Grits and the Gospel - May 17, 2026

Hello friends and welcome to this week's episode of grits on the gospel. My name is Reverend Katie Griffiths It's really good to be with you today. It is Good to be in the house of the Lord and in these beautiful spring temperatures I hope where you are is just as beautiful as it is Here I have two awake girls today as I record this so We're just gonna hope for the best today It is It is humbling to be with you and humbling to be their mother and to be To be able to join you today so with all of that being said on this seventh Sunday after Easter and the Sunday where we Celebrate the ascension of the Lord. Let us come together at a time of worship the Lord be with you and Also with you today's epistle lesson comes from the letter from Paul to the Ephesians It is the greeting and reminder of the ascension of Christ to those in Ephesus Here now the word of the Lord. I Have heard of your faith and the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints and for this reason I do not give do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ the father of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and Revelation as you come to know him so that With the eyes of your heart enlightened you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you What are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the Saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe according to the working of his great power God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and Seated him at the right hand of the heavenly places Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named Not only in this age, but also in the age to come And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church Which is the body the fullness of him who fills all and all The Word of God for us the people of God. Thanks be to God Let us come together now and remind ourselves of those tenets of our faith Friends, what do we believe? I believe in God the father almighty maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his only son Our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary Suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried the third day. He rose from the dead He ascended into heaven and sit at the right hand of God the father Almighty From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead I believe in the Holy Spirit the holy Catholic Church the communion of saints the forgiveness of sins resurrection of the body and the life everlasting Amen Let us pray dear Lord, we love you so much. We're so thankful for every single miracle For everything that the disciples got to witness for all the greatness of your person That they saw with their own eyes For all the greatness of your spirit that we continue to see with our own eyes Let us be thankful and mindful of those things around us that are true miracles as we move throughout our lives Hear us now as we pray those words that your son Our Lord our Savior our miracle worker taught us to pray Our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven And give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us Lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen Today's gospel lesson comes from the gospel according to Luke We're in chapter 24 verses 44 through 53 here now the word of the Lord Then he said to them These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you That everything written about me and the law of Moses the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and he said to them Thus it is written That the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness Of sin is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem Your witnesses of these things and see I'm sending upon you what my father promised So stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high Then he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands he blessed them While he was blessing them he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven and They worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy And they were continually in the temple blessing God The word of God for us the people of God. Thanks be to God Would you pray with me dear Lord these words of the miracle that was your ascension of the time when you left Your earthly kingdom to go sit with your father and your heavenly kingdom Seem almost too good to be true Help us to see that everything that is proclaimed was true You are the king of kings and the Lord of lords Thank you for being our king and our Lord Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight. Oh Lord our strength and our Redeemer I'm in There's a spot here at the campground that has the best Sunsets I Try to walk the dogs at the right time of day to catch the golden hour views It's right at the crossroads and there's something about the way the light comes up over the hill that makes the treeline street Become this tunnel of color and rays of glowing majesty I've tried taking pictures of it and the pictures could be Never capture how beautiful it is in real life I've tried taking a picture and then using a filter on the image to recreate what it's like in person I mean even that doesn't work to convey just how amazingly Beautiful the site is You have to stand at the right moment and see it with your own eyes To believe just how glorious that God is when the rays of light come through the trees It's one of the things that I love the most about living in South, Georgia the sunsets are Breathtaking we are almost through our journey to Pentecost Last week we took we looked at John 14 15 through 21 and looked at things We should believe in that we cannot see Jesus calls us to believe in God even though we can't see him anymore He is giving this charge to his disciples who had the privilege of looking Jesus in the eye and being in his friend But here in Luke We see that he is ascending into heaven and Jesus fully reveals himself to the disciples He opens their minds to fully see and understand what has been in front of them the whole time Because they believed in something when they could not fully see it Jesus blesses them with the ability to fully see Because they fully trusted Jesus even though they didn't fully grasp What or who or how he was and is the disciples were allowed to fully see and understand? Their blind faith Allowed them to see Can you even imagine what that light bulb moment was like for them? At this time they had been following Jesus watching his miracles listening to his sermons and parables and lessons Standing by his side as he was intellectually battling the spiritual and political leaders who are trying to destroy him After seeing all of that witnessing all of that they still didn't fully understand who Jesus was But here in these verses After Jesus fulfills all of the scriptures he opens their minds to understand He shows them the connections and the laws the Psalms and the prophets He reminds them of the things that God promised the Messiah would do And just like that All of the things that they had seen Fall into place It all makes sense to them What a moment that must have been and then we get to the part that only the disciples got to see yet We are called to believe The ascension of Jesus into heaven was the sight that only they could see because they believed Scripture says then he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands He blessed them and while he was blessing them he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven So I have a couple of theories here. I think either Jesus came Jesus took some kind of invisible escalator to heaven or Maybe a pack of angels or do we call a pack of angels a herd? I don't know Actually carried him like he was like he had just scored the winning touchdown Or maybe he vanished into thin air like the Star Trek transporter I Can only imagine that the thing that disciples saw was amazing. It had to be stunning It had to be awe-inspiring it was so powerful that they went back to Jerusalem so they could go to the temple and Continually worship God if you think about the reality of what scripture says too much It becomes harder and harder to believe I Can fully believe that something just clicked in their minds and everything they had seen and heard finally came into focus I can believe that the disciples had that aha moment because I have had them myself But that moment in a movie when you finally figure out who the killer is and everything makes sense But the moment of ascension seems a little too unreal a little too Magical it seems like a moment that it could only happen in movies and not in real life It seems like a part of a great story and not what actually happened all those centuries ago It's almost the opposite for us today than it was the disciples It is easier for us to believe all of the scripture fulfillment because we can look at the entirety of scripture and see it clearly But these wild events these healing and resurrection and ascension and Transfiguration moments are almost too much to believe because we can't see it We have the gift of perspective of the scriptures But the skepticism for the thing that seems too wild to be real and while those occurrences seem wildly unimaginable There are things that I have seen just this week that seem impossible But have come to be true Some of you have already heard the story of one of the graduates from the Methodist Children's Home this week I'm sure that she never thought her life would change in This way We'll call her Susan Susan found herself without a home. She was 18. So she had aged out of the foster care system She had one parent deceased and one in jail she had just a few months left to go in her senior year of high school, so she was couchsurfing among friends a Teacher found out about it and told her to call the Methodist home Not only did they give her a place to stay But because they have the funds set up for her their residents to go on and get post high school educations Susan now has enough money to go to college She wants to be a law enforcement officer It will all be paid for tuition books expenses all of it because miracles do happen Even if they happen in a different way than the fantastical magical biblical way One of our own members is another example. She had she has been in the hospital for weeks She had to be wheeled in and could barely speak when she got to the Coliseum in Macon at some point the eight Doctors that she had in Macon decided her set to send her to Piedmont in Atlanta She still feels like a pincushion and has had just about every vein blown by an IV or a blood draw But she's getting better and stronger every day As a Friday, she said 36 pounds of fluid removed from her body She can walk she can talk she can breathe Miracles do happen Even if they use modern medicine as a catalyst for healing If God can use all of those things today, then certainly he could have opened the hearts of the disciples and ascended into heaven The miracles we see today with our own hearts and eyes are what makes the timelessness Timeliness and timelessness of God so powerful The all-powerful and all-knowing God uses and continues to use The limits of humanity no matter the millennia to show us his power and love What miracles have you seen? What moments in life does God use to reveal himself to you? Where do you see God in your everyday life for me? For me it is the beautiful moments of healing The simplicity of a golden hour walk with my dogs It's the blooms of a native azalea or a camellia It's the standing in front of an old master painting at the high museum or the individual stitches of an ancient quilt sewn by anonymous hands I see the love of God and the jumping excitement that honey has every time I walk in the door Or the bouncy ears of Maggie when she knows it's time for a meal God is in the laughter and the joy and the overwhelming love I get to see every single Sunday Miracles beauty God those things are everywhere We just have to believe that it can be real So that we can see that it is The gospel text may today may seem a little unbelievable But it's the opening of the ephesians Of the letter to the ephesians the words of paul that helped me put into words what I hope It can mean for all of us today Not just here in this church, but for all of the children like susan and all of the patients like our member paul says this I Do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers That the god of our lord jesus christ the father of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation As you come to know him so that With the eyes of your heart enlightened You may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you What are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe according to the working Of his great power May the eyes of each of our hearts be enlightened and the hope of the immeasurable greatness of his love Give you wisdom and peace amen As we go throughout our week this week, let us all look for miracles around us Miracles that seem unbelievable, but we can see with our own eyes that they are true That the works of god may be revealed to us in new and beautiful and magnificent in different ways As we walk this earth Because in life and death in life beyond death god is with us We are not alone Thanks be to god amen