ascension – A Preacher’s Ponderings

They are in the world

Seventh Sunday of Easter; 21 May 2023; Easter 7A (RCL); Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11.

Easter 7 is the Sunday after the Feast of the Ascension, and we catch the theme of that feast in the reading from Acts. On Ascension Day itself, the Gospel reading for the celebration of the Eucharist comes from Luke’s Gospel, and narrates Jesus’ ascension into heaven, although he delays it by forty days in the Book of Acts (which is why it falls on Thursday in the sixth week of Easter — forty days after Easter). Luke’s narration of the ascension alludes to the apotheosis of Augustus, giving it a decidedly “political” flavor. (See “The Apotheosis of Washington” in the dome of the Capitol rotunda).

Whither Jesus?

Seventh Sunday of Easter; 16 May 2021; Easter 7B (RCL); Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19.

The first words out of Jesus’ mouth in John’s Gospel are addressed to the two disciples of John the Baptist who follow Jesus. Jesus turns and sees them following and asks, “What do you seek?” They reply, “Rabbi, where to you remain?” Jesus answers, “Come and see,” giving us, the readers of the Gospel, an invitation to discover where Jesus remains (the verb μένειν, menein, to remain, and its cognates appear dozens of times in John’s Gospel). This is the central question of the Gospel