PRELUDE
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!
https://youtu.be/fA8mtf_DcL4
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah! His truth is marching on!
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah! His truth is marching on!
In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me,
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah! His truth is marching on!
GREETING
“At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, every tongue confess him King of glory now; ‘tis the Father’s pleasure we should call him Lord, who from the beginning was the mighty Word.” Amen. (PH, 197, 1)
CALL TO WORSHIP(based on Psalm 47: 1, 5, 6)
L: Clap our hands, all peoples!
P: Shout to God with loud songs of joy!
L: God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.
P: Sing praises to God, sing praises!
All: Sing praises to the King of all the earth, sing praises!”
HYMN
Oh, beautiful for spacious skies
https://youtu.be/LIFlsPf2I3g
1. Oh, beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
2. Oh, beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.
3. Oh, beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev’ry gain divine.
4. Oh, beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
INVOCATION
Let us pray...
“Jesus, Sovereign, Savior, once for sinners slain, crucified in weakness, raised in power to reign, dwelling now immortal, endless in your days, unto you be glory, honor, blessing, praise.” Amen. (NCH, 255, 1)
FIRST SCRIPTURE LESSON
Luke 24: 44-53: “Jesus commissions and blesses his disciples and ascends to heaven”
GLORIA PATRI
https://youtu.be/QUBxpypSblw
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen, Amen!
PASTORAL PRAYER
Let us pray...
O God, whose ascended glory exalts our spirits, whose beauty in this special season of renewal makes our lives more wonderful, and whose love in Jesus Christ melts our hearts to love you, we adore you, and we worship you. Subdue us by your forgiveness, and strengthen us by your grace.
O God of creative and infinite love, before the miracle of springtime’s rebirth, we bow in wonder and thankfulness. Before the glory of your love seeking us before we sought you and gifting us with the freedom of your children, we worship you with grateful and adoring praise. May we show forth our gratitude in joy-filled lives, concerned most with our obedience to you in Christ-like living—living in our families, our daily work, our recreation, and our citizenship.
And on this Ascension Sunday, we are especially grateful that you are the ruler of the universe and all that is, and that you blessed us with Christ’s glorious life, death, resurrection, ascension, and reign, triumphing over the cross, caring for all of us, and opening the way to eternal life. All glory and power be unto him.
O God of love untiring, you know what is best for your children, even before we know it. We ask your presence this day with all who need you most: those who are ill, hospitalized, or recovering, especially all those whose lives have been touched by this Corona virus; those who serve the sick, the vulnerable, the dying, especially all of our frontline caregivers, responders, and workers; those who grieve; those who are lonely; those who suffer in any way; those nearest and dearest to us. Give to each suffering and sorrowing person that which is best—your healing and comfort. Come in times of loneliness and despair in your own loving and quiet ways to each and every soul. Keep from wrong decisions those facing difficult problems; and guard from choosing the easy wrong all those who struggle daily with alluring temptations. And bring close about us, we pray, those in your unseen kingdom who once lived and served with us here.
On this Memorial Day Sunday, hear us too as we pray these special prayers: that we remember those who have loved us enough to lay down their lives for us; that you would comfort all those who mourn the loss in war of a loved one; that we may never take the freedoms we have for granted and will share them with others; that we and all of your children everywhere may learn to wage peace, so that no more people will
ever die in war.
And to your thrice glorious name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be all the power, honor, glory, and praise forever, Amen.
THE LORD’S PRAYER
Our Father Who art in Heaven,
hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come,
Thy Will be done,
on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power,
and the Glory forever!
Amen!
DOXOLOGY
https://youtu.be/eMnevRoAz74
Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Praise God all creatures here below!
Praise God above you heavenly host!
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
Amen!
OFFERING PRAYER OF DEDICATION
Let us pray...
Bless our gifts, O Lord of all, that we might worship you with great joy and serve your people with great love. In Christ’s name, we give, receive, and pray, Amen.
HYMN
Jesus the very thought of Thee
https://youtu.be/wF1cFxJ2Yhw
1. Jesus, the very thought of thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far thy face to see
And in thy presence rest.
2. Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
Nor can the mem’ry find
A sweeter sound than thy blest name,
O Savior of mankind!
3. O hope of ev’ry contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who fall, how kind thou art!
How good to those who seek!
4. Jesus, our only joy be thou,
As thou our prize wilt be;
Jesus, be thou our glory now,
And thru eternity.
SECOND SCRIPTURE LESSON
Acts 1: 1-11: “The ascension”
SERMON Looking in the Right Place
Let us pray...
“Christ, for you high triumph waits, lift your heads, eternal gates! You have conquered death and sin; you, our Sovereign, enter in! Christ, for us still intercede, by your suffering for us plead; make us worthy of the place, which you offer us by grace.” Amen. (NCH, 260, 2 & 4)
“I believe in Jesus Christ...who was conceived...born...suffered...was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”
Some of you may recognize these phrases as portions of the Apostles’ Creed, perhaps the single most broadly used affirmation of faith in all of western Christianity.
But I for one have always had a hard time with this portion of the Apostles’ Creed, especially as it relates to what we might call the “spatiality” (yes, that is a word; I looked it up) of Jesus. It is of course one of the great proof texts for the theological doctrine of the ascension, which we celebrate this day, as it proclaims quite clearly that “Christ ascended into heaven.”
I for one have always had a hard time with this part of the creed and with this doctrine, because it assumes the ancient theory of a three-storied universe—hell below us, a flat earth on which we live, and the dome of heaven above. Hardly any modern person sees our own spatiality that way; yet the doctrine of the ascension seems to require just such a view.
And I for one have always had trouble with Luke’s claim in Acts that Jesus escaped from earth by being lifted up in some magic act of levitation and then whisked away on a cloud. Somehow, I don’t think he would have gotten very far! The same is true in Luke’s gospel account—the ascendant Christ is “carried up into heaven”
as if by some grand chariot or caravan led by angels. That too is hard for me to believe!
But, most of all, I for one have trouble with the creed’s depiction of this doctrine, because I never know where to look for Jesus. That is in fact the question of this day—where to look for Jesus when we need and want to find him? First, he’s conceived by the Holy Ghost, miraculously, somewhere out there, beyond our human space; but then he’s born and suffers and is crucified, dies, and is buried here on earth, in our usual, familiar space. But then he descends to hell, down below us; and ascends to heaven, up above us; and one day will return to where we are, to judge us all. This is indeed complicated spatiality! Where then do we look for Jesus, when we need and want to find him? Indeed, as the two men in white robes said to those first disciples: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
In the very midst of all this troubling perplexity about down, up, and back to earth again, I’ve decided that the ascension of Christ has to do with others things instead—that it has to do in fact with the very heart of the gospel, that it has to do with completing what began at Easter, that it has to do with looking in the right place for Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t have to be lifted or carried up to heaven, or taken away by a cloud, but he does have to be exalted by us believers. He doesn’t have to go up somewhere, but he does have to be over all things. He doesn’t have to be sitting someplace far from here on a throne next to an old man with a long white beard, but he does have to be the one who is so close to God, that we, having seen Jesus, know with certainty what God is like.
But even more, I think, the ascension is about completion and peace. The passion drama is over. Jesus has completed what he came to earth to do. The reconciliation between God and mankind is consummated. His work is done. “Then,” as Luke says, “he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them,” undoubtedly, with the familiar “Peace be with you!”
Now peace is a dangerous commodity, especially given how we use the word in the English language. Often, it means nothing more than a kind of static, benign, struggle-free existence, an escape from the pain of human living. Sometimes, we use it only to mean an absence of war. But Jesus and the Bible mean something quite different when they refer to peace. They mean a kind of composure in the very midst of human struggle, a kind of confidence that we can always do our very best, no matter what happens to us, that we can in fact, as Paul says, do all things through Christ who strengthens us. And as we say through these days of pandemic, “We will get through this together!” When Jesus and the Bible refer to peace, they mean in fact what our Jewish friends mean by “shalom:” wholeness, health, assurance, trust, faith.
The ascension, even more perhaps than the resurrection, gave those first Christians precisely this kind of peace, this kind of assurance, confidence, composure in the very midst of adversity and struggle, even in the very face of persecution and death itself. And the ascension gives us contemporary Christians the same. The resurrection made the claim that Jesus is Lord, but the ascension sealed it!
The story of this extraordinary event at the beginning of Acts reminds us that the ascension of Jesus marks the inauguration of our own work as followers of the Christ. Picture again the details of the scene—two men in white robes, presumably angels, are standing with those first disciples as they watch the resurrected Christ rise to heaven. Now, as you may remember, this isn’t the first time these heavenly characters arrived on the scene—they were there at the tomb on that first Easter morning. And always when they are present, they seem to have the very same message: “Don’t hang around here! You’re looking in the wrong place! He’s not here! For heaven’s sake, get on with your lives—get to work!”
So then, where is Jesus? Where is the right place to look for him when we need and want to find him? If he’s not still lying in a grave as a religious martyr, and if he’s not going to fall out of heaven like a supernatural action-figure hero, then where is he? Up, down, or here?
“Where two or three are gathered together in my name,” he said, “there I will be in the midst of them.” This refers of course to the church, to the gathered community of believers, assembled for worship, learning, service, and fellowship. If we look there, which is of course here, then we are looking in the right place.
And he said, “If you do it unto the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me.” Maybe we need to look not up or down but here instead, perhaps even among the poor and the lowly and the lost. If we haven’t found Jesus yet in our own kind of a world, then perhaps it’s because we’ve been looking in the wrong place and hanging around with the wrong crowd all the way along. I suspect that Jesus can be found now where he was found then—among those in need—among the poor, the lonely, the hungry, the homeless, the sick, the naked, the dying, those who are scared to death of something, and especially these days, among those stricken with this horrible disease we now fight. If we look there, which is of course here, then we are looking finally in the right place!
My friends, if only we look in the right place, then surely even we shall find the ascended Christ!
Let us pray...
O Christ: “Now, parted from our sight, in the depths of starry night, may our souls with you arise, seeking wholeness at your side. There we will with you remain, heirs in your eternal reign; in the presence of your face, we will dwell in heaven’s grace.” Amen. (NCH, 260, 5 & 6)
HYMN
O for a closer walk with God
https://youtu.be/neqtbQZFVTE
O for a closer walk with God,
a calm and heavenly frame,
a light to shine upon the road
that leads me to the Lamb!
Where is the blessedness I knew
when first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
of Jesus and his word?
Return, O holy Dove, return,
sweet messenger of rest;
I hate the sins that made thee mourn,
and drove thee from my breast.
The dearest idol I have known,
whate'er that idol be,
help me to tear it from thy throne,
and worship only thee.
So shall my walk be close with God,
calm and serene my frame;
so purer light shall mark the road
that leads me to the Lamb.
BENEDICTION
Let us be blessed with these familiar words of our Lord, spoken to them and spoken to us: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Amen. (John 14: 27)
BENEDICTION RESPONSE GO NOW IN PEACE
Congregation:
https://youtu.be/mefNCtwjp2M
Piano:
https://youtu.be/JLJXpuxDjes
Go now In peace, never be afraid.
God will go with you each hour of every day.
Go now In faith, steadfast strong and true.
Know He will guide you in all you do.
Go now In love, and show you believe.
Reach out to others so all the world can see.
God will be there watching from above.
Go now in peace. in faith and in love.
Amen. Amen. AMEN!
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