This is a rather crowded Sunday in the church calendar. It is Memorial Sunday, when we remember those who have given their lives in service of their country. It is Aldersgate Sunday, in fact Aldersgate Day, commemorating John Wesley's heart-warming experience on May 24, 1738. And it is also Ascension Sunday, celebrating the return of Jesus to heaven. All are important and worthy remembrances.
First, Memorial Sunday, a solemn and appropriate recognition of our fallen service men and women. There has never been a more eloquent tribute than by the poet Laurence Binyon, written in 1914 as the scale of the slaughter in World War One was becoming horrendously real. Let these words from his poem, For the Fallen, be our tribute on this day to our service men and women:
They went with songs to battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labor of the day-time;
They sleep beyond the land they once called home.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

(Selected Poems of Laurence Binyon, adapted, [New York: Macmillan, 1922], p.77)

This is also when we commemorate May 24, 1738, a day that marked a milestone in John Wesley’s spiritual pilgrimage, and which many regard as the touchstone for the Methodist Revival. He had come back to England after several discouraging years in Georgia, troubled in spirit and seeking an assurance of faith that seemed to elude him. Listen to these words from his Journal:
I continued thus to seek [communion with God] till Wednesday, May 24. I think it was about five this morning, that I opened my Testament on those words, "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the divine nature." (2 Pet. 1:4.) Just as I went out, I opened it again on those words, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." In the afternoon I was asked to go to St. Paul's. The anthem was, “Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. . . .
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me.
I then testified openly to all there, what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, "This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?" Then was I taught, that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith . . . But that, as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes gives, sometimes withholds, according to the counsels of his own will. (Wesley’s Works: 18:249f.)

Methodists remember and celebrate this day as the spark that ignited Wesley’s leadership of the Methodist movement, becoming the great church to which we now belong. As Wesley himself made clear many times in his Journal and Letters, this kind of experience is not the only measure of the Christian life. But in our Methodist tradition we declare that the assurance he felt that evening at Aldersgate Street, this “inward witness” of the Holy Spirit, is the wellspring and dynamic of our faith and our discipleship. Again, an important remembrance for us on this day and in this place.
So to the third listing in our church calendar. Ascension Day itself is observed on the preceding Thursday, but in many churches around the world it has become the custom to do so on the following Sunday, as we are doing today. Since this concerns Jesus Christ rather than ourselves, of the three remembrances this is by far the most important.
Will you join me in prayer?
Most gracious God, out of all the words that will now be spoken and heard, may it be your living word that stays in our hearts. Give us the grace to receive it, and give us the charity to let all the other words slip away. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Today is also the seventh and last Sunday of the Easter season. Next Sunday we observe Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit to empower our witness to the coming Reign of God, and the season that follows is the longest of the church year, some twenty-five weeks, known as Kingdomtide and concluding with Christ the King Sunday. The church year then begins all over again: Advent, followed by Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, and then Easter. What makes the six months following Pentecost so important is that they are devoted to ways in which Christians live out the teachings of Jesus, in and through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Ascension Sunday is thus the transition between the earthly ministry of Jesus and the work of the church in preparing for its fulfilment in the coming Reign of God. It is the day when we affirm that this young rabbi from Nazareth, born of an earthly mother, living an earthly life, eating earthly food, sweating earthly sweat, bleeding earthly blood, and dying an earthly death, was God’s intervention into human history. His return to the heavens was the culmination of his earthly ministry, though not the fulfilment of his redemptive work, when planet Earth will once again take its proper place in the universe. Until that time, when he will come again to present planet Earth to his Father, fully redeemed and fully healed, his Resurrection and Ascension are God’s resounding affirmation of the pivotal victory of Christ, and that his final victory, still being fought and yet to be won, is assured.
Pending this final victory, we refer to the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus as the Christ Event, and the fulfilment of his redeeming work as the coming Reign of God. This presents a tension for the Christian in holding together the transcendence and the immanence of God. To declare the transcendence of God is to state the obvious: that God is beyond all possible human knowledge and experience. Not to say so would domesticate God into a human religious concept. Yet God is also immanent in the world, manifest in the wonders and the beauty of nature, and supremely in the human race, fallen though we may be. Indeed, the scriptures go so far as to say that we have been created in the very image of God. (Genesis 1:27-28)
To use words that are less philosophical, this can be described as the tension between the heavenly and the earthly dimensions of our faith. We find it in the prayer that Jesus taught, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” It is also implicit in his two Great Commandments, to love God, whom we cannot see, and to love our neighbor, who is every living thing on our planet.
As with all tensions, we must keep this in balance, though it is always possible to move too far in either direction. If we weight our faith too much toward God who is Spirit, not only do we tend to devalue the world that God has created, including our fellow human beings, but we can also use our faith to escape from worldly reality. In a culture that has become increasingly escapist, God who is Spirit can easily become a virtual God, a pretend God, a God who fits our own predispositions and prejudices, instead of our facing the challenges of loving our neighbor as Christ commanded.
One of my valued friends and colleagues in the Christian life is Bill Pannell, Emeritus Professor of Evangelism at Fuller Theological Seminary. An African American, Bill was invited in the seventies to develop a program at Fuller for black students, which he did with great skill and fortitude, providing insights into the underlying dynamics of racism in our culture that are still worth studying today. He tells the story of one of his neighbors in Pasadena who was a fervent Christian. Bill observed him one day packing a truck with books. He went over to ask whether he was moving. “No,” he replied, “these are Bibles I am taking to Russia. Now that the Berlin Wall is down, God has told me to spread the word to our new neighbors. “That’s great,” said Bill, “but since I moved in two years ago, you haven’t even asked me to have a cup of coffee, still less given me a Bible. I wonder why God didn’t tell you just to cross the street?”
On the other hand, it is possible to weight our faith too much toward its earthly dimensions. When this happens, we not only devalue the heavenly nature of God, but we tend to substitute a range of human thoughts and activities in place of the divine. This is often expressed as loving God by loving our neighbor, but the two Great Commandments of Jesus do not say that. We are rather commanded first to love God, with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and then to love our neighbor. This distinction is not playing with words, but simply to state a profound reality, that it is only with the love that comes from knowing God that we are able to love our neighbor as Christ would have us love. Loving and serving our neighbor is something a great many people do, and do well. Christians, however, must also be a means of grace, so that we can introduce them to Jesus Christ and connect them with their Creator and their Redeemer.
Even more important, when we unduly weight our faith toward its earthly dimensions, we tend to view Jesus less as the Son of God and more as a prophet, a teacher, and the embodiment of human love. While Jesus was all of these things, as a role model of worldly wisdom and love he did have his shortcomings. This is where Christians can learn a great deal from non-believers, and especially those who take the gospel more seriously than Christians themselves. One classic critique of Jesus is in a lecture by the philosopher Bertrand Russell titled Why I am not a Christian. The text is filled with questions that Christians must always be ready to answer. Let me quote him:
It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree [that Christ was the best and wisest of men. I do not [agree] myself. I think that there are a good many points upon which I agree with Christ a great deal more than the professing Christians do. . . . But I am concerned with Christ as he appears in the Gospels, taking the Gospel narrative as it stands, and there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that his second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time . . . In that respect, clearly Jesus was not so wise as some other people have been, and certainly not superlatively wise. . . . I know a clergyman who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found he was planting trees in his garden. . . .
[Also] one finds repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to his preaching – an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative [moral] excellence. You do not for instance find that attitude in Socrates. . . .[But] you will find that in the Gospels Christ said, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell.” That was said to people who did not like his preaching, [and it] is not really to my mind the best tone [to adopt.]

Well of course not; not when we center our faith on the humanity of Jesus to the neglect, or even the denial, of his divine nature as the Son of God. He then becomes merely a worldly figure with all the freight of a worldly role model, subject to the impish humor of scholarly non-believers like Bertrand Russell. The most damaging disablement of the church across the ages, and in no age more than our own, is how many of those who claim the name of Christ have questioned his true identity, sabotaging the witness of those who have proclaimed him for who he is, often with their very lives. With Christians like this, who needs pagans?
By earthly criteria Jesus does not rate very highly, either in light of worldly wisdom, or for that matter charitable disposition. Moreover, his teachings do not stand on their own. For one thing, quite a number of them can be found, not only in the Jewish tradition, but in other traditions even more ancient. And for another, not all of them are practicable, as Christians have found over the centuries. But as the Son of God, as the Savior of the world, he can certainly be allowed to let fly against the stupidity of the world, and especially its religious leaders.
The authority of what Jesus said emanates rather from who he claimed to be; who he was, and who he is. This we know, not from the influence of his teaching, but from his life and death and resurrection. “For Jews demand signs,” wrote Paul, “and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (I Corinthians 1:22-24).
Those of us who know this have been called and have received the gift of faith in Christ, the gift of knowing that in Jesus of Nazareth God broke into human history to redeem planet Earth: Jesus, the only Begotten Son of God, fully human, fully divine, far above all rule and authority. And when his earthly ministry was completed, he ascended into heaven with the promise that another Person of the Triune God would come to empower his disciples, called to continue his preaching and teaching until all the world is ready to come home.
Next Sunday The Rev. Julie Halstead will help us celebrate the coming of that Person, the Holy Spirit. May we be freshly empowered to be witnesses to what we know. And then, because we know, may we bring new energy and commitment to what Christ teaches and commands us to do in the world to love our neighbors. After next Sunday we will have twenty-five weeks of Kingdomtide to center ourselves on doing on precisely that.