1st May 2008ASCENSION DAY
Fr Julian Browning
Acts 1 : 1 – 11 ; Ephesians 1 : 15 – 23 ; Luke 24 : 44 - 53
He was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. Acts 1.9
At the Ascension, Jesus is not the only person on the move. 'Mighty Lord, in thine Ascension, we by faith behold our own.'
Ascension Day is mission accomplished. Jesus returns to his father.
It's not a physics lesson, it's about us getting to know God again.
There are two ways of being a Christian. The first way is to find
everything difficult: Miracles, Virgin Birth, Resurrection?
Ascension into heaven in a cloud? We always know better, don't we? Or
there is the way which God would like us to take, the way which Jesus
took, which is to say Yes to God, to take that risk and say Yes to
God's invitation to join Him in his work. With God at work, in the
Kingdom of Heaven, all these doctrines, these difficult things, start
to make perfect simple sense. This is the way which takes us, free and
forgiven, into the presence of God. On Ascension Day we are in
the presence of God. On Ascension Day we break free from the
limitations of this life, out of time and space and self-centredness,
to see an extraordinary sight, Jesus Christ, risen, ascended, glorified.
St.Luke puts the Ascension story in two different places: one is at
Easter, and the other is forty days later, that magic number forty
being a code word for a completed task. Christians use spiritual
geography, a picture of a three tier universe, heaven, earth, and
beneath the earth, to show who God is and what He can do. Jesus goes up
in authority and status. The head that once was crowned with thorns is
crowned with glory now. A completed task, a victory, that's what we
sing about. Hail the day that sees him rise, glorious to his native
skies. That was how the disciples felt. When they lost Jesus the first
time, on Good Friday, they were in despair. Here on Ascension Day, they
lose him again. He parts from them. But on this occasion, instead of
returning numb with grief and anxiety to their homes, we are told by
St.Luke that 'they worshipped him. and returned to Jerusalem with great
joy; and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God.' The
story's less about what happened to Jesus than what is about to happen
in the lives of the earliest Christians. So it's about what's going to
happen to us. The Holy Spirit is going to come among us. The Gospels
are not about them and us: them the lucky ones back then who saw Jesus
ascend to his Father, and us the unlucky ones to whom nothing like that
ever happens. The Gospels tell us about God coming to meet His people
at all times, and they describes how we shall meet him, our movement
towards God. At the Ascension, Jesus is not the only person on the
move. 'Mighty Lord, in thine Ascension, we by faith behold our own.'
What happened? When the disciples saw Jesus for the last time, as
he withdrew from them, leaving them apparently on their own, his hands
were raised in blessing. That was their Jesus, that was the person they
knew. And that is what the Ascension affirms, that Jesus Christ blesses
us, and death does not destroy that love. When Jesus died and was
raised to eternal life, he went to heaven as Jesus, wounds and all, a
complete person, not a sort of formless spirit, but as man. Death was
not dissolution. He had the marks of His Passion, the wounds of love,
on his hands, on his head. See he lifts his hands above; see he shows
the prints of love. And where he goes, we hope to follow, not absorbed
into the ether, but ourselves, still recognisable with all our wounds
of love. Jesus 'was taken up, a cloud receiving him from out of their
sight'. A cloud is the divine presence, the glory of God, that's
what clouds mean in the Bible. So God takes Jesus back home. The
Ascension shows us where home is: home is living in God's love, in this
world and the next, praying that we too, as the Prayer Book collect
puts it, may also in heart and mind thither ascend.
These elevated thoughts are all very well until we are back in Baker
Street tomorrow and all Christian thoughts evaporate, and far from
ascending anywhere with Jesus, we are back on earth with a bump. The
message of Ascension Day is that that does not matter as much as we
might think. Jesus is now everywhere at all times. Jesus has gone
to the Father, and can now be closer to us than we ever dared to
imagine, however absorbed we become in our own lives and work. When we
say that Jesus ascended into heaven, and that he sits at God's right
hand, we are saying something pretty staggering about ourselves;
that when we follow Jesus in this world, heaven is all around us,
and the Ascension, far from separating us from Jesus, actually brings
him closer to us, and us closer to Him.
The Ascension is busy two way traffic. God came to earth so that we
might get to heaven. Jesus returned to heaven to show us how to live as
God's children on earth.