God’s love-accepted emboldens us –Mark 16:15-20, Acts 1:1-11

Ascension Sunday, Year B: Holy Cross parish.

I think that the Ascension is the hardest feast of the Church year to preach on.  Not Trinity Sunday, not Good Friday, not a funeral: the Ascension.  And I say that, because it’s the only feast on which the primary action of God, in Christ, that we celebrate seems to be his moving away from us.  We’re on earth, and he ascends: to heaven.  And that’s not the primary movement given to us to proclaim at any other time: the Christian story is consistently one of God reaching out to us, God coming to visit and redeem his people, of us turning away, but of God’s grace eventually conquering our stubbornness and repentance moving us to accept the glorious eternal embrace offered.  Except today: when the movement is of Christ ascending.

One temptation is to basically preach a “Yes, but” homily.  Yes, Christ ascended, but think about all the ways he’s present still.  And we have three weeks of feasts coming up dedicated to those.  Next week, we have Pentecost, which follows almost straight on from the Ascension in the book of Acts: the celebration of the Spirit coming down upon the Church to dwell in our hearts.  “Yes, Christ ascended, but the Spirit dwells in our hearts, how much more intimate a presence is that!”  The following week, we celebrate Trinity Sunday, the divine community of love into which we’re invited through baptism.  “Yes, Christ ascended, but he left us baptism through which we share the life of the whole Trinity!”  The week after that, we have Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.  “Yes, Christ ascended, but he’s present to his Church still through the Eucharist, given to us as food and drink!”

And all those thing are wonderful, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Christ’s presence in “the least of these,” the poor served, which we celebrated back on the feast of Christ the King.  But, they’re not compensations for the Ascension; they’re amplifications of it.  The Ascension isn’t bad news that we need a “Yes, but” after it, because the Gospel and the Church’s feasts aren’t “yes, but”s but “yes”es, undiluted Good News.  And we can see that by paying closer attention by how Mark names the movement in the gospel we just heard.  He doesn’t say “then Christ left them” or “then Jesus ascended,” but “then the Lord Jesus was taken up to heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God the Father.”

Two takings: God takes Jesus to Himself in heaven, and Jesus takes his seat, his throne.  God expresses his love for his son by taking him to Himself, to His own embrace, and Jesus continues to live up to being his Father’s Son by delighting in being close to him, and by sharing in His reign.  In the Ascension, God continues to show us what love looks like.  On the cross, Jesus showed us the passive passion of sacrificial love: being slain for our sake, out of love for us.  In the resurrection, he showed the active raw power of love: trampling over death that he might return to be with us again and show us sin and death were vanquished by his love for us.  In the ascension, God shows us a more tender love, the love of taking your beloved to yourself in embrace, and of voluntarily sharing your power, your authority, your reign with the one you love.

And that’s the love he bids us show to the world, bids us be witnesses of, bids us proclaim: that love that longs to be with, that dares to reign with.  And that’s the love that makes the difference.  That’s the love that transforms his disciples.  Mark presents Jesus’ disciples during his earthly ministry as exceptional in their lack of understanding, their lack of faith.  The verse right before the gospel passage we re^ad tells us that: “[Jesus] he appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised.”  But then the extravagant promises are made, Jesus ascends, and the disciples finally show gospel courage and faithfulness in their proclamation: they go forth, they preach everywhere, and the Lord works through them.

Far from the bad news of Jesus’ absence, the Ascension becomes the good news of God’s love at last accepted, and that mutual loving acceptance leading to bold witness, to transformed disciples.  That’s what we celebrate today: the tender love that constitutes the Godhead; the mutual embracing and co-reigning of Father and Son that transforms us too, disciples called to so great a love.