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 read 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.
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