5/17/26 Sermon

It's hard letting go. Especially when it isn't something you want to let go of.

I've had to let go of dreams over the years. The one that still kind of stings is the dream of getting a PhD and teaching. So many of my closest friends have "Doctor" in front of their name now. It doesn't fill me with jealousy exactly, but it does fill me with a sense of longing sometimes.

But Dreams are relatively easy to let go of in the grand scheme of things. People are harder. I see potential in people, and sometimes I mistake that potential for who they are in the moment. It means I've held onto unhealthy relationships longer than I should have. It means I have friends everyone else thinks are jerks. And they're right. They are jerks. But it's hard for me to give up on people.

And then there are those cases that are hardest of all—when you know someone wonderful, who adds so much to life, and yet you have to say goodbye.

I had a teacher in high school named Joel Ferree. I’m sure I’ve talked about him before. He was the first teacher who didn't tell me I was a waste of potential or too smart for my own good. He just let me be me. And it changed my life. I wouldn't be standing here giving sermons without him. When I was in seminary, I preached at the church I grew up in, and he came to see. He'd just gotten over a serious  cancer diagnosis. Afterwards, when we got to catch up, I had so much I wanted to thank him for. But when it came time, we just hugged each other and cried. All I could choke out was "thank you." Some part of me knew it was going to be the last time I saw him. I found out a few weeks later that the cancer returned. A few months later I was sitting in another church at his funeral, wondering—what do I do now?

I wonder if the disciples didn't feel something like that on the day of the ascension.

Think about what they'd just been through. They'd watched him die. They'd buried him. They'd given up. And then, somehow, he came back. He showed up in locked rooms. He ate breakfast with them on the beach. For forty days, Luke tells us, he was with them—teaching them, telling them about the kingdom of God. They had him back. Everything was going to be okay.

And then one day, on a hillside outside Bethany, he lifts his hands to bless them—and he's gone. Just like that. Up into a cloud. Two men in white robes appear and ask them why they're standing there staring at the sky. And that's it.

Acts tells us what happened next. They walked back to Jerusalem. They went up to the upper room—the same upper room where they'd shared the last supper, where they'd hidden after the crucifixion. And they waited. Acts names them—Peter, John, James, and the rest—along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and Jesus' brothers. And they devoted themselves to prayer.

I bet they were wondering exactly what I wondered after Mr. Ferree's funeral. What do we do now? How does any of this work without him? They must have replayed every conversation in their heads—every parable, every meal, every healing—trying to figure out what he would tell them to do. Some of them would eventually write those memories down. All of them would go out and try to live what he'd taught.

But here's what strikes me about the ascension. Jesus didn't have to leave. He could have stayed. He'd already conquered death. He could have stuck around—physically, visibly—guiding the church for the next two thousand years, settling every theological argument. He could be here right now, telling me what to put in this sermon. But for some reason, that wasn't the plan. The plan was that we would have to figure it out.

I feel like I'm on the border of heresy here. I'm not saying we don't need Jesus. We need him badly—you can turn on the news to see that. But maybe the goal was never for him to swoop in and fix everything. Maybe the goal was for the church to become something more than a fan club gathered around a charismatic leader. Maybe the goal was for the gospel to belong to all of us—to be carried forward by ordinary people in ordinary places, by communities that have to discern together, that have to risk being wrong, that have to actually do the work.

If Jesus were standing here, we wouldn't need faith. We wouldn't need each other. We'd just need him. And we'd probably do what we always do with charismatic leaders—we'd let him carry it. We'd sit back and wait for him to fix things. We've seen how that goes.

But by ascending, Jesus does something extraordinary. He hands the kingdom over to us. He says, in effect: you've been with me. You've heard the teachings. You've seen what the kingdom of God looks like. Now go build it. Together. The peace I've shown you, give to each other. The healing I've offered, offer to your neighbors. He doesn't leave us alone—he sends the Spirit, he promises he'll be with us to the end of the age. But the visible work of bringing the kingdom into being? That belongs to us now.

So we let go. We let go of waiting for someone else to do the work. We let go of the idea that this whole thing depends on one person—even if that person is the savior of the world. We embrace what he taught us. We trust those teachings to guide us. We rely on each other. And we get to work.

The whole thing is based around one person—Jesus. But it isn't up to him to make it work.

It's up to us.

Amen.