A few months ago a man came by the church who I did not recognized.  I went out and greeted him and he said was a member of the church many years ago, but goes some place else now.  Apparently, he was cleaning out a desk and came across this note.  He has asked the pastor at the time what this stain glass meant.  Those are the kind of questions ministers love, by the way.  I guess it was one of those right after worship questions because the pastor did not just tell him then, he wrote it out.  For those of you who are new or just do not know, this stain glass was dedicated September 28, 1969.  It is a representation of the Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, which was our reading this morning.  That pastor’s note lifted up several things about the ascension.  It noted that the ascension is the continuation of the resurrection, that the ascension marked the end of Jesus’ earthy ministry, and that ascension gave a universal range to Jesus’ work.  What is remarkable about those statements, is that you would probably not have gotten any of that by looking at that stain glass.  You could get Jesus going up to heaven on clouds from this image.  And that is the danger of these stain glass images.  You get the image of a moment frozen in time.  You do not get the whole story. 

          In fact, during the 1500s and 1600s, many churches were stripped of all of their stain glass and all the decorations inside, as well, because it was believed these images distracted people from the proper worship of God and even more so kept people from reading their bibles.  Why read your bible when you have picture of it right there?  And that’s dangerous because that picture right there does not tell the whole story.  It does not tell you about all the stuff from the pastor’s note.  It does not tell you what the disciples were doing. And it does not tell you what the disciples were told to do.  It is great artwork even edifying, but if you really want to know about these stories and have them be apart of your faith, you have to look at a little more than a snap shot.

          The apostles were doing what we were just doing, passively looking up at Jesus as he ascended into the clouds.  They were stuck in that moment.  It was almost like they too were looking up at a stain glass image.  They wanted to capture and live in that holy moment.  If you remember back to the transfiguration, an episode that closely mirrors this one, Peter wanted to build tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.  He wanted to prolong that moment, but Jesus told him and the rest to get up and go down the mountain.  There is work that still needed to be done. And that is what happens in our passage today, except instead of Jesus making the command the two men in white robes do it.  The men rhetorically and suggestively ask the apostles, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”  It is times like that where I always wish there was smart alic apostle to state the obvious.  Well duh, we are looking up at Jesus. But there was not and they get the hint and they go back to Jerusalem.  

          This is a significant development in the story.  The apostles could have stayed in that moment.  They could have stayed looking up to heaven, waiting passively on Jesus.  They could have made a little shrine there and never left that spot, gazing upward waiting for Jesus to come back.  And if they did, we all would not be here.  The church would not exist.  There would not be hundreds of millions of Christians around the world.  These things only exist because they did look down and come down the mountain and tell there story.  They spread the good news to all the people down here that not only did Jesus rise from the dead, conquer sin, and everything else, he ascended into heaven.  Right before Jesus ascended he told his apostle that the Holy Spirit has come upon them, that they are to be his witnesses in the whole world.  That witnessing changed everything.  And we know from the rest of the book of Acts the great travels that witnessing took the apostles on.  We know the fruits of that witnessing throughout the world in fact. 

          The danger of that moment lingers in time, though.  The choice between looking up expectantly to heaven and look down and around at what is going on down here.  Historically the times of greatest upheaval and reformation in the church have been at times when we were looking up a lot more than we were looking down and around.  Prior to the Reformation of the 16^th century huge, grand cathedrals were built that purposefully drew the eyes upward.  Ornamental walls, stained glass windows, and frescoed ceilings, like the Sistine Chapel, were employed to uplift the spirit of the onlooker and draw the worshiper’s eyes up to God.  And they did this.  They looked up, passively at very nice artwork.  And they did this while most of them had never read the bible, had never heard the bible (because the service was in Latin which they did not speak), never took communion because it was not offered to them and never heard the good news that they had been freed from sin and the Christ loved them.  One of the many things that the Reformation took seriously, was the earthly character of the church.  We can look expectantly to heaven, but there is work that needs to be done here too.  The bible needs to be read in your language, the good news needs to be shared with you in your language, the grace of God needs to be given to you down here through the Lord’s Supper as frequently as possible.  Another time of great upheaval in the church, many of you were alive to see: 1960’s.  The church changed dramatically during this time.  Some would say for the worse.  One of the dramatic changes of that time, though, was a renewed focus on the needs of the poor and oppressed.  For hundreds of years, mission work meant primarily saving souls.  Missionaries were sent out across the globe to learn the local language, share the gospel, and translate the bible into that language for them.  This is noble work.  Often times, however, this was done in the midst of acute starvation, pandemic disease, and widespread poverty.  And these were left largely undressed by the missionaries or the denominations that sent them.  The upheaval that took place during the 1960s sought to change that willful blindness.  The gospel needed to be shared, but on a full stomach.  The promise was no longer “pie in the sky after you die”, I guess it was pie now too.

          And that is the ironic thing about the ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven.  It has the opposite affect on us.  Jesus’ ascension is supposed to ground us more in the work that is left to be done down here.  We are not suppose to look solely upward waiting for Jesus to come back.  We are to respond to the question of the two men in white robes and look down and get to work.  We are to be Christ’s faithful witnesses to all the world empowered by the Holy Spirit.  We are to go to our upper room and pray and learn and prepare for our mission into the world. One of the things that note from earlier said, was that “the ascension gave universal range to His work of redemption.  His earthly ministry had previously had geographic limitations.”  Jesus earthly ministry was geographically limited to a certain area, a few days walk from here to here to here.  The change that happens after the ascension is that all the world becomes fair game.  Peter goes north.  Doubting Thomas is said to have gone to India.  Paul later travels all around the Mediterranean.  And now almost every corner has heard the good news.

          But just because the gospel has been spread around the world does not mean that we can stop.  There is work left to be done.  There are unchurched or underchurched people right here in our community.  People longing in the deep recesses of their hearts for something that they cannot even name.  They are longing for God.  We are going to be reading C.S. Lewis all summer long here at the church and one of my favorite images and a timely image for this day, is C.S. Lewis’s statement that humans and God are like an engine and gasoline.  We might wish, especially now, that there was something else that engine would run on, but it runs on gasoline.  They might be able to sputter along, but they need gasoline.  We need God.  The people in our community need God. 

          Last Thursday, we had a wonderful event with the children and parents of the Little Red Schoolhouse.  And we are going to be doing more things like that in the near.  The church and individuals have been inviting people to come and join us.  And that is wonderful.  We need to continue.  We need to continue to reach out.