Year A Ascension 2026 Ascension People

 Year A Ascension, 14 May 2026

St George’s and Trinity Episcopal Churches, Fredericksburg

“Ascension People”

Collect: Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with him continually dwell; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Psalm 47 

Clap your hands, all you peoples; * shout to God with a cry of joy. 

For the Lord Most High is to be feared; * he is the great King over all the earth. 

He subdues the peoples under us, * and the nations under our feet. 

He chooses our inheritance for us, * the pride of Jacob whom he loves. 

God has gone up with a shout, * the Lord with the sound of the ram’s-horn. 

Sing praises to God, sing praises; * sing praises to our King, sing praises. 

For God is King of all the earth; * sing praises with all your skill. 

God reigns over the nations; * God sits upon his holy throne. 

The nobles of the peoples have gathered together * with the people of the God of Abraham. 

The rulers of the earth belong to God, * and he is highly exalted. 

Acts 1:1-11 

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But 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.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” 

They say that the dash on your gravestone, the dash between the date of birth and the date of death, is your entire life. Jesus got a double dash, birth to Easter, and Easter to Ascension.

Here is the thing. We take Easter seriously, and we should. We call ourselves an Easter people, and we should. It is the culmination of Jesus’ teaching and ministry. And after Charles Dickens, we in the English speaking world took Christmas so very seriously. But then we have today. Ascension. What do we do with that?

We do not take it seriously. We have no Ascension carols. We have no set festivities that escape in from the culture or sneak out into it either. Ascension, if mentioned, is more metaphor than something real. We take Christmas and all the details literally. We take Easter literally as well. But when it comes down to the Ascension, we barely give it notice, much less importance. And I would dare say, very few of us take it literally. 

Two years ago I walked across Spain on the Camino de Santiago de Compastella. And every couple of days there tended to be a cathedral. And in those cathedrals they had to fill the space with something, and often they took a chapel off to the side and dedicated it to the Ascension. You could always tell, because there would be swirling clouds, disciples aghast, and then, dangling from the ceiling in the midst of the clouds, there were feet, feet with nailprints in them, dangling from the ceiling.

I have to admit, it made me giggle. It was cheesy. I had to laugh because it was laughable. I had to laugh because, never, not once, was I ever urged to take this day seriously. If mentioned at all in Jesus’ story, it is, “Oh, by the way…”

We include it in the Nicene Creed.

he ascended into heaven

            and is seated at the right hand of the Father. 

We do all of this, but deep down, do we really take this day seriously enough?

What if we thought of ourselves, not as Easter people, but Ascension People? 

Jesus said: “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.” 

And mere seconds after he was gone, the disciples stood there gaping, and they caught the angels’ rebuke:

“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” 

When I say we should see ourselves as Ascension people, we should see ourselves as Christ’s body here on earth, at work in the world, expanding and enhancing the very Kingdom of God! No light task. Not dismissable or even close to laughable. Daunting, maybe. Harrowing, perhaps. But definitely not silly or laughable.

In the Gospel of John it is recorded that the disciples of John the Baptizer asked about this Jesus, and what they were to do with him. John responded, 

He must increase, but I must decrease.’ The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. [John 3:30-31]

John had fulfilled what he had come to do, and needed to step out of the way so that the one for whom he had come to prepare the way for could do what was needed to do.

Jesus did much the same thing. He went “home” so that we, The Church, could step into our own. What he had enabled and empowered, its time has come. He did what needed to be done so that we might become God’s dream for us.

Friends, we live in a post-Christendom era. The Gospel has become so acculturated that people can say they believe in Jesus with no change in themselves whatsoever. People put words and ideas in Jesus' mouth that are nothing like the teaching of our Lord and Savior, at all! If we take Easter seriously, if we take the Ascension seriously, we must be actively engaged in making the earth, heck, let’s settle for Fredericksburg a bit more like heaven each and every day.

That’s what Jesus said to the apostles, start where you are, and work your way out. Or literally, “Be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” That’s what we are to be about. We have our mission set before us.

Ascension People, our time has come! Let us be about the work we have been given to do. Amen