What would you do if you met Jesus face to face?  What would you say to Him?  A woman in California was getting an ice cream cone when she turned around and bumped into actor Paul Newman.  Flustered, she started towards the door when Mr. Newman said, "Ma'am, are you looking for your ice cream cone?  I think you just put it in your purse."

          What would you do if you met Jesus?  I think about things like that.  Like what did Jesus do in the days following Easter Sunday?  What do you think you would have done?  Your work was over.  Your tasks were completed.  You had done what you came to do.  It's time for a break, maybe even time to retire.

          Dr. Dale Meyer, former Lutheran Hour Speaker, once sent a letter to pastors in which he speculated on this.  He wrote:  "I wondered what Jesus might have done during the days after Easter Sunday if He had followed the typical patterns of our lives.  Perhaps on Easter Monday He would have slept in at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus and then enjoyed a late breakfast, talking leisurely with Lazarus about their mutual first-hand experiences of resurrection.

          "With His work of passion over, He might have hung up the working clothes of His ministry and gone over to the Bethany Wal-Mart and bought casual clothes for His retirement.  Finally, He might have gone through the Kidron Valley and up to Jerusalem Motors where he would purchase a new RV.  With that He could visit at his leisure the locales where He had been so busy preaching, teaching, confronting, comforting, and doing miracles.  Following our way of life, Easter would have begun His retirement with a definite focus on the past."  That's a little daydreaming by Dr. Dale Meyer.

          The facts, of course, were much different.  There were 40 days of sporadic appearances and then the came the Ascension.  The resurrection is very important for us.  Indeed, without it, we're in trouble.  1 Corinthians 15:17 tells us, "... if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile;  you are still in your sins."  That's plain talk.  If there's no resurrection for Jesus, there's no hope for us.  Yet as essential as His resurrection was and is for each of us, it was not Christ's ultimate goal.  His goal was ascension -- getting back to Heaven, and getting things ready for our personal ascension.

          After Easter, Jesus was focused on the future, upon His ascension, so that we and all fellow believers might one day ascend to be with Him.  Christ's resurrection is not all there is.  Though it's absolutely necessary for our faith, it's not the end of the story.  Ascension was still to come -- now you know the rest of the story.  You and I can be thankful for the past, but remember that we have a future with God.

          And more than remember, let's get excited about the future.  One day we're going to be in heaven with Him.  We'll be rid of all this stuff of the world that drags us down -- no more pain, no more wars, no more politics, no more foolish Supreme Court decisions, no more senseless killing, no more sadness over the stupidity of mankind -- only His goodness and His love and His joy and His pleasures forever.

          At a pastor's conference some years ago, for some reason I shared with other pastors at dinner table that Carol and I had bought our cemetery plots.  Not a typical thing to discuss over dinner, even for pastors.  This is not a topic people like to discuss, not even pastors.  Yet I was surprised that other pastors said they had also done this, and so we discussed it a few minutes.  Not more than a few minutes, mind you.  Pastors can be realistic about the future, but they needn't overdo it.

          A member recently told me her elderly in-laws cannot deal with death.  "We can't even bring it up," she said.  "They just go ballistic."  It is truly a Christian thing not to be worried about one's death.  To some extent, we might even to look forward to it.  For with our death comes our future with the Lord.  Some people today would call that sick -- an obsession with dying, a denial of life.  I call it looking to the future - a future that's much better than what the world offers us now.

          A recent book, Death of a Nation, outlines the struggle our society is currently in.  The author writes that all successful cultures are changed.  They're perceived by a small group to be corrupt, so that group then seeks change.  To make this change, they strike at the very heart of what holds the society together -- its religious heritage and its family structure.

          The author shows how modern-day activists working feverishly for legalization of a whole list of sins are seeking the same end.  They attack our traditional roots in order to destroy them.  They are doing this to bring in their own new order of society.  But the tragedy is they have nothing to put in its place.  They have a notion.  They have an agenda.  But after mass destruction, they have nothing to offer that's any better.  When people stop believing in God, it's not that they believe in nothing, but that they'll believe in anything.  If you believe in nothing, you'll fall for anything.

          Are you surprised?  Listen to what St. Paul once wrote about his present times.  "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.  Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised.  Amen.  Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.  Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.  They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.  They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful;  they invent ways of doing evil;  they disobey their parents;  they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." (Romans 1:21-32)

          Sound familiar?  It's like reading the agenda of the new society.  In some ways, it's like hearing the nightly news, or a diary of our times.  Yet these words are over 1900 years old.

          You see, the real problem is that people by nature don't want to deal with the eternal.  For them, salvation is only what you can get in the present.  This life is all there is.  When you can't deal with the present, death is just an escape.  Remember Dr. Jack Kevorkian?  Do you think he had Christian motives?  The present will always be worse than our future with Jesus.  Here there will always be pain.  Here there can be no heaven.  The present is but a shadow, a shadow that blots out the sun.  The reality is Christ, and His reality for us is simple:  "Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die."

          That's the good news.  But only believers will share in that good news.  Jesus once said, "Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." (John 3:19)   That's not good news.  But if there's faith in Jesus, there's hope.  If there's no Jesus, there's no hope.

          The Gospel for today surely has hope.  "In my Father's house are many rooms, and I go there to prepare a place for you."  When Christ ascended back to heaven, He had a task -- to prepare us a place.  That's our destiny - life with God.  Not becoming a god, not finding god within you, not seeing god in things around you.  Our destiny is life with God, the only true God, in heaven with Him.  And Life comes only by faith in Christ.  Not faith in the future, nor faith in humanity - faith in Jesus Christ!  Trusting Christ completely, the One who gave His all that we might have it all.

          The question is, "Are we ready to join Him?"  Little Stephanie was on fire for the Lord.  "Do you want to go to heaven?  Then you'd better believe in Jesus!"  She asked Annie, "Do you want to go to heaven?"  "Yes I want to go to heaven," Annie replied.  "Then you'd better believe in Jesus," said Stephanie.  "But, what about my brother?" said Annie.  "Will he there, too?"  Now Stephanie was really eager to share her witness.  "Do you want him to be in heaven?  Wouldn't you like him there with you?"  Said Annie thoughtfully, "I'm not so sure."  "Then you'd better not tell him about Jesus," replied our bright little Stephanie.

          Too bad for Annie's brother.  Jesus died for him too.  The Ascension is not a minor church festival, but that's what we've made it.  We treat it as an addition to the story:  "Oh, by the way, later on Jesus went back to heaven."  If that was the case, the writers of the creeds would never have said:  "He ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead."

          May each one of us here today rejoice in Christ's resurrection, for with it, we know He is God's Son.  And may we also rejoice in His Ascension, for with it, we shall be with God forever.  Amen.

Copyright © 2003 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.