Ascension - Week Two
LIBERATION LECTIONARY
Love Lifted Me
“ You are not judged by the height you have risen but from the depth you have climbed” Frederick Douglass
Artwork: Stacey Gillian Abe
Daily Readings
Sunday: Psalm 47.5-8 God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm. God is king over the nations; God sits on a holy throne.
Monday: Hebrews 3.1-6 Therefore dear siblings, brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, consider that Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses also ‘was faithful in all God’s house.’ Yet Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has more honour than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that would be spoken later. Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.
Tuesday: Hebrews 3.12-14 Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end.
Wednesday: Hebrews 4.14-16 Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Thursday: Hebrews 5.1-4 Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness; and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. And one does not presume to take this honour, but takes it only when called by God
Friday: Hebrews 5.5-9 So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’; as he says also in another place, ‘You are a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchizedek.’
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated a high priest by God
Saturday: Hebrews 6.13-20 When God made a promise to the ancestors, because They had no one greater by whom to swear, God swore by Themself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and multiply you.’ And thus our ancestor Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise. Human beings, of course, swear by someone greater than ourselves, and an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all disputes. In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of divine purpose, God guaranteed it by an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
Reflection: Our Bodies Matter
“We have the hope, though we do not know the exact means, we have the hope that we will rise again in the body. This we claim in spite of the chemistry of decay.”
Rev. Edward Scott, Pastor of Allen Chapel AME in Staunton Virginia
The occasion of Ascension season shows us that Jesus’s body, resurrected and yet scarred, was received into heaven and glorified because of his ministry and life on earth. As we reflect on God’s ministry in the body of Jesus, we consider the ending of his saga on earth. His birth by a young woman who was visited by an angel, his blood shed at the hands of oppressive powers, and his resurrection by the plan and power of God. All of the events in the life of Jesus were meant for teaching and giving life to us. Jesus made his care for our bodies evident, because he came to spare our bodies from the power of suffering. Ascension had meaning, especially in the presence of the people who believed in him and lived by his message. Today’s reflection gives some insight into that. We are sharing a message from 2021, from an AME pastor in Virginia.
“We hope to be loosed from the binding power of gravity. To be lifted by divine power to the weightless air - in the limitless sky. So consider with me the end of the story of Jesus on earth. When Jesus tarried with his disciples before his miraculous and astonishing departure in glorious transcendence. “
Read Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, to see the story of Ascension day.
There are accounts of Jesus’s ascending into heaven in three of the gospels. Matthew and Mark’s accounts include the great commission (Go make disciples). Luke’s account of the ascension happens while Jesus is speaking a blessing. John ends with Jesus sharing a meal among his disciples, and he alludes to his departing and returning, as he has done throughout his final teachings in John.
“Jesus’s body is punctured, scarred, flayed and twisted, by the pains of torture. Jesus’ body is not unlike yours or mine. It is a body requiring food and drink. A body subject to shocks and shutters, to wants and needs, but a body open to pleasure, power and play. Jesus is a man. He delighted to sup and drink with those he called friends: to lift the fallen, heal the infirm, and even to raise the dead. In each case, his body was never an instrument of his purpose but the end of his purpose.”
“What he did, he did for the body, for people who lived in the body, and at one with their bodies. Which moves me to say please let us stop this nonsense of devaluing human bodies. Bodies matter.”
This message is for us still, today. Jesus is God. Jesus is a man. Jesus’s body being exalted is the forerunning of our bodies receiving exaltation. When we see violence and loss of life, Jesus feels far from us. A remembrance like this, of his ascension, feels like a departure. The Lord is inviting us to see Jesus’s ascension as preparation. God wants us to see ourselves as a people of power. God wants to equip us to continue the activism of Christ. This activism includes speaking up and disrupting cruelty, but it also includes standing at our friends tombs and weeping, praying that God would show us the way. Jesus not only took on a body like ours, he took on our suffering and our sadness. And while there has not been a great removal of our pain, God has taken away pain’s power to control our capacity to hope. ~
Watch the full sermon from Rev. Edward Scott from Allen Chapel AME, in Staunton VA
Music & Meditation: Come Ye Disconsolate
In the past few weeks, mass shootings have taken the lives of many people in our communities. We are not sure if the hurts of our world will truly be healed. Somehow Jesus’s ascension must have meaning for us, in order to bring us into the working readiness of Pentecost. What do we do when our hearts are heavy, when our work feels worthless? We go to God in prayer, we pray with our feet, we take our friends and families to the mercy seat.
Please join us in prayer this week as we move from Ascension season to Pentecost, in hopes that the Holy Ghost will come and lead us by the power God has promised. In our ponderings, and prayers, we are singing “Come Ye Disconsolate” and thinking of the people mourning their lost loved ones. Come and lament with us. Lament is a form of worship too.
Listen here to the version performed by Roberta Flack and Donnie Hathaway ~ pray as you sway.
“Come, ye disconsolate, where’er ye languish; Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel. Here bring your wounded hearts; here tell your anguish: Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. // Here see the Bread of Life; see waters flowing - forth from the throne of God, pure from above. Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing, Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove. // Joy of the desolate, Light of the straying, Hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure! Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying: “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot cure.”
(Lyrics to the hymn “Come Ye Disconsolate” by Thomas Moore, Thomas Hastings, original tune by Samuel Webbe.)