A Homily for the Sunday after Ascension
Day
Ye men of
—Acts of the Apostles, 1:11
On the fortieth day after Easter,
the Church observes the Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven.
Jesus’s
ascension has been depicted rather fancifully, both in great art and in popular
illustration, as resembling nothing so much as a launch of the space
shuttle. Silly folk, who do not
understand that this is a symbolic representation, pretend to believe that
Christians think that heaven is a place (like Washington, D.C., or Disneyland)
and that it is located straight up from the earth—or, rather, since the earth
is a sphere, straight up from some point on earth (such as Jerusalem). Such a caricature of Christian belief is easy
to ridicule.
We know that Jesus Christ lived and
died as a human being, in form just like us; and that after he died and was
buried he was raised to life again; and that, being risen, he discoursed with
his disciples, walked on the road to Emmaus and on the shore of Lake Gennesaret, that he taught the Apostles, showed his wounds
to Saint Thomas, and instructed Saint Peter to feed his sheep. And we know that, when forty days had passed,
he was taken out of their sight and received into heaven where, as Saint Mark
says, he sits at the right hand of God the Father.
In Saint Luke’s narrative, Jesus led
his disciples out of
The angels, for that is what we
suppose they were, thus gently rebuked the disciples for not understanding the
meaning of what they had witnessed and for not responding appropriately to
it. In a way, we contemporary Christians
may likewise be faulted for standing around gazing up into heaven, and so we
have this scripture lesson as an annual reminder that we must understand the
meaning of Christ’s ascension and we must respond appropriately.
The fact of the ascension tells us
something important about God and about his love for us human beings, and it
also tells us something important about what we, as Christians are meant to be
and to do. To begin, we can do no better
than to listen to what Saint Augustine had to say:
Christ is now
exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we,
the members of his body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from
above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when
he said: I was hungry and you gave me food.
Why do we on
earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith,
hope and love that unite us to him? While in heaven he is also with us; and we
while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and
his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him,
we can be there by love.
He did not
leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went
up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth
is borne out by his own statement: “No
one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the
Son of Man, who is in heaven.” . . .
Out of compassion for us he descended from heaven, and
although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in him by grace.
Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended; not because
there is no distinction between the head and the body, but because the body as
a unity cannot be separated from the head.
The historical fact of the
ascension, therefore, tells us something important about God, because we know
that when Jesus ascended to heaven, he did not leave his humanity behind. When the Word became flesh, he became flesh
forever; and when the Son of God, who for our us and
for our salvation came down from heaven, ascended again to heaven, he bore our
humanity with him.
In one of the hymns that is frequently sung here in this parish, written by the
nineteenth century priest Frederick William Faber, there is a verse that says:
There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt
than up in heaven;
there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly
judgment given.
We
can be confident of the truth of this verse, not only because God the Father
made us in his own image and loves us, but because God the Son pitched his tent
for a season among us, in an indissoluble union of the divine and human, and
ascended to heaven clothed in our human flesh.
But the ascension also tells us
something about ourselves, as Christians, and about what we are meant to be and
to do. We come again to the angels’
question: “Ye men of
Can we imagine what would have
happened had Jesus not ascended? In
Saint Luke’s account, even as Jesus led them out to the place from which he
would leave them, the disciples asked him:
“Lord, will you now restore the kingdom to
In a more general sense, until his
ascension, Jesus had to be somewhere—that is, he had to be in some particular
place. Only after his ascension was it
possible for Jesus to be everywhere. He
warned us, did he not, that the time would come when people would say, “Look,
here he is,” or, “There he is, over there”; but we are not to pay attention
them. And why not? Because we know where Jesus
is.
At his ascension, Jesus, in his
physical body, was removed from the earth to heaven. But ten days later, with the descent of the
Holy Ghost upon the Apostles on Pentecost, Jesus got a new body right here on
earth. This is his mystical body, the
Church: the blessed company of all
faith-full people; the body of which Jesus Christ is the head, and all baptized
people are the limbs and organs. This is
the body in which Jesus can be everywhere at the same time.
And we Christians, the members—the
hands, and feet, and ears, and voice—of Christ’s mystical body, must be about
doing the very things that the resurrected Christ, in his glorified fleshly
body, would have done had he not ascended.
In recent years, a slogan has been much used and abused, in the form of
a question: “What would Jesus do?” I think we can be pretty sure that he would
not be selling WWJD t-shirts and jewelry and license plate frames.
But we may well ask, “What does
Jesus do?” Because what he does, he does
in and by his body, the Church. And when
he taught in the synagogue at
According to Saint Matthew, just
before he parted from his disciples, Jesus gave this great commission to his
Church: “Go, therefore, and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded
you.” This is the work of his Body, the
Church; and the duty of each member of the Church is to work, and to pray, and
to give for the spread of his kingdom.
And, to encourage us in the work he
left to us, he concluded with this promise, “Lo, I am with you always, even
unto the end of the world.” Therefore,
let us all say:
Praised, blessed, worshiped, and adored be Jesus Christ:
on his throne
of glory in heaven, in the most holy sacrament of the altar,
and in the
hearts of his faithful people. Amen.
Church of Saint Mary Magdalene
20
May 2007
See a list of the deacon’s homilies.