Ascension Day — 29 May 2014
Trinity, Iowa City
– 12:15 pm
Acts 1:1-11 | Psalm 47 or 93 |
Ephesians 1:15-23 | Luke 24:44-53
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from
the dead and seated him at his right hand in 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. [Ephesians
1:20-21]
There’s a piece in the current Christian Century (some of you may be familiar with that magazine –
it’s been around for a long time, and represents what I suppose we might call a
progressive ecumenical mainstream viewpoint), and in this piece the author
writes about how he and a committee were planning a service of worship for Ascension Day, and
the question arose as to whether the Paschal Candle should be extinguished
after the reading of the Gospel. They
were Lutherans, so they didn’t have the Book of Common Prayer to tell them that
no, the Paschal Candle continues to burn throughout the 50 days of Easter
through the Day of Pentecost! I won’t
accuse any of you of being old enough to remember, as Fr. Hulme and I do, that
we also back in the Olden Dayes used to put out the Paschal Candle after the
reading of the Gospel on Ascension Day.
I recall as an acolyte responding “Praise be to thee, O Christ” after
hearing St. Luke’s account of Jesus being carried up to heaven, taking the
candle thingy, and extinguishing the flame.
“’Bye, Jesus!”
Which of course is exactly wrong, and why the Prayer Book now
has it right.
(Some of you may recall one or another versions of my
infamous “Toes” sermon for Ascension Day, but I promised I wouldn’t go there
this year. You’re welcome.)[1]
The Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ is a theme that runs
throughout the New Testament. Matthew
and Mark certainly imply it, for instance when Jesus being interrogated by the
high priest quotes Daniel 7 [Mt. 26:64;
Mk 14:62]. In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus talks about his
ascension to the Father, notably with Mary Magdalene after she discovers the
empty tomb [Jn 20:17; cf. Jn 6:62],
and in his long so-called “Farewell Discourse” to his disciples Jesus talks
repeatedly about how he will go away and then come again [Jn 14 & 16, passim]. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter and the apostles
speak to the Sanhedrin about how “God exalted Jesus at his right hand as Leader
and Savior” [Ac 5:31], and later
Stephen, witnessing before the Sanhedrin just before his stoning, cries out,
“Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man [Jesus] standing at the
right hand of God!” [Ac 7:55-56]. St. Paul, in the Letter to the Romans, writes
about “Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of
God” [Rom 8:34], and in Philippians
he quotes what seems to be an early Christian hymn with the line “God also
highly exalted him” [Phil 2:9]. In the Letter to the Colossians Paul (or
whoever) writes, “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that
are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” [Col 3:1], and in the Letter to the
Ephesians that we heard in the Epistle today, “God put this power to work in
Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at is right hand in the
heavenly places” [Eph 1:20], and
again, “He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the
heavens, so that he might fill all things” (Eph
4:10]. The Letter to the Hebrews
speaks of how Jesus “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” [Heb 1:3]; he is the “one who is seated
at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens” [Heb 8:1]. The First Letter of Peter talks about “the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand
of God” [1Pet 3:22]. But note that all of these many references
are to the ascension of Jesus and his seat at the right hand of the Father as a
present reality; they may imply, but do not narrate, an event.
The only descriptions of the ascension of Jesus as an event are by St. Luke, which we have
just heard in the readings: in the
Gospel, and before that in the Acts of the Apostles. And perhaps you have noticed that these two
tellings are not quite the same
story. Luke does that. For instance, he tells the story of the
conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus
three times, two of them purportedly from Paul’s own mouth, but the three
stories are almost but not quite identical. Of course Luke is, or at least is acting as,
among other things, a Hellenistic historian, and historians in the Greco-Roman
Empire did not have the kind of detailed documentary research resources that
modern historians are expected to use.
They saw their task to be to tell the meaning of the story as they understood it. They knew that a historian is not simply a
chronicler. Another example of this is
the Jewish historian Josephus, who tells the stories of Jewish history and of
the war with Rome
the way he wants us to remember them!
This does not mean
that the event of the Ascension of
Jesus at Bethany or on the Mount
of Olives or wherever did not actually occur. I don’t know whether it did or not. If it did, then I think Archbishop Michael
Ramsey was right in suggesting that it was an “enacted parable.” What did not
happen is that Jesus “lifted off into orbit.” Jesus “ascended” into Heaven (how else would we say it?); but Heaven is
not “up there,” and we know that. “Up
there” is billions of light years of the vast expanse of interstellar space;
and God is there too, but neither more nor less so than right here and now, and
it’s the “right here and now” that should matter to us. Yes, Jesus had to leave us, in a sense,
because otherwise his location would have remained fixed in first-century Jerusalem and therefore he couldn’t be in
twenty-first-century Iowa . He has “ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.”
So the point of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ is
not that he has gone away – “’Bye, Jesus!” and snuff out the candle – but so
that the Light of Christ may remain lit in us and among us in all places at all times. It is St. Matthew
who records the essence of what we celebrate this day: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end
of the age” [Mt 28:20].
