Some people say that 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’m not making excuses here, but it’s the
only feast on which the primary action of God, in Christ, that we celebrate
seems to be him 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 to consume!”
And all those thing are wonderful and
true, and we’ll get to them (coming soon to a pulpit near you…). But, they’re not compensations for the
Ascension. The Ascension isn’t bad news
we need a “Yes, but” after, because the Gospel and the Church’s feasts aren’t
“yes, but”s but “yes”es, undiluted Good News.
Acts talks about Jesus being taken up to heaven, and it doesn’t say who’s
doing the taking, but we know. We know this is about God the Father taking
Jesus to himself. Ephesians talks about God seating Christ beside him, at his
right hand, in heaven. The Ascension isn’t about distance; it’s about closeness.
God takes Jesus to Himself in heaven. 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,
without ceasing to be human. The
Ascension shows us that grandeur of God’s dream for humanity, that being
authentically human can mean being that close to God, and sharing in God’s
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 being shown what love looks like,
like that, has consequences for us. It enlivens our sense of love. It excites
us to holiness. It shows us that holiness doesn’t just look like heroic acts of
courage (though those are holy). It also looks like day-to-day intimacy. It looks
like the best version we can imagine of family life, of religious community,
and of trusting tender prayer. It looks like closeness. And it should inspire
us to desire that closeness and to bear witness to it. Before Jesus ascends,
the last thing he says to the 11 (the 12 minus Judas) is that they are to be
his witnesses. That’s what they’re bearing witness to, the fullness of God’s
love for humanity. And that’s a love that sometimes looks like enduring
suffering, that sometimes looks like conquering evil, and that sometimes looks
like snuggling, like closeness, like intimacy.
We are the more empowered to bear
witness to that love, the more we appreciate how we are held by that love.
Think of being on a ladder, and having to lean out to hang Christmas lights. We
learn further the more we trust the person holding the ladder at the bottom.
Celebrating this feast of the Ascension shows us the strength of the love that
God is, shows us how trustworthy that love is, and invites us, almost dares,
us, reach out, be Christ’s witness, and light up the world!
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