Come on, we all want to know. How did it happen? What really happened? The ascension of Jesus. And if we think about it in Christian art, or in our own minds and imaginations, we have this image of Jesus, we’ve all seen it, on a cloud being raised up to heaven, the disciples carefully watching and wondering what was happening. Today, we celebrate that wonderful gift of our faith that Jesus, the Risen Lord, has Ascended to heaven. And the important thing is not to get caught up in the what and how it all happened. Because if we do, we will lose the truth, the theological truth of what we have heard in the story today.

The truth is this: Jesus, the Risen Lord, the Ascended Lord, the Paschal Mystery is something that we now celebrate and live in and are a part of in our everyday lives. We ask ourselves, or think to ourselves, “So what?” “What does that really mean?” Well, it means this: we’re mortal human beings. We know our time on this earth is limited, but we live now in the hope of the Risen Ascended Lord, Jesus Christ. Death no longer has power over us. So, what I want us to think about today is simply this: this message of hope, this good news of the Risen Ascended Lord. It began with the disciples spreading that word 2,000 years ago, and let’s think about where that word has gone since then.

It’s here in you and me right now. And just as the disciples came to know Jesus, the Risen Lord, the Ascended Lord, in the breaking of bread when they gathered, we know the Risen Lord, the Ascended Lord today in the breaking of bread and in this community gathered. Now, the question is, in faith, hope, and love, how will we go out and share this wonderful, this great good news?