Acts 1. 1 – 11
Ephesians 1. 15 – 23
Luke 24. 44 – 53
Ascension Day
Fr Alex
There’s always a little bit of a tension, I think, on the great feast of the Ascension. It’s a joyful celebration, of course – but are we really celebrating Christ going away from us, going up into heaven where we can’t follow?
Wouldn’t it be so much better, so much easier, to have kept him with us – to give us the words to speak, to help us through the trials of life by showing us the way?
It’s true that our Christian faith is beautiful and mysterious; but it’s also rather strange and difficult at the same time. We are required to have faith, for a start: to believe in things we can’t see, or touch, or measure.
We aren’t given a precise list of instructions on how to live, like many other faiths. Each experience of life and each Christian journey is unique; and sometimes – often, perhaps – we’ll get it wrong.
We only have to switch on the news to see just how wrong some people get it; and the terrible suffering they cause to others.
Being a human is complex – there are evil people who do evil things. There is sickness and suffering in the world, and perhaps we think we’ll never understand God’s purposes for us and his creation.
But Christ’s Ascension is the promise that one day we will be free of all that. It’s the promise that there is nothing natural, and nothing eternal, about the suffering and the evil we see all around us.
When Jesus returns to his Father in heaven, he goes clothed with our human nature. For the first time, there is a human in heaven.
And so we see the destiny of our fallen humanity. That one day all will be made new in Christ, as we are clothed with the same perfected humanity, following Christ into his heaven. Where only the good, and loving, and generous parts of human life will remain.
That’s a tremendous promise for the future. But as he departs the world, Jesus makes another promise. That, in fact, we don’t have to grope and grasp for the way through the journey of life; because he promises to send the Spirit to dwell within us.
Although Jesus goes away from us, this isn’t really a departure. Today is not a commemoration of absence. We celebrate today because the Ascension is a moment of presence.
As he leaves the world, Christ ceases to be in one particular place in one particular time, and instead goes into every place, and every time.
And so we don’t have to ‘gaze up into heaven’ like the disciples, waiting for Christ to return: because he has sent the Spirit to guide us and sustain us, as if we still had Christ himself with us.
Today’s feast, then, is not just the promise of future glory for those who follow Christ: it is the promise that our humanity is already on the path to perfection. That we carry within ourselves the very presence of God, in his Spirit.
And we cooperate with the Spirit by striving to ‘ascend in heart and mind’ to dwell spiritually with Christ; by seeking first the kingdom; by striving for peace and justice; by proclaiming the Good News of Christ crucified, risen, ascended, glorified.
…
We heard that the disciples, having witnessed this wondrous moment, returned to Jerusalem with joy, and gathered together in constant prayer for the Spirit.
At the end of our service, having celebrated the Ascension, we will gather together around the Font, which serves today as our liturgical Jerusalem; and like the disciples, we too will pray for the renewing gift of the Spirit.
We have already received the Spirit, of course, on the Day of Pentecost and on the day of our baptism.
But we pray, once again, that we may become more aware of the Spirit’s presence and action in our lives; as St Paul prayed in our reading from Ephesians, that ‘the eyes of our heart may be enlightened’ so that we may truly ‘know what is the hope to which he has called us … and what is the immeasurable power for us who believe.’
May we be richly blessed in our beautiful and mysterious faith; and may we truly come to know the creating and transforming presence of God within us. Amen.