I hope you’ve noticed the wonderful banner in the lobby stairwell. It was created and progressively updated by our worship committee throughout the course of our program year since last September. Each symbol on the banner represents a worship season during which we’ve examined a facet of our year long worship theme, Finding Our Way. Today we close our Easter series entitled, “There Are No Dead Ends”.

We can grasp the Easter claim of “No Dead Ends” because the story of an empty tomb is a graphic reminder that we simply turn a page and the story of Jesus continues! Six weeks later on this Ascension Sunday however, the gospels all come to an abrupt end and the claim of “No Dead Ends” carries some baggage that’s necessary to acknowledge.

Every year at our spring confirmation retreat we take time for theological dialogue on a variety of topics raised by the class. I’m always impressed by the thoughtful questions and insights they offer. One issue that seems to arise repeatedly is the difficulty of believing in the idea of ascension when the whole notion of Jesus’ physical body rocketing off to orbit the earth or to galaxies unknown, seems ludicrous in our current worldview. It’s such an odd understanding in fact, that it hinders the confirmands’ ability to even believe in the concept of resurrection. I can only assume that it’s a question that many parents and grandparents wrestle with as well.

All four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John include accounts of post-resurrection encounters with the risen Christ. All four gospels include farewell conversations of comfort and commissioning between Jesus and his disciples. All four gospels allude to a spiritual presence of Christ that continues into the future. But curiously, only two gospels, Mark and Luke carry this ascension story that culminates in a mind-boggling ascent of Jesus’ body levitating toward the sky and disappearing from sight.

While Matthew was written primarily to a Jewish audience and John to an early church audience, Mark and Luke were written primarily to a Gentile audience, namely Greeks and Romans. The pagan religious traditions of the Greeks and Romans had a difficult time comprehending the spiritual importance of the physical world. There was always a dualism between the heavenly realm of the gods and the earthly realm of mortals with only periodic “slumming” by the gods in undesired interactions with humanity.

What an audacious, but transforming image the ascension story must have been! Painting a picture of an earthly body infiltrating the heavens! What if, the author’s point was not to literally launch a body to float aimlessly in outer space, but rather to figuratively establish a link between earth and heavens, between material and spiritual, between human and divine? The way that I read Mark and Luke is that the authors used the image of the bodily ascension of Jesus to boldly declare that our world can truly become God’s world and God’s world truly is our world! The sacraments we share today, both baptism and Holy Communion declare the very same thing – that dualism is dead. The relationship of human and divine is as close as water, bread and cup!

This understanding offers a new vision of what resurrection is all about. Resurrection is not resuscitation; it’s not simply an Automated External Defibrillator jolt that restores movement to this deteriorating package of flesh and bones. Who’d want to spend eternity in the zombie-like bonds of this body anyway? No, resurrection isn’t just a transition to quantitatively more life; it’s a transformation to a qualitatively different kind of life.

I’ve read that if you put a buzzard in a pen that is 6’ x 8’ and is entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of its ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of 10-12’. Without space to run, as is its habit, it will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top.

While resuscitation infuses us with the energy to get up and run around the pen again, resurrection breaks down the walls that imprison us and allows us to experience life in a way we never previously perceived. Resurrection of an addict isn’t just restoring that person to their pre-abuse life; it’s transforming that person into a self-identity as one who will always be recovering. Resurrection of a relationship isn’t just gluing together broken promises; it’s transforming connections to those based on love and trust. Resurrection of hope isn’t just idle dreams; it’s transforming our view of future to see from God’s perspective. Resurrection of the body isn’t just decomposed bodies crawling from a grave; it’s the very essence of who we are, being given wings to soar!