Site icon Episcopal Church of St. Martin

“Set Free”: Sermon by Rev. Debbie 5/17/2026

gabe

Sermon on May 17, 2026
“Set Free“
By: Rev. Debbie Hawkins

https://churchofstmartin.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026_05_17_Easter7sermon.mp3

Set free.

Sometimes I worry about being found acceptable in God’s sight, about accumulating enough “brownie points,” as someone recently put it, to be considered worthy of heaven or God’s care. I worry I need to do something to make sure God loves me, notices me, but maybe not too much, hoping whatever it is I am doing will lead God to say, “well done, good and faithful servant, now enter into the joy of your master.” Jesus even suggests we should be thinking like this or at least he tells parables about people being pleased to hear that response. That particular quote is from the parable of the talents in Matthew 25.

But we also hear scripture passages like the ones today: spoken to a bunch of very humanly humans who, when the going gets tough, run away and hide. Who, when asked a direct question, fudge, or fib, and say ‘who me? I don’t know him,’ and yet are still told “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” You will be my witnesses. Not you have earned the right to be my witnesses or you have finally figured everything out and will never make another ghastly mistake again so I finally can trust you with this mission but simply you, as you are, will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. Bishop Wright of the Diocese of Atlanta reminded a bunch of us at clergy conference this last week that biblical Jerusalem is a place of misused raw power, dashed hopes, and betrayal. Jesus says, you will be my witnesses in those places and anywhere else you happen to find yourself. 

What are we going to do with those contrasts? This is the Sunday after the Ascension. I wonder if the doctrine of the Ascension can help us.

The Ascension is something some of us tend to ignore, partially because it is actually part of Easter, not separate from it but rather is part of the whole, but also, I think, because a lot of the iconography is just plain silly. Have you ever seen a stained-glass window with a picture of clouds and then feet dangling down out of the bottom of the clouds? There are such windows. That is the Ascension. A few weeks ago, Pamela gave a sermon using essentially a giant felt board. At the top she placed at figure, an icon, of a heart with hands, it was kind of silly too, but it was so we would be mindful of the loving heart and hands of God at work in the world. Today we have clouds and a dangling pair of feet. Definitely silly. Still, I know I have felt like that – up in the air, my head in a fog, and no solid place to stand.

I think another reason we sometimes hold the ascension at arm’s length is because it has a lot to teach us about who God is and who we are in relationship to God and that can be scary.

Over the past few weeks, I have asked several of you what you think of the doctrine of the Ascension, what Jesus’ ascending into heaven means to you. If you are one of those I pestered, I want to thank you for your time and your serious consideration of the question. Really. I was quite moved. I’m not going to talk about what you told me. They were not those kinds of conversations. I would, however, like to share some of what you stirred up in me by what was said. 

The doctrine is a story, a kind of parable that addresses why we might want to worry about living the way Jesus teaches us, and why we don’t need to worry about that at all. So, what is this parable of the Ascension? We tell the story every week when we recite the Nicene Creed. It comes in the bit about Jesus Christ who, for us and for our salvation came down from heaven bringing divinity into creation. He lived and suffered and died and rose again. Here is the “Ascension” part, you can say it with me if you want to: “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” That part, “”, is the story of the Ascension.

So here is one thing we might hear: the Christ, who was from the beginning, came down to earth bringing the divine nature to profane creation. Scooping that up, Christ has ascended taking our created nature into the heaven uniting us with God. I’m not making that up. In the second century Irenaeus was writing and teaching all about it and in the 21st century I’m here to testify there are some people in Davis still talking about it, that swirling new creation of God’s that the Ascension completes, not just when we die but now and always. Sr. Ilia Delio writes about this picture the parable shows us when she writes, “Christ is always emerging in us as we seek to grow in love. Jesus’ ascension into heaven conveys to us a new reality, that our humanity is fulfilled in God, and God is fulfilled in us, as Jesus proclaimed: ‘I am with you always, until the end of time’ (Matt 28:20).” (https://christogenesis.org/a-short-reflection-on-the-feast-of-the-ascension/)

This way of reading the Ascension helped me just yesterday when I was having trouble with some of God’s more fractious children. It reminded me that the Fisherman has come down with his giant net and scooped us all up and carried us into heaven. If all I can think of is, ‘they stink,’ well, they probably do, and I probably do too, but Jesus isn’t concerned with that. Jesus wants to feed a world that is hungry in oh so many ways and we, all of us, are always invited to grow in love so we can truly help with that each day. 

Here is another thing I heard. In the context of the church year we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension 40 days after the Resurrection which means it always falls on a Thursday but the lectionary takes care of that by making sure we read the story from the Acts of the Apostles on the following Sunday. That is today.     40 days. Can you hear the rain falling for 40 days and 40 nights during the flood? And the sun comes out and the world is new and God makes a new covenant with all creation. That, too, is the Ascension. There is a new creation.

40 days. 40 years and we have Moses and the Exodus. We are set free from bondage to pharaoh, or power, or status, or money, or demands or expectations or whoever says he is god but is not God. Our chains are loosed. We have been bound so tightly to worry we are not good enough, or anxiety about failure, or blindness to reality, or to the need to assert control over others or outcomes, or to whatever our own particular self-obsession is, it takes a long time of wandering in the wilderness, learning to depend on God, arguing with God about that, and then learning again to depend on God to shake us free enough of our chains to be formed into a people of God formed, shaped, and readied for Pentecost and to love our neighbors (which is nothing less than all creation) as ourselves. 

Something else. Sometimes we get discouraged. Nothing seems to matter. Jesus is gone. Yeah, yeah there is a promise of return, but he is gone. That is part of the experience of the Ascension, too. We cannot see very far ahead. We are in a fog. We look up but there is nothing to see and nowhere solid to stand, our feet are flapping in the wind. NT Wright calls that the Christ space, if that helps. When we find ourselves there, the Ascension tells us to turn to one another, even in the middle of places of misused raw power, dashed hopes, and betrayal, and share with awe and thanksgiving what we do see. The Holy Spirit will find us there.

What I heard in the story of the ascension, listening to some of you this month, is we might want to worry about living the way Jesus teaches us to because we have been caught up in the mysterious work of the creation of a new heaven and a new earth and, because of that, what we do, how we live, matters. We can set worry aside because we don’t have to worry about God. What God wants, what God gives us is freedom so we can learn to live out of a heart of love and be a part of Love’s hands and heart at work in the world. Ascension reminds us the kingdom is among and within us. We might not always be able to see it or feel it, but together we are each held within the dynamism of the living, risen, and ascended Christ, and for that we can give thanks to God. That is what you helped me find in the story of the Ascension. What do you find?

OTHER RECENT SERMONS

To see more sermons

Exit mobile version