240509 Sermon for Ascension of our Lord May 9, 2024 Rev. Michael Holmen's Sermons

 Audio recording Sermon manuscript: If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be? Maybe some of you remember a commercial for the powerball lottery. In the commercial different people catch the powerball, which had lightning coming from it if I remember correctly. With that powerball in hand they could point to their regular looking house, and they’d have a mansion. They could point to their regular looking car, and they’d have a Ferrari. If you won the lottery, then you could buy a lot of stuff you can’t afford now. Would that get you what you want? Winning the lottery, however, is not very likely. That commercial was a bit fanciful. In “real life” you have to keep your goals reasonable. Since we are so used to living “real life,” it is easy to manage our expectations too thoroughly so that we don’t even begin to grasp the meaning of Christ’s ascension. We get so used thinking we can’t have everything we want—that’s fairy tale stuff—that we don’t believe in what the ascension means. The ascension means that Jesus is Lord. All rule and authority and power and dominion have been put under his feet. The inheritance we will receive from God because of Jesus is beyond our imagination. Paul says, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination of the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” Although we can’t fully grasp what God has prepared for us, it is important to try. If we don’t try, then we won’t get it. At best our imaginations will be limited to those powerball kinds of wishes, and those powerball kinds of wishes are not high enough. Eben the highest kind of wishes that you might have with the lottery aren’t high enough. Suppose there would be some kind of lottery that would enable you to suck up every last cent and every last piece of property on this earth. All other human beings become your slaves. Nothing happens without your say-so. Even after winning this lottery so that you are some kind of god on this earth—that would not be good enough. To try to grasp our inheritance we must think higher. We must think about God. There are many things we could think about with God, and they would all be good, but tonight I’ll limit myself to just a couple things: life and love. We’ll begin by talking about life. Life comes from God. God is the creator. From the smallest thing to the largest thing—all things come from him. We might wonder at the power of the sun, the vastness of the universe—these things come from God. On a more personal level, we all have a craving for life, because whenever we have tasted it we have so thoroughly enjoyed it. Another word for enjoying life is fun. Fun comes in different shapes and forms that vary with each person. One has fun with his or her mind. Another has fun with his or her heart. Another has fun with his or her accomplishments. Romance, friends, laughter, fear, pity, weeping—these are all interesting facets of life. People want to live rather than die because life is good. Life comes from God. Love, also, comes from God. John in his epistle even goes so far as to say that “God is love.” Love draws people together so that they are one. Giving love is reaching out to bring in the other. Receiving love is when you have been accepted and brought in. We all know by experience how good this is. We also know by experience how bad the opposite of this is. We have all experienced rejection: “No, you aren’t one with us.” Think of how this happens with children. Second, third, fourth grade—all of a sudden there are in-groups and out-groups. The in group is to be loved and admired. The out group is lesser and are given to know this by being shunned or mocked. The kids get shuffled and sorted, usually on the basis of things that they have no control over. Kids are just like us. They want to be recognized and admired. To be reviled and humiliated is painful. What can be done about t