Ascension Day, Year A 2026: Luke 24:44-53

My six-year-old daughter really wants to be a grown up. And from her perspective, I can see the appeal. Grown-ups make all the rules. We get to stay up later. And we are constantly telling her to enjoy being six. But it’s hard for her to wait. And, the bad news for her, is that waiting won’t get easier when she does become a “grown up”, whenever that happens. But we also remind her that she has so much cool stuff to do in the meantime. So many fun games to play, so much to learn, so many books to read. While she has to wait, there is so much activity in her life. I googled “songs about waiting” this week and got countless results across time and genres, from Phil Collins to Jennifer Lopez, the Beach Boys to Cindy Lauper, No Doubt to Tom Petty. There’s even a song in Hamilton called “Wait For It”. But in none of these songs are they simply sitting still - even if they aren’t physically doing anything, they become songs less about waiting and more about anticipation.

We practice waiting, and anticipating, a lot in our liturgical year. We spend four weeks waiting in Advent and then another six waiting in Lent. Then, we make it 40 days into Easter, and Jesus tells his disciples to wait again. At least this time we only have to wait ten more days, liturgically, until the Spirit arrives at Pentecost.

There is so much waiting in Scripture. And we have a mixed record when it comes to how well we wait; how well we remember that waiting isn’t necessarily “sit tight”, but can be active - ask anyone who has ever waited tables how active waiting can be. Sometimes, in Scripture, we fail spectacularly, like when Moses goes up the mountain to receive the Law from the Lord. The people decide that Moses is gone and Aaron turns their jewelry into a golden calf for them to worship. They had lost faith in the God who had recently brought them out of slavery in Egypt (not their ancestors, but them) - the same people who had witnessed the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea - cut their losses amazingly fast.

But Scripture also gives us examples of how to wait. 

In First Samuel, we are told that Hannah is barren, year after year. She waits and prays and eventually conceives and bears a son. Hannah then sings a prayer that Mary will eventually look to for inspiration for the Magnificat. Hannah did not know how this would turn out. She could have waited and prayed and still not conceived. In Hannah’s time, there were no recourses for women who struggled with infertility, and a lack of medical understanding, coupled with patriarchy, led to the woman being blamed for any inability to have children. So, a woman’s ability to bear children came with significant social consequences. But God wants us to have life and have it abundantly. God giving children to the barren is a common theme in Scripture because of what it communicates about God: that God is a God of life, giving life in places where we never expected to find life or had given up expectations of finding life. Our text today talks about waiting; and waiting with action. We know that the disciples are waiting for the Holy Spirit, which will come upon them in Acts Chapter 2. And after today’s reading, they take action and call Matthias to fill Judas’ spot among the 12. The disciples being complete again, they are ready for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

That’s what is happening in Acts. But in today’s Gospel reading from Luke, the same author as Acts, Jesus tells his disciples to “stay” in the city. However the word translated to “stay”, καθίζω, would best be translated as “sit”, but not the way we would hear “sit” in English. If someone tells me to “sit” somewhere, I would hear that I’m supposed to just sit tight, sit quietly, maybe bring out a book, maybe wait for my number to be called. But that is the opposite implication of καθίζω. The King James Bible translates the word as “tarry”, which better describes the activity that would have been implied by Luke. In Jesus’ world, to sit was more than a bodily posture. Whether on a simple bench in the synagogue or on a throne, sitting signified settled authority, judicial deliberation, completed labor, or attentive learning. Rabbis sat to teach; judges sat to render verdicts; monarchs sat to reign; disciples sat to receive instruction. Every New Testament use of this word or its cognates flows out of this shared cultural grammar. Matthew opens the Sermon on the Mount with Jesus seated. Mark (9:35), Luke (5:3), John (8:2), and Acts (18:11) repeat the pattern of sitting to teach. By taking a seat, Jesus signals settled authority; his words are not tentative suggestions but binding revelation. 

Every appearance of καθίζω in the New Testament reinforces a single truth: the One whose word created, whose cross redeemed, and whose resurrection vindicated now sits enthroned, inviting His people to sit under His teaching, rest in His sufficiency, and anticipate seats beside Him in the age to come. The apostles mirror their Master: on the Sabbath in Antioch, Paul and Barnabas “went into the synagogue and sat down” (Acts 13:14), ready to expound the Scriptures when invited. The church’s teaching ministry thus follows a posture first modeled by Christ himself.

When my oldest was a baby, I played a game with her at the kitchen table where I would sit her up on my lap, set her hands on the table, and “run” a family board meeting with her as the chair. “First topic: milk. Delicious.” Sitting at the head of a table continues to be a way in which authority is claimed. But today, those with settled authority typically stand. Teachers stand at the front of the classroom. Politicians stand at podiums. Preachers stand in pulpits - even those who don’t use pulpits. So, we have the opportunity to reorient ourselves a bit to see the activity and the power that Jesus is speaking to in his instructions to the disciples.

Jesus explains the Scriptures to the disciples - a sign that is fundamental to any understanding of what God has done through Jesus. And this revelation contains a mission: a mission to all the nations beginning with Jerusalem of which a more detailed program is given in verse 8 of Acts chapter one - included in our Acts reading today. Jesus commissions his disciples to be witnesses of these things that have happened to him in fulfillment of Scripture. Luke had promised at the beginning of the Gospel that his systematic account would be based on what the original eyewitnesses and ministers of the word passed on; in his telling  then, he clearly thinks that the disciples fulfilled their mission. (Brown, 262)

The timeline between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension in Luke and Acts are different. In Luke, it appears that everything in Chapter 24 - the resurrection, the walk to Emmaus (which begins with “that same day”) and the ascension - are on the same day. Acts, book 2 of Luke’s account, articulates that Jesus is among them for 40 days. What are we to do with this? It’s tempting to smooth it out. To try to make both accounts history-book true. But that’s not the kind of truth Luke is focusing on. He’s making theological arguments, not historical ones. In Luke’s storyline, he is using the single resurrection-ascension complex as a hinge. From God’s perspective the ascension of the risen Jesus after death is timeless, but there is a sequence from the viewpoint of those whose life it touched. For the Gospel the ascension visibly terminates the activity of Jesus on earth; but in Acts it prepares the apostles to be witnesses to him to the ends of the earth. (Brown, 281) So in Acts, Luke is stretching out the length of what he views as one event to better prepare his readers to carry out the mission of the church.

I recently heard English described as “the shower drain of languages” because of how much it is an amalgamation of other languages. Consequently, words have multiple, and sometimes contradictory, definitions. For example, I looked up “wait” and found fourteen different definitions, among which were: “to be available or in readiness” and “to remain neglected for a time”. Jesus is calling us to be available or in readiness. Not to be sitting on our phones in a waiting room, but to be lying in wait, eagerly anticipating so we can be ready for what God will be calling us to do next. Amen.