiness that this world so often offers. We want Jesus as a heavenly king on a throne, light and joy, not Jesus on a cross, pain and suffering.  Love, love, love that’s what it is all about – so easily said or sung, only made real as it is translated into day-by-day life?

We can look to the book of Acts for insight, that first reading this morning.  It has to do with making a distinction about who God loves, about who Jesus loved and came for and died for.  Peter gets into trouble with the Jerusalem religious establishment.  It seems he has been doing ministry with the uncircumcised – believing he was led by the Spirit of God to tell these gentiles about Jesus.  Indeed, to believe that God’s Spirit had come to them even as it had to the Jews and those who had the the sign of this Spirit cut into them by circumcision.  Peter has been led to the gentiles by this strange vision of the sheet descending from heaven.  It is no little symbol that this happened three times.  Peter tells his critics in Jerusalem, “The Spirit told me to go and not to make a distinction between them and us.” Peter believes that God is at work in the world, at work in him and he must respond to this intrusion of God into his life sending him to do that which is difficult and contrary to what he has been taught and believed all of his life.  Peter is called to embrace this new command of Jesus – this admonishing to love one another, in a specific way. He is called to love the gentiles, those he would have avoided, turn his nose up at, rejected before Jesus gave him a new understanding.  And the religious leaders in Jerusalem who live by distinctions – what makes us better and more correct and acceptable- are horrified and angry that Peter makes no distinction – that he teaches that God makes no distinction, that Jesus would include these outside the rules in his wide embrace of love.

Peter says to this grumbling, critical religious people who live by their distinctions, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I should hinder God?”  In this story of the early Christian community Peter shows us this new command of Jesus, “Love one another.” Practice service to others.

It is perhaps one of the hardest things we are called to do as followers of Jesus, servants of the one true God – to make no distinction – to love those who have made a mess of life with poor choices and small discipline,

to love those who are in a different class and demonstrate with arrogance, signs of wealth and belittling that they think themselves better than we,

to love those who come from a different country, speak a different language, have different customs, refugees and immigrants as if they are brothers and sisters by the work of God’s Spirit.

And by looking at the news yesterday we find this is not some abstract, distant conversation.  Many are killed in a mostly black neighborhood store by an 18 year old who believes in white supremacy.  This concept makes distinctions – it is contrary to the teachings of Jesus. It is not some easy-to-ignore part of our culture, not just in Buffalo, NY but in  our own community as well.

Jesus’ new commandment calls us to not only believe that God in Christ has come to redeem us, and those who look and act and have a memory like we do, but by the Spirit’s work God has redeemed God’s whole creation. We are called to believe and act like God makes no distinction; to love one another as God in Christ has loved us and all people without distinction

In attempting to help the church to understand that God loves all people equally, St Theresa of Lisieux used an analogy that says we are all different flowers in God’s Garden.  We cannot compare ourselves one to the other for each of us is a different kind of flower with its own distinctive bloom and foliage, its own particular beauty and delight to God in God’s garden. It is indeed glorious for all its great variety.

We love one another recognizing each and every one as one of God’s beautiful creation a part of God’s garden and in doing that, others will know we are one of Jesus’ disciples.

Amen.