Lent? Check. Easter? Check? Ascension? Check. Pentecost? Check. Last Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, I preached in Mayville, Wisconsin. A faithful pastor and good people who used Pentecost Sunday to celebrate the 175th anniversary of their church. My sermon in one sentence: You dasn’t forget the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wait, they may have thought, it’s Pentecost, it’s church anniversary. Ascension is past, we checked that off. This coming Sunday we’ll check off Trinity Sunday. Yes, I can read the calendar but no, you dasn’t forget the Ascension of our Lord Jesus.
“Dasn’t” was the word my father used when he wanted to make his point as clearly as possible. “Dale, you dasn’t do that.” It came from his childhood; he was born in 1920. Grandpa and Grandma Meyer spoke Low German but raised their children to speak English. I suspect “dasn’t” was a German-English hybrid. This strange word seems to me a good way to remember, don’t check off the Ascension.
Because we have special names for many Sundays throughout the year, Sundays that bring familiar readings and themes, Sundays focusing on this or that aspect of faith, we easily move Jesus Christ off center stage. Cycling through familiar Gospel stories about Jesus, we hear Him confined to Galilee or Samaria or Judea, wherever. Today He is not confined. He’s ascended and at the right hand of God. “Sitting at the right hand of God” does not mean “some specific spot in heaven … (but) nothing other than the almighty power of God, which fills heaven and earth.” Christ rules “from one sea to the other and to the end of the world” (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, VIII, 27-28). All creation is subject to Him (1 Peter 3:22).
Today’s news includes the first of several televised hearings about the January 6th insurrection. The San Francisco district attorney has been recalled, and the DA in Los Angeles is likewise taking heat for high crime rates. Authorities arrested a man who intended to kill a justice of the Supreme Court. On and on. With all this, I have memorized and take comfort in Psalm 94:9, “He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?” Lift up your weary heart to the one seated at the right hand of God. He hears. He sees. You dasn’t forget the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ!
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