"Going Up?"

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:46-53

When I was a little kid I remember going shopping with my mother in downtown Flint. And I remember how at Penny's and Smith Bridgman's there used to be elevators which were run by persons who sat on a little stool in the corner by the door. And these professional elevator operators would sit there with their hand on a handle that looked a bit like a throttle. If you pushed it one way the elevator would go down. If you pushed it the other way the elevator would go up. But if the handle was put into the middle position the elevator would stop. And, I remember how, if you approached the elevator while on the ground floor, the elevator operator would look at you and ask, "Going up?" And, if you wanted, or sometimes if you didn't want to hear it, he or she would also tell you what was on each floor. The elevator operator was useful in other ways, too. If a little child got onto an elevator without his parent, the elevator operator would find the child's parent before making the elevator go. In many ways, those elevator operators acted like store security. And I'm sure that more than one elevator operator turned in a shop lifter or made sure that young persons didn't joy ride around the elevators, like they sometimes do today.

And I always wondered how much those elevator operators were paid to do that all day long. Certainly, their job was an important one, for back then elevators weren't automatic. If a person got onto one of those elevators by himself and went up to the fourth floor the elevator couldn't go back down by itself. Somebody had to be in there making the thing run. It was in the late fifties that those elevators were changed to run automatically. So, no longer do you have your human directory to all of the floors of the building sitting there available to answer any question you may have about which floor something may be on. And, no longer do you have your person in charge of making sure that little children don't use the elevators without their parent. And somehow, I have always missed the voice of the elevator operator asking the question, "Going up?"

Perhaps this question, "Going up?" has a little more meaning for me today, because today is Ascension Sunday. It is the day, forty days after Easter that Jesus went bodily up into heaven. Indeed, the scriptures tell us that only one other person went bodily to heaven. That person was Elijah, taken up to heaven at the end of his ministry by a whirlwind that looked like a chariot of fire pulled by horses of fire. And, Jesus went up to heaven, but he didn't need a chariot of fire or a whirlwind to bridge the gap between heaven and earth. Rather, we are told that he simply levitated toward the sky, for he was the vehicle, he was the means by which the gap between heaven and earth may be crossed.

This bit of symbolism was very obvious to the person living in Jesus' day. For the average person living back then, there were many gaps between one place and another which could not be crossed. Bridges were a marvelous thing to people living back then. But they were so rare that the word "bridge" doesn't even appear in the bible. And if someone wanted to go on a sea voyage they were considered to be brave persons, indeed, because travelling by sea was very dangerous.	And most people living in Jesus' day rarely travelled more than twenty five miles from their homes. For travelling was a difficult, expensive, and often treacherous thing to do. So, for Jesus to have bodily bridged the gap between earth and heaven was a marvelous thing. And it said that if a person wanted to also bridge that gap, then he had to put his faith in Jesus Christ.

Today, we pride ourselves in being able to go anywhere we decide we want to go. A person can fly to London in about six hours. Or, if they take a supersonic plane they can make the trip in about three hours. And now I hear that there are plans on the drawing boards to build a space plane that can fly from New York to Tokyo in about an hour by actually going into sub-orbit like an intercontinental ballistic missile. You can even rent a submarine, if you want to go down into the depths of the ocean.

No, indeed, there doesn't seem to be any place we cannot go if we want to. Except that no one can go back and forth to heaven, at will. None of us can buy a ticket for the next train to heaven. There are no jet planes taking off for a safe landing at the Pearly Gates. Rather, it seems, and the Bible seems to verify it, that the only way to heaven is through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. For, as the story about the ascension of Christ points out, Jesus is the only Way.

Today, however, there are so many people who are enamored with the things they are able to do. Turn on the television and you can be entertained far better than you might be if you went to church on Sunday morning. Or, get in the car and drive for a few hours and you can see sights that glitter and satisfy and give pleasure. Indeed, there are so many things for people to do today, that they're so busy doing them that they have little time to sit down and think about the spiritual necessities of life. Folks move so fast from one worldly thing to the next that they can't find time to concentrate on the thing that matters more than anything: Jesus Christ. We even want our religion packaged for us, and done for us, so much so that we rebel if we are asked to in some way participate in some response to what God is saying to us. Indeed, what once took three hours to do on a Sunday morning in church two hundred years ago, we seem to think we can get done in no more than 55 minutes.

So, we have our instant travel packages, we have our instant soup and instant breakfasts, and instant coffee, and instant milk, and instant cameras. It's little wonder that so many people think that the gap between earth and heaven shouldn't also be in some kind of an instant package. But, the gap between earth and heaven isn't instant. Rather, it involves the participation of God's people, worshipfully, and purposefully, joined together in the Body of Christ, under the Lordship of the ascended Jesus, sitting at the throne of God, himself. And that doesn't happen in 55 minutes. And, indeed, it can't even happen in three hours. For participation within the worshiping Body of Christ means joining those saints who have worshiped God throughout time, by the power of his Spirit.

The Holy Spirit was very important to the early disciples of Jesus. And before Jesus left them to ascend into heaven, he promised to send them the Spirit. Jesus explained that the Spirit would give them power to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

How important is the Holy Spirit to us? We certainly need to ask that question periodically. And there's an easy way to tell how important the Spirit is to us and how involved we are with the Spirit by simply reading our lesson from Acts for today. For, as Jesus said, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses." Indeed, the Christian who has received the power of the Holy Spirit is unstoppable. Nothing will keep the Spirit filled Christian from making inroads for Christ in the lives of others. The Christian who has received the power of the Holy Spirit is the person who gladly and generously shares his or her prayers, presence, gifts, and service for the sake of the work of the Body of Christ. And Spirit filled Christians love people so much that they are willing to go to the cross rather than allow one person to perish because they didn't hear about Jesus.

And, so, the question stands, and I ask it again: "How important is the Holy Spirit to us?" How tuned in to what the Spirit is doing are we? Are our favorite things the things of Jesus. Or are the things of Jesus only a temporary diversion, something that we keep in a box to pull out maybe 55 minutes a week? Do we really mean it when we sing, "I Surrender All?"

Finally, when Jesus told his disciples that he would send the Spirit to fill them and give them power to witness, they wondered when God was going to usher in the day of the Lord. To this question Jesus said, "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority."

Some of you may have heard or read about the cult group out in Wyoming who have gathered together at the foot of the Grand Tetons to see the day of the Lord ushered in. Their minister claims that that day will come by the end of this month. And, so, the 10,000 members of this cult went and sold everything they had and bought the things they thought they would need in the last days. And they've gathered all those things together and have begun to wait. In the meantime, some of the gasoline that they had secretly hoarded in underground tanks has leaked out so that now they have to pay big fines to cover the cost of the clean up.

If only these people had paid attention to Jesus' words to his disciples that it is not for us to know the dates and times when God's judgment will come. Jesus didn't want to tell his disciples when God's kingdom would come because he wants us to be ready at all times. Jesus wants us to be full of the urgency to share the gospel with others that comes only when you think that the end could come at any time. Jesus wants us to be involved with the church in such a way that we feel our spiritual destiny depends upon it because this could be the day!

I am reminded of the story of how on one of his expeditions to the Antarctic, the great English explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, was once compelled to leave some of his men on Elephant Island, with the intention of returning for them and carrying them back to England. But he was unavoidably delayed, and by the time he could go for them he found to his dismay that the sea had frozen over and his men were cut off. Three times he tried to reach them, but his efforts ended in failure. Finally, in his last effort, he found a narrow channel through the ice.

Guiding his small ship back to the island, he was delighted to find his men not only alive and well, but all prepared to get aboard. They were soon on their way to safety and home. After the excitement ended, Sir Ernest inquired how it was that they were ready to get aboard so promptly. They told him that every morning their leader rolled up his sleeping bag, saying, "Get your things ready, boys, the boss may come today."

As Jesus' disciples watched him ascending into heaven we are told that two angels dressed in white told them that Jesus would come back just as he had left. But we do not know the day. We only know that the boss may come today. Amen.