Text: John 17:6-19
Title: Jesus Has Ascended as Our Guiding Star
Preacher: Jerry Cho
Date: May 17, 2015

When I lived in Queens, New York, I once went to a neighborhood restaurant. In the small restaurant’s wall was a piece of paper that had a story.

The story was about a bird, a swallow, or a sparrow, a small bird. When the fall came, his fellow birds flew to South for warmer weather. But this particular bird was too busy having fun or too lazy to fly along to the South with his fellow birds and stayed behind by himself.

The weather began to freezing cold. The little bird could not stay in the North East any more. So he reluctantly flew South. When his wings felt heavy, he decided to take a layover in a country barn.

When he was resting in a barn, he felt shivering cold. He was almost freezing to death. To make matters worse, a big cow came to the barn and pooped a cow pie on top of the resting bird. The bird was covered deep with the cow pie. He thought to himself, “I am going to die. What a pity!” Sometimes adversity turns out to be a blessing in disguise.

The warm cow poop melted the frozen wings of the little bird and kept him warm. The bird became healthy and happy and began to chirp. He sang a happy song, “Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!” That song awakened a barn cat. The cat found the bird in the poop and rescued the bird and brushed the dirt off and ate it.

The lesson of the story? The one who poops on you may not be your enemy. The one who rescues you from danger may not be your friend. When you are happy with a good fortune, keep your mouth shut.

Life is a combination of good and bad situations. We often sing when we are happy and we complain when things are bad. But the Bible teaches us that everything works out for the good to those who love God.

A wise man uses good fortune and bad fortune as his right and left hand.

As a preacher, I get some positive feedback and negative feedback. Some people say that they enjoy my sermons and appreciate them. Some others say that they don’t get any spiritual nourishment from my sermons.

My immediate reaction is that I like to hear positive comments about my sermons and get angry and defensive to negative comments. But as I think a little longer, I learn as much, if not more, from the negative comments as positive comments.

Just last Sunday I received a few kind words from my parishioner about my sermon. That made my happy day. I thought to myself, “I finally found my groove. My style of delivering a sermon seems to work.” But I also received tons of criticisms about my sermon all week long. In fact, negative comments about my sermon way outweighed the positives.

The comments were like, “The congregations don’t get spiritual nourishments from the pastor’s sermons.” “The sermons are not well-organized and sloppy.” “He did not follow the sermon manuscript.” “I don’t know what he was talking about.” Etc.

It made me think and reflect on myself. I realize that it must have been difficult for my congregations to follow my ad-libbing and going astray from the manuscript.

So I now realize that I had better stick to my manuscript to reduce the chance of creating misunderstanding and frustration in the listeners.

I also hear that the congregation is mostly conservative in their political and religious views. Perhaps there is nothing wrong about being conservative as there is nothing wrong about being liberal and progressive. It seems to me that Jesus was more like a Democrat while God is more like a Republican. They are united for the greater purpose of liberty, justice and happiness for all.

I believe that there is always something we can learn from each other. Liberals can learn from Conservatives and vice versa. Maybe liberals and conservatives are two wings of a bird that keep a good balance of the bird.

Change is inevitable. Change can be good. This is the time of the year for pastoral change in many churches. No Pastor is 100 percent good or bad. Most pastors are a combination of good and bad just like any congregation is a combination of good and bad. In all this, let us remember what John Wesley said, “The best of all is God is with us.”

Whether you will have a new pastor or old pastor, God is still with us wherever we may be. Jesus said, “As God sent me to the world, I am sending you to the world.”

In today’s Bible story, Jesus is giving a farewell speech to his disciples. He is leaving his disciples behind and goes to heaven to be back with his Father in heaven. We celebrate Ascension Sunday today.

If we take the ascension story literally, Jesus must be soaring high up in the sky right now. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan said, “If Jesus had ascended to heaven physically at the speed of light two thousand years ago, he still has not gone through the galaxy in our solar system. And there are innumerable solar systems in the universe. There may be more than one universe. There may be multi-verses.”

But if we take the ascension story metaphorically, figuratively, or theologically, Jesus has ascended to heaven as the guiding star of our Christian life.

On Ascension Sunday, we celebrate the kingship of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Lord and Master of our lives. We, Christians, follow Jesus Christ as our guiding star and our Lord of life.

With our words and actions, let us follow Jesus and listen and obey his words as the norm and principles of our lives. As the followers of Jesus Christ, Clergy and Laity alike, we are to uphold Jesus as our Guiding Star and follow Him humbly and faithfully to expand the Kingdom of God on earth.

The best of all is God is with us. Everything works out for the good to those who love God. Amen!