Sunday Sermon -The Rev. Dr. Hillary Raining (May 17, 2026)

[00:00:39] Speaker A: The Holy Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ according to Luke. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Glory to you, Lord [00:00:48] Speaker A: Jesus said to his disciples, 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, the prophets and the psalms, must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day. And that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised. So stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they were continually in the temple blessing God. Gospel of the Lord. [00:02:40] Speaker B: In the name of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated. If you'll please do me a favor and Turn to page 7 of your leaflet. Page 7 of your leaflet at the top of the page, there you'll find the words to a hymn I'm going to ask you to sing in a minute, so, fair warning, I'll sing it first, though, so you'll have to save me from my solo in a moment. This is a hymn called Christ has no Body Now But Yours. Really more of a chant than a hymn, taken from the words of St. Teresa of Avila to me. It's been with me all week as part of my sermon preparation, but also as my way of entering into prayer. I'll sing it the first time, and then I'll ask you to join me in a second time. [00:03:31] Speaker C: Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he sees. Yours are the feet with which he walks. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands. Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he sees. Yours are the feet with which he walks. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands. [00:04:43] Speaker B: You sounded beautiful. Keep that next to you, because we're coming back to that. This chant has convicted me and motivated me this week about what the Feast of the Ascension of Christ actually calls us to. Now, for your average Christian, and I'm an Average Christian. So I'll count myself in this. What celebrations or principal feasts on the church calendar that we might consider most important are kind of the obvious ones, right? I'm talking Christmas and Easter. That might have been your guess if somebody asked you that. Maybe someone would throw in the rogue Pentecost or Whit Sunday if they were feeling cheeky about it. And that would make sense, because with Christmas, we get the Incarnation, Christ with us, Easter, we get the resurrection, everlasting life, Pentecost, the Holy Spirit. Hard to beat those feasts. But if we were to ask Jesus what moment was completely indispensable, what part of his journey was so linked with ours and ours with his, what part of his life did he say had to happen as to be foundational to the world in which we see everything? As Christians, what would Jesus have answered? Well, if we look at the Gospels, we can see that he actually never mentioned the events of his birth. Not once. He does give us insights on the Incarnation itself, of course, and why the Son of Man has come, but he does not specifically tie it back to mangers and angels and shepherds and the like. So I don't know, Christmas may not have made his top five. I don't know. Now the Resurrection. Okay, now we're getting closer. He does talk about the resurrection many times in the Gospel, so we know it's central to his whole message. But even when he talks about it, it's not in the way we normally think. He rarely speaks about it as a ticket to heaven, as though it were an escape pod to a faraway, disembodied reward for good behavior after die. Instead, Jesus talks about the resurrection and everlasting life as present realities of the kingdom of God, breaking into the here and now, which will have its ultimate fulfillment at the end of time. For Jesus, resurrection is not just a future event, it's a here and now event. In fact, Jesus talked about the kingdom of God in heaven more than anything else in the Gospel. That phrase, the kingdom of God, that concept appears more than a hundred times across. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It serves as the absolute centerpiece of his entire ministry. His parables, his healings, his exorcisms, even the resurrection itself, all of them for Jesus, points to the way we can experience God's power and presence here and now. And that combination, the combination of the kingdom of God being lived out through us, through the Holy Spirit, that is what Jesus insisted we focus on over and over again, for us to become what he is, bringers of the kingdom of God here and now to do that. The Gospel highlights the importance of why he felt he had to leave. For example, in John 16:7, he says this is an absolute necessity to his followers. He says, but very truly, I tell you, it is for your good that I go away. Unless I go away, the advocate, the Holy Spirit will not come. But if I go, I will send him to you. Thus I've begun to wonder if Ascension, the feast of the celebration of Jesus, ascension into heaven that we've transferred to this Sunday, if that feast would have been the one that he felt was most important, or at least a pivotal part of a three part movement of resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost united together. Why? Because it is in the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost that we become what Christ is alive, equipped, eternal bringers of the kingdom of God. Now, this is both a deeply theological and singularly practical concept all at the same time. Here's what I mean. As Christians, we see the resurrection as that bonding moment between Christ and ourselves that we celebrate in our baptism. In it, we believe we are joined with Christ not only in his death, but in his everlasting life. This is an eternal proposition that grafts us finite beings into the heart of the infinite where we will stay forever. And as I've said, that's not something that affects only our future, but it should give us courage to be Christ for the world. Now, no matter what crosses we will be given to bear. For there is nothing that will separate us from the love of God, not even death. So right off the bat, we see resurrection isn't just about Jesus, but all of us. But the Ascension tells us to take that further. Jesus blesses and leaves his disciples in our readings for this morning. He does this to take his seat in the heavenly court, the second seat that is his by right, as part of the triune God he goes, fully divine and fully human. Do you see the baptismal implications of this? Since we are in Christ and Christ is in us, that means humanity is in the Trinity. Think about that. Humans, through Jesus incarnation, have been given into the triune God. It would have been amazing enough to have one human, just Jesus in the Trinity. But since we are one in him, we are with him, and through his ascension we are complete. He leaves us with even more, though. The blessing he gives us in Pentecost is the Holy Spirit that descends and does not leave in Scripture, up until this point, the Spirit seems to descend on special places and people at special times. But now it's a constant flow of God at all Times the triune God lives not just in heaven, not just on earth, but everywhere the kingdom of God bearers are willing to walk. We are thus Christ's body as Jesus in the world. We are Christ's hands in the creative work of the Godhead. We are Christ's Spirit through the flowing of the Holy Spirit in the way we bless. In point of fact, Teresa was right. Christ has no body now but yours. You are Christ's body. Let that sink in. It should awe and inspire us both at the terror of the responsibility and the joy of the gift that we have been given. Just as joy and awe and fear were something the disciples felt often even then, at this moment when Jesus is taken into heaven, they have to be told by the angels to stop looking up at heaven as though Jesus were coming back any second to do the work for them. They are sent to do the work now themselves. Howard Thurman, the theologian who inspired Martin Luther King Jr. Put this responsibility of being Christ in this way. He said, it is never quite sufficient to place the needs of humanity before God and just leave them there. The efficacy of prayer is often measured by the degree to which the individual is willing to become involved in actually working in the world to meet those needs. We would say to become Christ for the world. A person may share in their prayer, their concern for peace in the world. And yet if in their own little part of the world they are not willing to change their private attitude or prejudice towards their fellows, well then obviously such a prayer would be meaningless. If we are not willing to do the hard work of being Christ of all that may cost us. If we are not willing to be Christ's body, then our prayers and our hopes run the risk of being meaningless. Christ's blessing is not just about being nice or having good intentions. It is about being willing to put your very body on the line to bless the world. Because helping God answer these prayers is our body's duty. No one else, not even Jesus is here to do it for us. It's us and the Holy Spirit. Now given all of this, do you not find it odd that the Feast of the Ascension, the feast honoring this all important moment, not just in Jesus life but in ours. Do we not find it odd that people sometimes forget this even exists on our church calendar? Well, I have a theory about this. I think it's because it's hard to wrap our heads around this mystery. I don't know about you, but I could think of a lot of better people that Jesus could have given the honor of Being Christ in the world to than me. Perhaps you feel same about yourself or me. I don't know. I don't even want to have a Jesus fish on the back of my car for fear of having some bad piece of driving be associated with being a follower of Christ. But what good will that ever really do the world if we deny or ignore or grow immune to the wonder of all of this? If we do that, we will not find fully live into it. That sung prayer where we started of St Teresa of Avila will not let us fall short. It tells us to make this prayer our own. That Christ has no body now but yours. That the kingdom of God is not just work for Jesus. If we are not the body of Christ, it won't be brought to the earth. Please also see. See though that yes, this means being doer of good works, that deeply practical part of being Christ does mean feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, working for peace. Yes, that is the work of the hands of Christ. But don't make the mistake of thinking that acts of charity and goodwill are all it's about. It has to flow from the Spirit of God. Notice in all of these stories, Jesus hands are also used for blessing the deeply spiritual part of Jesus life. We're not just do gooders. We're not just part of the Rotary Club. As good as the Rotary Club is, we are Christ working with the Holy Spirit to be the part of God that brings heaven to earth, the part that brings peace, which passes all understanding, to be spiritual healers, to be workers of miracles. Before you dismiss this out of hand, listen again to what Paul says in the reading from the Ephesians today. He writes, may God give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him. So that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what it is, what this hope is to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and most importantly, this immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe according to the working of his great power. What Paul means by this is that the saints are people who have not ignored this power that is Jesus and flows through us. But they are willing to use this power in their life with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in accordance with God's will. If we don't, it's an abuse of power because it means we're holding it for ourself. He keeps going. He connects this power to the resurrection, to our baptism and to the ascension. Jesus and ours. During this week don't let the ascension be something that gives you little, that you give little to no thought about. To be a Christian is to give ourselves, our bodies, our souls, our lives, to bring forth that which Jesus did, to see the world with the eyes of love, to be willing to use your feet, to stand with others, to use your hands in blessings. Yes, you Christ has nobody else. If you'll take this chant out again, we're going to use this to remember to call us back to our baptism that we are calling forth Heaven. I recommend making it your prayer this week. Sing it three times a day all week till you memorize it and it becomes a part of your spiritual DNA so that it will help remind you that your life may be the only gospel that someone will ever hear. And before you dismiss this out of hand as being just Jesus, Job, or somebody else's job, remember he has given this work into our hands. No one else will do it for us. We are the hands. Friends, if you'll join me again in singing this one more time, [00:19:40] Speaker C: Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he seals. Yours are the feet with which he walks. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. You are the hands. [00:20:22] Speaker B: Amen.