Date- 12 May, 2002 (Ascension Sunday)
In our reading from Ephesians Paul prays that God will give us wisdom and revelation so our hearts are enlightened and we may know the hope God is calling us to. That hope is the person of Jesus Christ. God expressed his love for us in the death on the cross of Jesus as our sin is washed away. God expressed his power in the resurrection of Jesus as death is overcome by eternal life. God expressed his hope for us when he sat Jesus at His right hand and gave him all authority on earth and in Heaven. Our hope is in the man who died for our sins, who rose from the dead to give us eternal life, who has all of God’s authority and who now offers to share with us that love, that power and that authority. God is calling us to hope in His son, Jesus.
Human beings can not live without hope. When hope is taken away from us, we become despondent, full of despair. If hope is not restored, we become depressed and without hope depression becomes suicide. Life is not worth living without hope. This was born out time after time in prisoner of war camps in WW II and Viet Nahm. When prisoners lost hope, they laid down and died. Capt. James Stockdale, one of the first Navy pilots shot down in Viet Nahm, spent 7 years as a POW under unspeakable conditions and still carries physical infirmities from beatings, torture and deprivation. He has stated over and over again that it was the hope of eventual release that kept him alive. He also states that his faith in God was the source of his hope. And the hope God calls us to is the person of Jesus Christ.
It is interesting to observe the folks we encounter to see where they place their hope. Many today seek hope in health foods, diets, exercise programs and self-improvement books and pursue them with a fervor that Christians would do well to emulate. On the other hand it has been said that the greatest example of false hope is found in the first four hours of a new diet. This is not to say that reasonable care of our bodies is bad since they are the temple of the spirit, but not as the source of hope for our future. The body will fail no matter what we do. Other sources of hope today are a bigger income, a larger house, a newer car or the latest electronic gear, the cutting edge of technology. Death makes them all meaningless. J. P. Morgan’s lawyer was asked after the millionaire’s death, “How much did he leave?” The truthful and succinct answer was, “All of it.” Whole towns can loose hope. (Town above the dam site) The hope God calls us to sustains us in this life and opens the door to eternal life. That hope is the person of Jesus Christ. What we invest in him bears fruit in this life and rewards us with eternal life.
Only moments before He departed earth to return to God, Jesus spoke earnestly with his Disciples and left them 3 things. First he opened the Scriptures to them and gave them knowledge, knowledge that it was God’s plan from the beginning that His Messiah should die for us and do what we could not do for ourselves- cleanse us of our sin. Second, He gave them a mission- to be His witnesses and to proclaim repentance and forgiveness for sin to all peoples in His name. Third, he gave them power in the coming of His Spirit. His Spirit does for us today what He did for the Disciples. The Spirit opens the Scriptures to us. And then the Spirit does much more. Jesus took his humanity to Heaven where He is no less human than He was on earth and His divine nature is the advocate with God for our human nature. Then through the Spirit His divine nature comes to dwell in our human nature so that we may become more like Him and have available to us the Love of God, the power of God and the Hope of God.
Paul likened the Christian walk to a race and I would suggest it is a like a 400 meter relay race. God ran the first 100 meters when He created the world and then created us. Then God passed the baton to Christ who ran the second 100 meters when he died to offer us the opportunity for a restored relationship with God. Then Jesus passed the baton to the Holy Spirit who is running the third 100 meters while offering us knowledge of who Christ is and the opportunity to become His Disciples. The Spirit wants to pass the baton to us if we will only reach out our hand and accept it. If we accept the baton, we run the last 100 meters to victory as God pours His love into us, Jesus cheers us on and the Spirit gives us the power to run. And as we run, we tell everyone we encounter of the amazing baton that has been passed to us and offer it to them so they may run too. And the amazing thing is God has an inexhaustible supply of batons because every time we pass the baton we find a new one in our hand to pass on again. And just as in a human relay race the baton is sometimes dropped, but Jesus continues to cheer for us and through the Spirit sustains us and offers to help us to go back and retrieve the baton and finish our 100 meters.
It is a race that we never have to run alone because not only does Jesus sustain us through the Spirit, He sends us other runners, some of whom are far better Disciples than we are, to nurture us and guide us to the victory tape at the end of our 100 meters. And as we run and get to know Jesus better and better, our Hope becomes firmer and more unshakable and we become better witnesses and better able to pass on the baton. Just as the children pointed out, the better we know someone, the better witness we can be for that person. So if we place our hope in Jesus and become His Disciples, we need to get to know Him through Scripture, through prayer and through fellowship with our fellow Disciples so we can more effectively carry out the mission He gives us to pass the baton as His witnesses. May the Spirit make it so for each of us.
As Paul prayed, I pray for each of us that God will give us the wisdom to see where He is calling us to hope. He is calling us to hope in the person of his Son, Jesus the Christ.. Stretch out your hand and take the baton from the Spirit and begin to run the race that leads to abundant life now and eternal life with Jesus when you reach the victory tape for death has become victory for those who carry the baton.
Amen.