May 14, 2026, Ascension Day, Year A

Luke 24:44-53, Acts 1:1-11, Psalm 110:1-5, Ephesians 1:15-23

Alleluia! He is risen!

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you on this Ascension Day.

We began this Easter season with Mary Magdalene weeping in the dark outside an empty tomb. The stone was rolled away, the body was gone, and then — a voice. Her name. And everything turned. Since that morning we have followed the risen Christ as he found his people: a locked room breathing new creation life, two disciples on an Emmaus road with burning hearts, the true vine and the command to abide repeated ten times across those eleven verses. This coming Sunday, on the Seventh Sunday of Easter, we will be the subject of the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in any of the Gospels. He will lift his eyes to heaven and pray for us in the High Priestly Prayer: “Holy Father, keep them in your name.” (John 17:11, ESV) That prayer was prayed on Maundy Thursday night. By the time he prayed it, the cross was hours away — and the Ascension was weeks away. Today, on this Ascension Day, we see that prayer being fulfilled.

The sequence the Easter season has been tracing is this: the resurrection inaugurates the new creation — the decisive victory, the first fruit, the stone rolled away. The Ascension enthrones its king — the risen Christ exalted to the right hand of the Father, all authority given to him in heaven and on earth. Pentecost, ten days from now, pours out its power — the Spirit falling like wind and fire, the Church empowered for its mission. We are standing at the hinge today. The resurrection is behind us. Pentecost is ahead. And between them, this: he ascended into heaven.

Today is Ascension Day — the fortieth day of Easter and one of the seven Principal Feasts of the Anglican liturgical year. It falls on a Thursday, forty days after Easter, in accordance with Acts 1, and it commemorates something the Church has never been able to say without a kind of breathless wonder: he ascended into heaven. The same Jesus who was crucified, buried, and raised bodily is now glorified in that same humanity, exalted to the right hand of the Father, where he reigns and intercedes for his people even now.

The Ascension is not the disappearance of Jesus. It is his exaltation. It is not the end of his nearness to us — it is the beginning of a new and greater intimacy. He does not leave his humanity behind when he ascends. He carries it — carries us, in some mysterious way — into the presence of the Father. And from that place, he does not retire into passive glory. He governs. He intercedes. He prepares a place. And he is coming back.

Our Gospel reading is Luke 24:44–53. It is the final scene of Luke’s Gospel — the risen Christ with his disciples one last time before the Ascension, and then the Ascension itself. It is a short passage, ten verses, but it carries the weight of everything.

Jesus opens in verse 44 with a statement that gathers the whole of Scripture into a single claim: “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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44, ESV) Everything. Not some things. Not the convenient parts. Everything written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms — the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures — pointing to him, fulfilled in him. And then verse 45: he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

That phrase is easy to pass over and it is one of the most extraordinary things in all of Luke’s Gospel. The disciples have been with Jesus for three years. They have heard him teach. They have seen him heal, cast out demons, raise the dead. And still, their minds needed to be opened. Understanding the Scriptures is not a natural capacity. It is a gift. The same risen Christ who opens the Scriptures on the Emmaus road — where the disciples’ hearts burned without them knowing why — opens the minds of the disciples here. This is what the Spirit will do at Pentecost on a wider scale: illuminate what has always been true, make visible what was present but unseen.

Then the commission in verses 47 and 48: “repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24:47–48, ESV) Witnesses. Not theorists. Witnesses — people who have seen something and cannot stop speaking of what they have seen and heard. The commission is not given to the qualified or the confident. It is given to people whose minds have just been opened, who are being told to stay in the city and wait for power from on high before they go anywhere. They are commissioned before they are equipped. The sending precedes the empowering — but only by ten days.

And then verses 50 and 51: “And he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.” (Luke 24:50–51, ESV) He led them. He lifted his hands. He blessed them. And in the middle of the blessing, he was carried up. The last thing the disciples see of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel is his hands raised over them in blessing. He does not leave them in silence or in darkness. He leaves them mid-blessing. Which means the blessing did not stop when he disappeared from their sight. It is still in progress.

And what do they do? Verse 52: they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Not grief. Not confusion. Great joy. This is the disciples’ own interpretation of what just happened, and it is the right one. The one they followed is not gone. He is glorified. And they know, because he told them, that he is sending the promise of the Father. They have ten days to wait. So they go back to the city, and they are continually in the temple, blessing God.

Luke wrote the Gospel and he wrote Acts, and Acts 1:1–11 is his own sequel to Luke 24. He opens it: “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up.” (Acts 1:1–2, ESV) Began. Everything Jesus did and taught in the Gospel of Luke was only the beginning. What comes next — Acts, the Church, the Spirit, the witness to the ends of the earth — is the continuation of what Jesus began. He has not handed the project off and stepped away. He has ascended to the place of all authority, and from there he is still at work, through his Spirit, through his Church, through the proclamation of his name in every nation.

Acts 1:9 gives us the physical detail Luke’s Gospel does not linger on: “he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” (Acts 1:9, ESV) A cloud. In the Old Testament, the cloud is the shekinah — the glory-cloud of God’s presence, the same cloud that led Israel through the wilderness, that filled the tabernacle and the temple, that appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration. The cloud does not obscure him from God. It receives him into glory. He is not swallowed by the unknown. He is welcomed into the presence he never truly left.

And then two angels appear and ask the disciples the most gently corrective question in Scripture: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?” (Acts 1:11, ESV) It is not a rebuke. It is a reorientation. The disciples are doing the natural thing — staring at the last place they saw him, as if looking hard enough might bring him back. The angels redirect them: this Jesus will come in the same way you saw him go. He is coming back. But the posture of the Church in the meantime is not upward staring — it is downward engagement, Jerusalem-ward, Spirit-empowered witness. The Ascension does not call us to mystical withdrawal from the world. It sends us deeper into it.

Psalm 110 is the most quoted psalm in the entire New Testament, and it is quoted precisely in the context of the Ascension and what it means. It opens with a verse Jesus quoted about himself, Peter preached at Pentecost, and the writer of Hebrews returns to again and again: “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” (Psalm 110:1, ESV) The enthronement of the Son at the right hand of the Father is not a new idea invented by the New Testament. It is a thousand-year-old prophecy being fulfilled on Ascension Day. The king who ascends is the king who was always coming. And verse 4 adds the dimension the Epistle to the Hebrews will spend thirteen chapters unpacking: “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Psalm 110:4, ESV)

King and priest. Both. The Ascension enthrones not only a king who reigns but a priest who intercedes. He does not sit at the right hand of the Father in passive triumph. He sits there as our great high priest, carrying our names before the Father, presenting his own blood as the once-for-all sacrifice that never needs to be repeated, making intercession for us with an authority no earthly priest ever had. As Paul tells us in Romans 8:34 — Christ Jesus, who was raised, is at the right hand of God and is indeed interceding for us. He wI’ll be doing it on the Sunday after Ascension Day when we preach John 17. He is doing it right now, in this room, for the people in these pews.

Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:15–23 is perhaps the fullest New Testament exposition of what the Ascension accomplished. He prays that the Ephesians would know “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.” (Ephesians 1:19–21, ESV)

Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. Every power that frightens us, every authority that claims ultimate allegiance, every force that seems to govern the world — the ascended Christ is above all of it. Not eventually. Now. The Ascension is not a promissory note to be cashed at the Second Coming. It is a present reality. The one who ascended is the one who holds all things together right now, this Thursday, in Hiawassee and in Jerusalem and in every place his name is proclaimed.

And then Paul names what this means for the Church in verse 22–23: “God has put all things under his feet and “gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22–23, ESV) The Church is his body. The ascended Christ who fills all things chooses to make himself present in the world through the community of people who carry his name. We are not a club of like-minded individuals. We are the body of the one who ascended, the fullness of the one who fills all in all. That is what we are. And it is his Ascension that makes it so.

The BCP 2019 Collect for Ascension Day prays it with a precision worth sitting with: “Almighty God, whose only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven: May our hearts and minds also there ascend, and with him continually dwell; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

May our hearts and minds also there ascend. This is not an invitation to escapism or mystical disengagement from the world. It is an invitation to arrange our lives around what is actually true rather than what merely appears to be true. Paul says it plainly in Colossians 3:1: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” (Colossians 3:1, ESV) Seek the things that are above. Not because the things below do not matter — they do, enormously, which is why the ascended Christ sends his Church into them — but because the things below only make sense when they are seen from above, from the vantage point of the one who holds all authority in heaven and on earth.

The disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God. They did not go home and close the curtains. They went back into the city. They went to the place of public worship. They waited with expectation, not paralysis. The ten days between Ascension and Pentecost are not ten days of absence — they are ten days of the most intentional prayer the disciples had ever prayed, because they had been told exactly what they were waiting for. The promise of the Father. Power from on high. The Spirit who would make them witnesses.

We are in those ten days right now. Ascension has happened — we celebrate it today. Pentecost is coming — ten days from now. The question the angels asked the disciples is the question Ascension Day asks us: why are you standing here looking into heaven? Not a rebuke. A reorientation. He is coming back. But between now and then, there is a city to return to, a community to pray with, a commission to live out, and a name to proclaim. The blessing he spoke over them at Bethany has not stopped. It is still in progress. It is over us, right now, in this place.

Three things for us to consider today:

First: the Ascension means he has not left — he has drawn closer in a new way. He is not absent from the world; he fills it. He is not absent from this congregation; he is present as our great high priest, carrying our names before the Father, interceding for us with a love and an authority that never sleeps and never fails. When we cannot pray, he is praying. When we cannot hold on, he is holding. The Ascension is not a loss. It is the beginning of a presence more intimate than anything the disciples experienced when he walked beside them on the road.

Second: we are the body of the one who ascended, and that changes how we understand what we are doing here. Every act of mercy, every word of witness, every Sunday gathering, every prayer prayed in a kitchen or a hospital room — these are not small private acts. They are the activity of the body of the one who fills all in all, carrying his presence into the places he sends us. Every time a neighbor is fed at the food pantry, every time a prisoner is visited in the county jail, every time a grieving family is comforted in these mountains — the ascended Christ is at work through his body right here. The Church is not a human institution that talks about Jesus. She is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. That is what we are. Act like it.

Third: he is coming back, and that is not a distant theological abstraction — it is the horizon that gives everything else its shape. The angels said it plainly: this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go. The same Jesus. Bodily. Visibly. In glory. History is not drifting. It is moving toward a destination. The one who ascended is the one who will return, and the community he finds when he returns is the community he is shaping right now, through his Spirit, through his Word, through this Table, through the ordinary faithful acts of ordinary people who have staked their lives on the promise that he is who he said he is.

He led them out to Bethany. He lifted his hands over them. He blessed them. And in the middle of the blessing, he was carried up into heaven.

The blessing is still in progress. Go back to the city. Wait for the promise. He is coming.

Let us pray.