Ascension Sunday: the Binding of Heaven and Earth
May 17, 2026
ASCENSION SUNDAY ~ 7TH SUNDAY OF EASTER
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
Acts 1: 1-11; Luke 24: 44-53
Acts 1: 1-11 & Luke 24: 44-53
A blessed Ascension Day, to you!!
It always falls on a Thursday…because it always falls on the 40th Day after Easter Day. Maybe because it falls on a day during the week that it passes us by unnoticed. Of course Christmas Day is never unnoticed whatever day if falls on.
If someone asked us to name the four great feast days of the Church—Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost—chances are, we would only come up with Ascension after a little prodding. Pentecost, which is next Sunday, would be a close second.
When we lived in France, Ascension Day was a National Holiday—but even then my sense was most people had no idea why they didn’t have work or school that day.
Hard to locate on the calendar…even harder to locate the actual site of the Ascension… Not so with all faith traditions.
You might be surprised to learn that ASCENSION looms large on the landscape and in the architecture of Jerusalem. When you visit Jerusalem to day, there is a large Golden Dome visible from all directions—perhaps the most recognizable Gold Dome in the world. It stands as one of the holiest sites in Islam. We know it as the “Dome of the Rock.” Muslims know it as Al-Mi’raj—which translates as, THE ASCENSION. The Dome houses a large rock where is it believed that the Prophet Mohammad ascended through the seven heavens, meeting various prophets before reaching the Divine Presence. The Prophet Mohammad returned to earth to live for another several years before his death.
Now, there is a site that is remembered by Christians as the spot from where Jesus ascended. It is marked by a small stone dome structure on the Mt of Olives…can only be seen once you have entered the small courtyard that surrounds it. The only thing inside the dome is a small rock embedded in the floor that supposedly contains the impression of a footprint of Jesus. It is assumed that the force was so great that how could it not leave a mark on the point of take off. You’ve seen the aftermath of the launching pad at Cape Canaveral?
Hmm. Sounds more than a little dubious that the dome marks the actual spot much less the thrust of the ascension!.
Actually, Christians were always slow to identify the actual places that commemorated these major linch pin moments in the life of Jesus. All the sites that pilgrims now visit—in Bethlehem and Jerusalem and Nazareth—were not even identified until the 4th Century—some 300 years after Jesus.
Earliest Christians seemed less preoccupied with physical locations of where things happened and more caught up with the encounter those moments in time made possible in all times and all places. In the original accounts of these pivotal events, including the Ascension, those who are present are always being sent away! Whether the shepherds at the Manger, the Disciples at the empty tomb, and here, at the site of the Ascension. The site is narrated as a point of departure not of arrival.
That being said it is a pivotal moment in time and place. Jesus was raised from the dead, never to die again and yet, as we know, he is no longer visibly present on the earth. There came a moment when his time with the Disciples ended—and they encountered his physical presence no more.
On this Ascension Sunday of the year of our Lord 2026, it is reasonable to ask….
When Jesus left this world, did he abandon us to our own devices?
Was his ascension akin to him saying,
Good luck, I’ve done all I can do now you’re on your own.
Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to see how THIS departure of Jesus was experienced VERY differently than when Jesus was taken from them on Good Friday…
On Good Friday, they were left completely powerless, utterly defeated and useless with nothing to offer…they were lost and afraid…cowering behind closed doors…with no where to go, nothing to do…but fear for their lives.
This time is different. His leaving seemed to unleash something in them…his departure became for them an arrival at a new way of being in the world…a new experience of the presence and power of God as never before.
Instead of his departure leaving them paralyzed with fear, cowering in the darkness—they went forward boldly and powerfully. How do we know that?
Well, we’re here! Some 2,000 years later, we along with countless others, are gathered in remembrance of the life of Jesus…of which Ascension is a part.
The Ascension speaks directly to the mystery of how the experience, the life and death, of this one man came to have such a profound, transformative impact upon the course of history…an impact that transcends the power of any single human being.
The ascension seems to signal not an evacuation but the inauguration of an unprecedented connection between heaven and earth, between God and humankind…
There is a Native American understanding of the relationship between the sky and the earth. I do not remember where I first heard it..but it has stayed with me..as I hope it will with you…it resonated with me.
I think I have shared it with you briefly on an earlier Sunday. I want to share it again, and with a little more elaboration.
It is our common sense perception that we walk on top of the earth. The Native American understanding is that we walk on the bottom of the sky. The earth is where the sky kisses the earth. Transforms one’s relationship to the earth. Such an understanding can cultivate in us a disposition of respect, honor, humility, and sacrifice. We are creatures bound to the earth…we are destined for the sky.
It we substitute HEAVEN for SKY…I think we come close to knowing that those first disciples came to understand about what just happened. This earth as been kissed by heaven and that has changed everything for everyone forever.
The theologian, Gilbert Meilanender, names how that change changes how we understand ourselves: “We are creatures who have dual membership—who belong to a world of space, time, and bodies, AND we are creatures who are made for the God who creates but transcends this finite world…We are,” he says, “God-aimed spirits, whose every moment is lived in the presence of the Eternal.”
Wherever we are….especially when we feel the gravity of our earthbound lives most intensely…there is more to this story of ours that both transcends and infuses every moment:
As loving parents sitting at the beside of a loved one as their daughter recovers from a stroke; or keeping faith with a son or a daughter who is battling cancer; or a couple—I’m thinking of Roberta and Gary Walker…sitting with family members who have suffered so terribly from the Robbins Lumber fire…Wherever and whenever we encounter need and suffering in this life, there Jesus is to be found and seen and known.
‘Jesus had to leave one place so he could be everywhere in heaven and earth…so that his fullness could fill all.”
Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, is the other side of the coin of the Ascension…but that’s for NEXT SUNDAY…For now, today, it is enough to remember that. “Our job is not to retrieve Jesus from some distant past… but to meet him where he promised to be…among those who suffer and seek redemption.”
I want to conclude with a poem…by the poet Malcolm Guite. You’ll find it printed on one of the last pages of your bulletin. He names, as only a poet could, how the Ascension of Jesus inaugurates a sacred binding of earth to heaven.
Ascension Day
We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we our selves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.
A blessed Ascension Day to you!
Amen.