"God has gone up with a merry noise" So begins today's Gradual Psalm in the prayer book translation. the RSV translates the same verse " God has gone up with a shout". The word "Shout" certainly doesn't convey to my ear the same sense of joy and celebration as the phrase "Merry noise". Nor does it as clearly suggest to us what our attitude towards this extraordinary event, the ascension of our Lord into heaven, should be. The disciples surely saw the event as the end. Their hopes were dashed on Good Friday, only to be lifted again on Easter Sunday when Jesus was returned to them transformed, then forty days later he leaves them again, this time with even more finality,, it seems, than with death. So their reaction to the Ascension must have been pain, despair, confusion, a sense of abandonment. After their experience of the Resurrection, perhaps they were expecting another reappearance because the angel appears and asks them why they are all standing around looking up at heaven. They had to be told that that was it, like the janitor having to come out on the stage of a theatre to tell the audience to go home, the show is over. But we know, and the disciples were soon to learn, that the show wasn't over.

           Let's stop for a minute and look at what has happened. Jesus began his ministry by calling these twelve men as his special disciples. They believed him to be the Messiah they had expected and had been waiting for for generations. In choosing to follow him they showed their faith in what they believed him to be. No matter what or who they each understood by the title messiah, they accepted the idea that he was it. The next three years were certainly difficult for them, they gave up homes, jobs, and family to travel with Jesus all over Palestine. His various miracles must have awed them and at times frightened them to death, much that they saw and were told must have been confusing and nonsensical. Yet they followed. They had faith that Jesus was the Christ. Their confusion must have been compounded by the crucifixion and the events that followed, yet they continued obedient, faithful. And at the time of the Ascension they are obedient once again to the final instruction to return to Jerusalem and wait. To wait for this "Comforter" that he told them about.

           Think of how they must have felt. They didn't understand what had happened, they didn't know really what they were waiting for, they must have been in an incredible state of confusion. All they had was their faith. The faith that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, and that no matter what, what he had said must be accepted as truth, that they must obey, and that God would prevail, somehow.

           Imagine, if you will, how you would feel if you woke up tomorrow morning and all the basic rules of nature were changed. The sun and moon no longer cycled across the sky, gravity no longer was a predictable force holding everything to the ground. I think you would feel like any else would feel, you would begin to question your sanity. Has the world gone mad or have I? Now what if something else happened. What if you were unable, because of some mental defect, to understand that every time you let go of something you were holding it would fall down, that the sun and moon repeat their daily, monthly and annual cycles. In other words, you didn't know nor could you understand that these basic natural laws existed. Your confusion would be just as great as before, because nothing would be predictable, Life would be spent cowering in abject fear of the unknown. Because you would never know what to expect. What is it that prevents this condition in all of us? What is it that lets us get up in the morning knowing that the Sun will rise and that our shoes are where we left them the night before? Very simply it is faith, faith in the laws of nature, faith in the predictability of the world. All humans seem to be born with this kind of faith, or very quickly learn it. We hardly even think of all this as a matter of faith, but it is, yet it is not enough for us because this faith fails us as soon as we discover the greater issues of life, death, who we are and why do we even exist.

           For the Disciples their faith in the world was very deliberately shattered, then transformed into something else by their experience of Jesus. It was shattered by the wondrous things he did, and the resurrection, that went against the laws of nature, and the rebuilding and transformation came about through their realization of the greater laws of God, and that their faith must be directed to him alone.

           There is a recording by Tom Waits called "Jesus' Blood has never failed me yet". The story behind it is this: Gavin Bryars, while working on the sound track for a documentary about street people in London, found a tape recording of a skid row bum evidently singing the same phrase of a hymn over and over to himself. Bryars took the tape, and looped it so it repeated over and over, and added an instrumental accompaniment that ranges from single instruments to full orchestra with pipe organ. As recorded in its original form before Tom Waits, the work is a haunting and hypnotic composition that lasts about an hour. The theme of course, is that this poor man who has absolutely nothing to his name but the clothes on his back sings over and over the words "Jesus blood has never failed me, Jesus blood has never failed me, Jesus blood has never failed me yet." as the work procedes this refrain which at first seems to be a cry of despair grows and transforms into a shout of triumph although the tape loop never changes. That is the state the twelve must have been in at the ascension. They could well have returned to Jerusalem singing those words. Their despair has become a triumph of faith. The only thing that they could count on was that Jesus had never failed them yet. All that they had faith in was changed and even their faith in the Messiah was reduced to simply believing in what he had said, even though they understood little. They had to wait for the Comforter who would explain all to them and restore their sense of equilibrium. It was only then that they would be able to understand the Good News of Jesus Christ and preach it to all nations. The disciples' experience is, of course, the model for us. Our faith in the world, and the worldly must be replaced by faith in Jesus Christ. As our faith in the world is shaken, as life seems to get crazier and crazier, and the patterns of our lives disintegrate, we must ultimately come to the one central truth, that no matter how things may seem, Jesus will never fail us. It is on this one central point that all the rest of our faith depends, understanding comes after. He seems to leave us at the ascension, yet things are not as they seem, for in ascending he merely is passing from the limits of time and space into the limitlessness of the divine. In the Ascension he has not left us alone, but rather by ascending he enables himself to be with each of us at all times in all places. He is not at a distance but now closer to us than we are to one another. And at the same time, he reigns in heaven at the right hand of God as prophet, priest, and King. Ruling all things, teaching and leading us to the will of the Father, and offering himself as the one holy sacrifice for us perpetually in heaven. God has gone up with a merry noise, let us rejoice in God our saviour! Amen