Acts 1:1-11, Colossians 3:1-4 "Angels at Our Backs" Scott Hoezee

Years ago a fellow German major at Calvin College was delighted to purchase an old German fairy tale book at a local garage sale. We enjoyed putting our German to use by reading these children's stories, although we were surprised at how horrifying some of them were. Because unlike the American versions of these stories, which seem to have been sanitized and tidied up, the original German tales are brutal. The stories are designed to teach children lessons, and the authors obviously believed that scaring the wits out of kids was the best way to get the point across.

One story I remember was titled "Hans Guck-in-der-Luft," which I would roughly translate, "Hans Head in-the-Clouds." The story is meant to teach children to pay attention to what they are doing and where they are going. To make the point the title character of Hans is a little boy who is forever daydreaming, forever walking around with his eyes fixed on birds, butterflies, treetops. The result is that he keeps bumping into lampposts, tripping over uneven sidewalks, running into old ladies. Throughout the story adults chide Hans for his dreaminess and they warn him to pay attention, to get his head out of the clouds. But Hans does not listen and so at the end of the story he walks straight off a cliff and is smashed to death on the rocks below. Sweet dreams, boys and girls!

You can doubtless see where I will go with this story on this particular evening. Because we have all heard the old saw about Christians, the kind of criticism that was made famous by the philosopher Karl Marx. Marx was, to put it mildly, not much of a fan of religion, and of Christianity in particular. Among Marx's complaints about religion is that it makes people into Hans Guck-in-der-Lufts--people who are too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. Religion is the opiate of the masses. The Christian faith drugs people's minds with visions of a better tomorrow in the sweet by-and-by. The resulting heavenly stupor renders people worthless for social action as they think to themselves, "Why make this world better when our true home is elsewhere anyway?"

Of course, Marx was partly right. Too often even today Christians ignore things like the degradation of the environment because earthy, physical concerns about trout and ozone seem unimportant compared to a wispy heaven with streets of gold. Too often Christians stay willingly out of the loop as to what is going on in the world in favor of nurturing a hyper-spiritual piety fueled by intense Bible study and sheltered by a world-shunning lifestyle. I doubt, for instance, that the millions of people who absorbed page after page in book after book of the best selling Left Behind series found in that reading much motivation to wonder if maybe we should think about driving more fuel-efficient cars for the sake of the environment. Indeed, just look at the title of the series, which may say it all: the number one fear some Christians have is precisely that they will be left behind--that is to say, left behind on this earth! Escape is the goal. Remaining on earth is the fate to avoid. We ponder heavenly matters so as to avoid being trapped on a doomed planet.

But I want to suggest this evening that Ascension Day is about making connections between heaven and earth. The ascension of our Lord into heaven is about a link-up--or maybe an up-link--of heaven to earth and of earth to heaven. But this ascension-connection forces us to live with some tension, a tension neatly seen when you place today's two Bible passages side by side.

On the one hand we have Acts 1. Jesus is talking to his disciples when suddenly he lifts right off the ground and drifts up out of sight. Stunned, the disciples stand around with their mouths hanging open, shielding their eyes against the sun's glare, wondering when Jesus was going to float back down. They are then startled by a couple of angels who ask, "Why are you looking up there? Your job is not to stare up into the heavens. Jesus will be back some day. Meanwhile he already gave you your marching orders for this earth. You are to go to Jerusalem where you will receive the power to do what Jesus just told you: be his witnesses, be his workers to do his bidding, be his voice to declare his truth on this earth."

Why are you staring into the sky? That is the key question of Acts 1. On the other hand, however, there is Colossians 3. There Paul seems to tell us that we should stare into the sky. "Set your minds on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, not on earthly things!" Paul appears to be telling us that since Jesus has ascended into the heavenly places, that is where our focus needs to be as well. So on the surface Colossians 3 looks like a reversal of Acts 1. Acts 1 says that we are not to be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. Colossians 3 says that we are not to be so earthly minded that we are of no heavenly good.

How can we embrace this tension so as to live out the full richness of both passages? Perhaps we would do well to connect the images of Acts 1 and Colossians 3 this way: Acts 1 is concerned with our eyes, Colossians 3 with our minds. Acts 1 tells us that our eyes need to be trained on the reality that is right here before us on this earth. We need to focus on the headline of today's paper, on the cover of Newsweek, on the injustices in our community, on the needs of the homeless in Grand Rapids.

At the same time, even as our eyes take in all of that, our minds must be fixed on Jesus as the heavenly Lord of lords. This is vital because it is, after all, our minds that will process the data provided by our eyes. Those of you who attend Calvin Church regularly know that I have long benefitted from the writings of neurologist Oliver Sacks. In his various books Sacks has provided a bevy of clinical vignettes that remind us of how utterly interconnected we are in terms of mind and body.

In one such true story, Sacks tells us about a man who had what doctors refer to as a visual agnosia. This man's brain had been damaged very slightly but just enough so that the vision center of his mind was unable to process what his eyes took in. His eyes functioned perfectly, 20/20, but his brain could not assemble this visual data into coherent images. So if he looked at you, he could see your hair, your ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and moustache but not your entire face--in his mind it all looked like one of those strange Picasso paintings where everything is jumbled up in a mish-mash of images: here an eye, there an arm; here a nose, there an ear but nothing is connected the way it should be.

Alas, that's how a lot of people see the world just generally. To some the world is just a booming, buzzing confusion with no rhyme or reason, no purpose and no destiny beyond the moment. But that can never be a Christian's take on the world. Forty days after Easter we this evening affirm that the resurrection of Jesus gives us a meaningful framework in which to make connections, in which to make sense of the welter of images, sights, sounds, and information that we soak up in this world. For us the world is not a helter-skelter of chaotic events that adds up to nothing. Jesus as the risen and reigning Lord of heaven and earth tells us that history has a meaning and also a destiny in God's hands.

Our vocation is to live like we know this. Ascension Day more or less gives each one of us an assignment and that is to live like we believe this day's central event is not only true but is the organizing principle around which we orient our lives, it is the lens through which we see the world. Our eyes are not on the skies but on this earth--this is the place where Jesus commissioned his disciples to work. Our eyes are here, but our minds are with Jesus. So we process our world's visual data in the context of the heavenly rule of Jesus. We know who is in charge and so we live in ways that go with the flow of his kingdom patterns.

In other words, what should distinguish Christians is not that we are isolated from the mainstream. Our identity should not be wrapped up in how many parts of the world we won't look at, won't touch, won't participate in. Rather we Christians should set ourselves apart by how wisely, prudently, intelligently, and soberly we do appraise, utilize, and participate in the things of earth.

Our fitting enjoyment of food and drink; the joyful elan by which we engage our sexuality within marriages; the exuberant enthusiasm by which we affirm the created wonders of this planet; our wise and intelligent appreciation for literature, cinema, theater, the arts; our ardent efforts to promote justice; our deep compassion for those with AIDS--these attitudes and actions should form a major component in who we are as Jesus' disciples in the world.

All of which has lovely and profound relevance for us as we live in a world that seems increasingly dangerous, increasingly tragic, increasingly prone to acts of war and terror. Because please do not think that what I have suggested so far this evening is an easy thing to do. Let's grant that those around us in society who see the world as a booming, buzzing confusion come to that conclusion based squarely on current events. And let's grant, too, that if we ourselves lacked faith, if we also did not believe in a Lord Jesus Christ who is the key to this world's sensibility, then we also might well look around us, see the horrors that flood the news most days, and wonder to ourselves, "What's it all about anyway?" In other words, if we're going to have our eyes trained on the real world, let's not pretend to see something different than what every other sensible person can see. Let's not say that the world isn't so bad after all so long as Jesus is in your heart. Let's be honest about what we see.

But it is precisely that honesty that reveals why it is that now, as much as ever, a main task of the church is to help one another and all people to make sense out of life despite the ugly realities that seem almost calculated to undermine that very effort. What we in the church need to do is meet people in their confusion and disorientation, grant that there is much in life that is properly confusing, properly disorienting, but then even so assist others in maintaining or in coming to a belief that there is a Lord and King who assures us that somehow or another, he really does have the whole world in his hands.

That's why it is vital that we embrace both Acts 1 and Colossians 3, and the only way to do that is to keep heaven and earth firmly clamped together in our hearts and minds. Because if we focus on heaven at the expense of caring about earth, then we are poor imitators of God. Because God cared so much for this earth that he came all the way down here in person to die for it! Seeking escape from reality is, therefore, a profoundly unChrist-like thing to do. We can be thankful that Jesus didn't give up on life on this earth!

On the other hand, focusing on earth without ever giving heaven a second thought is also wrong. Jesus ascended to help us interpret this world through the mindset of heaven. In so living we witness to the world. We bear testimony that there is another reality, that there is a Lord over us all, that there is another set of possibilities as to how life can be lived.

So contrary to what Karl Marx thought, religious faith need not be a substitute for an engaged life on this earth. Religious faith in the Christian tradition can even be an enrichment of life by connecting this world to the heavenly reality of our very loving and always present Lord Jesus.

There is a rich visual irony in Acts l--one that I never noticed until recently. But consider again the scene: Jesus no sooner ascends into heaven and what is the very first thing that happens? The disciples see angels. Ah, but they have to take their eyes off of the skies to see them! Jesus ascended into heaven all right, but it wasn't in the heavens that the disciples spied angels--the angels were right behind them on this earth! The angels' presence at the disciples' backs is clear evidence that what the ascension means is not less concern with earth but more.

It's as though the angels are saying, "We're working for Jesus on this earth--so what are you doing with your heads in the clouds!?" That is the Ascension Day question and it is a question which the church must face again and again as we strive to fulfill Jesus' ardent wish that we be his continuing presence of love and grace right here on this earth.

It's when we lose sight of one or the other that we may find ourselves in trouble. In an anecdote I read some while back, I learned the story of a missionary to China. This man had devoted his life to teaching the gospel and preaching the Word of God to the Chinese people. Upon his retirement from the mission field around the year 1915, he returned to America on board the same ship that was returning former President Theodore Roosevelt from a multi-week hunting safari in Africa. As the ship sailed into New York harbor, huge crowds had gathered to welcome back the popular ex-president, and T.R. loved every moment of it, flashing that broad and famous grin of his as he waved to the adoring crowds from the deck of the ship.

As he observed all this hoopla, the missionary thought to himself, "What a lot of fuss over a man who recently did no more than shoot tigers for the sport of it! Here I'm coming back from a lifetime of the Lord's work in China and there is no one here for me. Who is there even to acknowledge what I did?" Just as he was finding himself becoming more frustrated at this sad homecoming, suddenly a voice whispered into the ear of his heart, "Yes, but just remember, my son, you are not home yet." There. The heavenly and the earthly; the work we do and must do here but the ultimate heavenly context in which we view that work. Both. Together. That's the Ascension Day connection. Thanks be to God and Amen.