"Angels, Nostalgia, and Dangling Feet" (An Ascension Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday May 17, 2026 – 7^th Sunday in Easter (Ascension Sunday)
Scripture:  Acts 1:6-14

Jesus’s ascension into heaven is a story that comes around every year.  It’s not one of the big flashy church holidays like Easter or Christmas or Pentecost.  It doesn’t even fall on a Sunday – technically last Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension.  But it is part of the story of Jesus, and it bridges the gap between Easter and Pentecost.

Easter is a season in the church year – one that stretches on for 50 days, or 7 full week.  Today is the last Sunday in the season of Easter, but Easter doesn’t end until next Saturday.  And I love how long the season of Easter is.  The 40 days of Lent can feel like a slog, in a season of contemplation and repentance and continual turning back to God and extinguishing our candles as we move into the shadows.  But then we get 50 days to celebrate the joy and the hope of Easter before the year asks us to move on to the next exciting festival.

But 40 days into the season of Easter – it’s always on the Thursday between the 6^th and 7^th Sundays of Easter – we encounter the curious story of Jesus ascending into heaven to return to be with the one whom he calls Father.

It is a strange and holy moment of transition, equivalent to his birth at Christmas, his death on Good Friday, his resurrection on Easter - a moment of transitioning from one way of being to another.  And holy moments can be hard to translate into words or into images.  Jesus’s disciples were there to witness Jesus’s ascension, yet it hasn’t become a core story to our faith the way that the resurrection has.  In my Mid-Week Message last week, I said that the strangeness of this story often gets translated into art as pictures of Jesus’s feet dangling down from a cloud.

 

“The Ascension of Christ”
Hans Süss von Kulmbach, 1513
Public Domain

 But I actually think that the story of the resurrection is just as strange, or maybe even more so.  Have you even noticed, though, that there is no witness to the resurrection of Jesus.  His disciples see his dead body being laid in the tomb.  They witness the tomb being sealed shut.  But then the next thing that they see is the empty tomb.  No-one witness the moment when Jesus’s body goes from being dead to being resurrected.  I also sometimes wonder – if there had been witnesses to the resurrection, would Easter art be equally as strange as Ascension art?  Paintings of Easter usually focus on Jesus’s lifeless body lying in the tomb, or of the empty tomb, or of the already-resurrected Christ meeting with his disciples.  When artists try to depict the moment of resurrection, they usually turn to very abstract art to try and convey the holiness of the moment.  And here with the ascension, we have Jesus’s dangling feet.

Anyways, all of this to say that the Ascension is a key story in Jesus’s life, but one that we usually don’t usually linger on.  But it’s a story that we read every year, and every time I turn to a familiar story, I like to ask myself, “What detail in this story is jumping out to me this time?”

This week, the detail that jumped out at me were the angels in the story.  Or were they angels?  They actually aren’t identified – the author of Acts only names them as “two men in white robes” standing next to the disciples.  But I think that this might be the case for a lot of the angels who appear in the bible.

Sometimes the angels are definitely named as angels.  The heavenly choir that appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus – they were definitely angels.  The angel who appeared to Mary and invited her to carry, birth, and raise God’s son – again, explicitly named as an angel.

But do you remember the story in the Old Testament of Jacob wrestling an angel on the banks of the river, trying to win a blessing?  That angel was only ever named as a man.

Going back even further, Sarah and Abraham saw three men standing outside their tent, and welcomed them and fed them, and it was only later that they realized that they had been entertaining angels.

Even when you look at the resurrection stories from the four gospels, and who was at or in the empty tomb when the disciples showed up on Easter morning, the accounts don’t agree with each other. in Matthew, he is named as an angel, a being dressed in white with a face like lightning.  But in Mark, sitting in the tomb was a young man in a white robe who tells the women not to be afraid.  In Luke there are two men standing there in gleaming bright clothing. And in John, we are back to two angels named as angels, sitting where Jesus’s body was.

But taking all of this together, I’m fairly confident with naming the two men in white robes standing next to the disciples after they have watched Jesus be carried away – I’m fairly confident with naming them as angels.

And angels, at the core of their being, are messengers from God and bringers of good news.  So what good news do they have for the disciples in this moment?  Their message is “Stop standing here, staring up into the heavens. Get yourselves back to Jerusalem, the way Jesus told you to do!”  Which is a strange bit of good news to go with a story that is always strange.

But then I think about those disciples who were standing there.  They had been with Jesus through his life and had witnessed his ministry.  They were the first ones to hear the parables he told and had front row seats to see his miracles.  But then they had been through the utter devastation and grief of watching their beloved teacher and friend arrested and tortured and murdered by the state.  Two days later though, they encountered the empty tomb, and once they were able to overcome their fear, they have just had 40 days, once more in the presence of their beloved.  But now they have just seen him carried away on a cloud, back to the fullness of the presence of God.

And I can totally understand their inclination to stay there staring at the sky, focused on the place where he has just disappeared.  I can even imagine them choosing to stay there, setting up a picnic lunch, remembering Jesus as they broke the bread and poured out the wine.  I can picture them reminiscing about the good old days, and re-telling the parables that Jesus has taught them, every so often glancing back up at the sky to see if Jesus is going to float back down, “Just kidding – did you really think I was gone?!”

But then those messengers from God, those two angels show up, and basically tell them to get on with things.  Don’t stand here looking up at the sky; get back to Jerusalem just as Jesus told you to do.

I think that maybe God saw that the disciples risked getting stuck there, that they were at risk of spending so much time reminiscing and looking backwards that they might forget that they had to keep on moving forward.  If they had stayed there staring at the sky and watching for Jesus’s feet to come back, they would have missed everything that comes next.  Ten days later is going to be Pentecost – if they were out in the field staring at the sky, then they would have missed that whole event where the Holy Spirit shows up with a rush of mighty wind and tongues of fire, and the ability to speak in different languages to reach all of the people.  They would have missed the opportunity to be the church moving forward if they were stuck looking at the sky feeling nostalgic for what used to be.

Sometimes I wonder if we in the church need a visitation of angels like these two – a message to stop lingering in the past, a message to stop staring at Jesus’s feet up there in the sky; a message to instead move into the future with excitement and anticipation.  Churches – and I’m not necessarily talking about our churches specifically, but churches in general tend to be very good at nostalgia, very good at remembering the good old days.  But we don’t want to get stuck staring at the sky, visions of former Sunday Schools, visions of past events and gatherings, filling the clouds where Jesus’s feet used to be.  Because if we get stuck there, then we’ll miss our Pentecost moment – that moment that catapults us into the future.  We can’t be the church that God is calling us to be if we are stuck reminiscing about the church that we were ten years ago, or thirty years ago, or fifty years ago.

And even if this might be a hard message to hear, the message of the angels is good news.  Don’t stand there staring up at the sky where Jesus’s feet used to be.  Get on with life, keep moving forwards, for Pentecost is coming!

And so today, as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next week, let’s wave goodbye to the space where Jesus’s feet used to be, and let’s start dreaming about where God is calling us next.  Let’s intentionally release the burdens of the past that are weighing us down, so that we can dance our way into Pentecost; for the future that God has planned for us can be much more vibrant than the echoes of the past, if only we have the courage to be the dreamers who will lead us there.

And may it be so.  Amen.