If you have been listening to my sermons for a while you know that I am a big C.S. Lewis fan—  The Chronicles of Narnia especially.  That’s why I was excited last week when a friend who is much more active on social media forwarded a quote that supposedly Lewis had written in his The Screwtape Letters, in 1942.  It was presented as being prophetic of what we are going through in these days of a pandemic:

          Satan: I will cause anxiety, fear, and panic. I will shut down business, schools, places of worship, and sports events. I will cause economic turmoil.

Jesus: I will bring together neighbors, restore the family unit, I will bring dinner back to the kitchen table. I will help people slow down their lives and appreciate what really matters. I will teach my children to rely on me and not the world. I will teach my children to trust me and not their money and material resources. 

If you have received this, please know that this passage is not a piece of prescient writing originally published in the 1940s. This text actually has modern day origins. It was written by a Facebook user named Heidi May and first appeared on that platform March 12, 2020.  Well, now that I have set that straight we can move on to better things.

This Thursday is a special day on the calendar of the church— not Grace’s but the church.  It is Ascension Day, and while it doesn’t have the glitz of the other high holy days of the church year like Christmas and Easter and you probably don’t remember  ever going to an Ascension Day eve service or an Ascension Day sunrise service, it is nonetheless important in its own right

As evidence for that statement I point to the fact that all three of the creeds of our church— Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian—   have a statement something like:  “…he ascended into heaven.”   The day recognized the fact that 40 days after Easter Jesus, while gathered with his disciples,  ascended (the only word in the vocabulary of the day for what they saw) into heaven.  Note that number 40, as in Moses 40 days on Mt. Sinai talking with God,  40 years in the wilderness for Israel, 40 days in the wilderness for Jesus, 40 says of Lent and 153 more times that the number is mentioned in  the bible.

But, I digress.  Why should we pay any attention to Ascension Day?  In last Sunday’s gospel Jesus told his disciples he was going to prepare a place for them and that he would be back.  Stands to reason then, Jesus can only come back if He first leaves.   Not by our schedules or reason or anguish or hunger or anything else we might use to skip over this Ascension celebration, but rather because we will finally be fully completely with him— the hope of this life. 

Until then, I encourage you to ignore feeble attempts to turn the pandemic into prophecy of Christ’s return and instead bring Ascension Day into the spotlight later this week.   For starters we might want to amend our Easter affirmation to sound like this:  Christ is risen!  Christ ascended!  Christ will come again!

Anybody up for an Ascension Eve service Wednesday?