Seventh Sunday of Easter, Ascension Sunday 2026: Year A – The World as It Really Is – Acts 1:6-14

(This sermon was first preached on Ascension Sunday at the 8th Street Church, Oklahoma City, USA)

Acts 1:6–11

There are some days in the church calendar that feel intuitive.

Advent—we know what to do with that: waiting, longing.

Christmas—arrival, incarnation, God with us.

Epiphany—light, surprise, going another way.

Lent—reflection, repentance, maybe giving something up.

Easter—resurrection, joy, life out of death.

And then there’s today. The Sunday before Pentecost.

Ascension Sunday.

Now, even though we talk about it every year, most of us don’t really know what it is—or what it means.

And yet, it points to one of the earliest and most foundational confessions of the church, found in the Apostles’ Creed:

“He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.”

---

I grew up in church, but I never really heard about Ascension Sunday. The only version I got came at the tail end of the Easter story: Jesus rose from the dead, then he went to heaven, and someday he’ll come back.

Which meant that, somewhere in the background, Larry Norman’s rapture song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” was playing in my head.

So get your stuff ready… clean up your life… change your ways…

’Cause when he comes back, he ain’t taking no prisoners.

But that is neither what the second coming nor the Ascension points to.

The truth is, we skip over the Ascension… because it can feel strange.

For all kinds of reasons.

Forget that the whole notion seems physically impossible—even the concept is sort of irritating.

The disciples have been witnesses to one of history’s greatest injustices when their leader was murdered. But then Jesus rises from the dead, appears to the disciples, and then—right when it’s all about ready to bust open, right when the work has started to spin the other way, right when this thing is about ready to get up off the ground—he leaves? Like he needs a break? Or like he’s going on vacation with Dad or something?

At least, that’s how we’ve often imagined it.

But I don’t think that’s what Luke is trying to tell us.

So let’s take a step back.

In Acts, the disciples are gathered around the risen Jesus, still trying to make sense of everything. So much doesn’t yet square for them.

He was murdered. Then three days later he rose from the dead. Now he’s been with them for forty days—teaching them, reframing their thinking, trying to open their minds to the kingdom of God—and still, after all that, like us, they don’t quite get it.

So after all of that, they ask the question that makes sense to them—the question we don’t realize we ask, but we ask all the time:

“Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

In other words:

“Lord, now that all this has happened, when are things going to get better?

When will things finally be under control?

When will power look the way we’ve always assumed it should?”

Although the resurrection has flipped everything on its head and all they know has been reoriented, they’re still thinking within the framework of the old world—of the empire.

And empire—whether it’s politics, business, education, or anything else—answers that question the same way:

Things will get better when you get on the “right side” of power.

When the right people are in charge.

When the right religious principles are put in place.

When you have enough money, influence, or control.

And the logic goes like this:

If we can just get the right team in place—the right leaders, the right system, even the right version of God—then everything will be okay. Because if they’re in control… then we are.

Which is why one of the most common—and honestly, one of the most unhelpful—things to say in the middle of difficult or confusing times is: “God is in control.”

Ascension Sunday challenges that.

Not because God lacks power, but because we assume God uses power the way we’ve always seen power used. We assume God will use power like Pharaoh, or Nebuchadnezzar, or Caesar, or Herod—or Obama, or Trump, or any modern empire promises to do—to fix things on our terms, to secure outcomes, to make life work the way we want it to.

But the Ascension says—that’s not how God works.

That’s why Jesus doesn’t answer their question the way they expect.

He doesn’t give them a timeline.

He doesn’t offer a strategy.

He simply says:

“You won’t know the day or time when God will finally get what God wants for this world. However, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and the power you will be given will be the power to bear witness to a truth of deep importance.”

And then—before they can press him any further—he is taken up.

He ascends.

And, as the confession says, is seated at the right hand of the Father.

And they just stand there—staring into the sky—trying to locate him somewhere “up there,” as if the point is that Jesus has gone somewhere else.

And then two figures in white interrupt them with what feels like a gentle rebuke:

“Why do you stand here looking up toward heaven?”

As if to say: “Y’all… you’re looking in the wrong direction.”

Which is what we so often do when we are trying to find Jesus. We usually look “up”—to the right leaders, the right position, the right philosophy, the right politics.

The Psalmist confessed that this is exactly what he would do. In a moment of desperation, he sang: “I look up to the hills. Where does my help come from?”

The Ascension is not about Jesus going up to heaven—as if he is going somewhere else.

It’s about Jesus going to where God is.

And that changes everything.

Because when we think of heaven, we tend to think of a far-off place—a distant paradise, somewhere “up there.”

But for the biblical writers, for the first-century thinker, heaven wasn’t just a destination. It was God’s space—a dimension of God’s creation—interwoven with earth, overlapping with it, breaking into it.

Heaven and earth are not separate realities.

They are meant to be held together.

God’s will is to be done “on earth as it is in heaven.”

The God who fills heaven is also fully present here.

So when we say Jesus has ascended and is seated at the right hand of the Father, we’re not saying he’s gone far away.

We’re saying he now holds ultimate authority—right here, in the middle of this world.

And what kind of authority is it?

Not domination.

Not coercion.

Not control.

Love.

In the Ascension, the love of heaven takes its place as the ruling power in a world we often experience as hell.

Which is why the early Christians could say, boldly: “Jesus is Lord.”

Not Caesar.

Not empire.

Not fear.

Not anguish.

Not even death.

Jesus.

Wherever love shows up, heaven and earth are colliding.

The Ascension is about Jesus taking his place as Lord of love, which places him over everything that already is. It means he is not leaving the world behind, but filling it—not withdrawing from the world, but being ever-present in the fullness of self-surrendering love, reigning within it.

The Ascension doesn’t remove Jesus from reality.

It reveals reality.

It unveils what has been true all along: Jesus is Lord.

And it also reveals that love is at work in full force—even when it doesn’t seem so.

Not someday.

Not eventually.

Not when things finally get better.

Now.

Jesus is Lord over space, over matter, over time—every place, every thing, every moment—held together not by force or control or domination, but by love.

And if that’s true, then something else must also be true.

If Jesus is Lord, then someone—or something—else isn’t.

The problem is that we have learned to live as if that someone or something else is.

Like the disciples, we’ve been formed in a different rhythm, a different story about how the world works. Politics, economics, violence have trained us well—trained us to move faster, to produce more, to control outcomes, to secure our lives, to win.

It shows up in the way we schedule our days, in the way we measure success, in the way we respond to fear, in the quiet belief that if we don’t hold things together, everything will fall apart—and it is all on us.

It’s subtle.

But it’s everywhere.

But from the beginning, if we look a little deeper—just beneath the surface—creation and the God working in creation tell a different story.

Think about it.

Creation moves in a different rhythm.

The earth doesn’t rush.

The seasons don’t panic.

Seeds fall into the ground and take their time.

Light breaks into darkness slowly, faithfully, every single morning.

Creation receives.

Creation yields.

Creation participates in something larger than itself.

It does not strive to control the world; it lives within it.

And in doing so, it bears witness to something—some love working behind the scenes, offering, offering, offering, rather than taking, taking, taking.

That’s the something I’ve been trying to name:

Creation itself has a liturgical rhythm… and creation is already testifying, already revealing, already speaking.

Which means the Ascension is not announcing something new so much as unveiling something that creation has borne witness to all along:

Jesus is Lord.

And now Jesus says, “This is when it gets personal. As I am in creation, I am in you—and like creation has been doing all along, you will receive power… you will be my witnesses.”

You will bear witness to the love-force at work in the world.

You will receive power.

That is a promise.

But we need to be careful with that word—power—because when we hear it, we tend to think control, influence, the ability to win at all costs.

But that’s not the kind of power Jesus is talking about.

The power Jesus offers is not the power to control the world; it is the power to bear witness—to live truthfully within the world.

It is the power to endure without hardening, the power to see and tell the truth without violence, the power to love without needing to win, the power to remain present when others withdraw.

And it’s the kind of power you can actually see all around you, if you know where to look.

Whether he knows it or not, it’s the power the alcoholic depends on—not to fix their whole life, but to stay sober today.

It’s the power the woman working two jobs depends on to keep showing up, to keep loving her kids, to keep going when everything in her says she can’t.

It’s the power the man who has been unjustly accused depends on to stand in truth without collapsing under its weight.

In the words of Huey Lewis and the News—or Celine Dion—it’s the power of love.

It’s quiet.

It’s steady.

But it is real.

And it is enough.

Jesus says that’s the power you will receive—a power to bear witness to this deeper reality: love is at work.

And that word—witness—matters.

Because it means telling the truth about matters of deep importance, even when it costs you.

The word Luke uses—*martys*—is where we get the word martyr, because from the very beginning the church understood that to bear witness to the truth that Jesus is Lord would put you at odds with a world that believes something else is.

We are not witnesses to comfort.

We are witnesses to a crucified and ascended Lord—and that kind of truth will always create tension, because that kind of truth is a threat to the powers that be.

And here’s where it all comes together.

If the Ascension reveals reality, and if creation is already bearing witness to that reality, then our role is not to force belief.

Our role is to join the witness that is already happening.

Our job is to love.

Love the neighbor.

Love the stranger.

Love the enemy.

Love the foreigner.

Love the widow.

Love the orphan.

Because the Lord of creation is Lord of our lives and is giving us a power that has not been shaped by an old understanding of power, but works in spite of it.

The Ascension helps us see what creation has been bearing witness to—and gives us the power to finally see it, to recognize it, to name it, to live in alignment with it.

And that makes this confession—“He ascended and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty”—deeply practical.

Slow down, because you can’t bear witness in a world of constant noise.

Pay attention, because the Spirit is forming your perception, not just your behavior.

Resist the rhythm of empire—the urgency, the control, the need to win—and learn the rhythm of creation—receiving, trusting, participating.

Tell the truth about what you see, even when it’s inconvenient, even when it costs you, even when it puts you at odds with the dominant story.

And the truth is this:

Jesus is already Lord.

And Caesar is not.

And we are not sent into the world to make that true.

We are sent into the world to tell the truth about it.

And if we don’t know where to look, creation will show us—and embolden our faith.

Look around.

Where life breaks through death…

Where love endures longer than it should…

Where forgiveness shows up when it makes no sense…

Where people remain present in the face of suffering…

That’s witness.

That’s not the world as we’ve come to know it.

That’s creation remembering what it was made for.

And now, by the power we’re given, we are invited to join in.

Amen.