In the name of the Crucified and Risen Lord. Amen.
Ascension
Day is the forgotten feast of the Church. Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost get
plenty of fanfare. Epiphany, in many cultures, is associated with gift giving
and is an important holiday. All Saints is remembered, if for no other reason
than explaining that Halloween is linked to All Hallow’s Eve. Trinity Sunday,
even if lesser known, falls on a Sunday, so it’s never forgotten. But that
leaves us with Ascension Day – always a Thursday as it’s always 40 days after
Easter. But to forget the Ascension is to forget an important part of the Good
News of God in Christ.
The
Creed makes note of only a few events in Jesus’ ministry, which should make it
clear that those events are integral to understanding who Jesus is. Those
events are that he “became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,” “was crucified
under Pontius Pilate,” “on the third day rose again,” and “ascended into
heaven.” And when Jesus’ life is recapitulated in our Eucharistic Prayer, we
pray “having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty
resurrection and glorious ascension.” So it is clear that the Ascension is one
of the pillars of faith in Jesus, but it gets so little focus, either in terms
of theological discourse or holiday attention. As we will see though, the Ascension
informs our faith in tangible ways.
There
are several ways to approach this event. Psychologists have come up with
various models to describe what they call “stages of faith.” The idea is that
as we mature in our faith, we advance through these stages. Sometimes the
stages are correlated with age, but sometimes people in their 80s remain in the
stage of faith that most children grow out of by the age of twelve. And it is
common to move back and forth between stages.
The
first phase is the faith practiced by many children and is literal in nature.
Interpreting the Ascension this way, we see Jesus as something like Superman:
able to fly into the air. When we read this passage in this stage, we expect
that the Ascension happened exactly as it is described in both Luke and Acts:
Jesus, like a rocket, went up into the clouds until he was seen no longer.
While there is value is taking these events seriously, when we interpret
Biblical events only in a literal way, they lose any sense of meaning as they
become historical events of the past instead of stories that still speak to us
today. This is a place where we all start, with a faith that is grounded in
facts and literal interpretations. I’m afraid though that reading the Ascension
only as a historical event does little more than giving us a line in a Creed.
The
next stage of faith is one that children move into during elementary school.
Here, there is comfort with stories taking on a moralistic nature, meaning
there is something to be gleaned from them. The child doesn’t ask how it is
that Pinocchio’s nose grows, but understands that the story is about the
importance of truth telling. This is where many Ascension Day sermons,
including ones that I’ve preached, often reside. This is not a judgment or
condemnation of those sorts of sermons, as they speak well to people in that
stage of faith. Often, on Ascension Day, the sermon goes something like this
“Jesus is gone up into heaven, and so now it is our job to be his hands and
feet on earth.” This stage of faith is that of the conventional wisdom, and there
is often truth in conventional wisdom. The downside to this stage of faith
though is that the meaning of the story overrides the story itself. The
Ascension loses any historical importance that it may have had in the first
stages and becomes simply a vehicle to make a larger point. This though is also
an unsatisfactory approach to reading Scripture, and it doesn’t take seriously
the actual events that we read about.
After
this stage comes the faith of the college student – rebellion, or when given a more
positive name, it is the “reflective stage.” This stage is usually found in
college as people are exposed to new ideas and they start to think outside the
box, realizing that there are boxes that they’ve never even heard of. Here,
instead of being taken at face value or seen as doorways to a lesson, symbols
are dissected and demythologized. So in this stage, someone might say “The
whole notion of the Ascension is absurd – there is no ‘up there’ for Jesus to
go to. Where did Jesus go when he reached the stratosphere?” In this stage,
there is often confusion about what truth is all about, and so claims of
religious truth are treated with suspicion. So the Ascension in this stage
might be described as “an antiquated story that the early Christians came up
with to explain why it is that Jesus is no longer around after the
Resurrection.” In other words, the Ascension solves the problem of “what
happened to the body?” As we progress through our own faith, we all go through
this stage, sometimes many times, and so it is good to critically engage with
our faith, but it’s also crucial that we don’t stay in hat place of needing to have all the answers.
The
final stage of faith is one that not everyone will arrive at in their lifetime.
This stage is sometimes referred to as the “conjunctive” stage of faith, as it
joins together various beliefs into a working whole. This is a stage of a
mature faith that a person can describe in their own terms without simply
restating the official party line. Various truths can be held in tension with
one other as there is a comfort with mystery in this stage.
It’s important to note
that these stages are not a contest, so don’t worry about trying to figure out
whether or not you’ve reached this stage or not. This is a sermon about the
Ascension, not a lecture on faith development. So in this stage the Ascension
becomes something full of meaning and beauty.
In this stage of faith,
symbols are incorporated into our meaning-making and become vehicles for our transformation.
Symbols are intended to work on us, but so often we try to work on and analyze
a symbol. Think of the metaphor of a wind-up alarm clock. The whole point of
the clock is to tell the time. But if we try to take the clock apart to figure
out how it works, it no longer functions in its time-telling purpose.
Certainly, it can be helpful to know about things like gears and springs, but
the purpose of the clock is to tell the time. So here, we become the object
being worked on by the symbol instead of us being the subjects which work on
the symbol.
Symbols function to draw us
into deeper truths and transform us. If you were to go out and get a running
coach, she would never say to you “Well, you’re now running a 10-minute mile,
so my work here is done.” No, just as the coach will push you further and
further, so too, do symbols push us deeper into the mysteries of God.
It
is through this lens that we will consider the Ascension. And unlike the second
phase where the Ascension teaches us a lesson or gives us homework to “go and
do,” rather the Ascenino of Jesus reveals something to us about God and our way
of being in the world. There are three truths that I want to point out as being
ways that the Ascension transforms us.
First,
the Ascension’s central claim is that Jesus cannot be located in any single
place or time, and therefore is present in every place and every time. In
Ephesians (though not the portion that we heard this evening) it says that
Jesus “ascended far above all the
heavens, so that he might fill all things.” There is no place where Christ
cannot be found, as he is as near to us as our breath. And if we can trust in
and abide in God’s presence, then it radically changes our lives. We are never
alone. We are never apart from God’s love and mercy.
Second,
the Ascension tells us not simply that Jesus is gone, but that he has arrived
to his place at the right hand of the Father. The Ascension is not Jesus’s
earthly absence, but his heavenly presence. But this is so much more than a
simple statement of faith that “Jesus now resides at God’s right hand.” The Ascension
affects us because we are told throughout Scripture that Jesus brings us to the
place where he is. The Ascension is not only about Jesus’ ascending, but ours. From
1 Peter: “For Christ suffered in order to bring you to God.” From John: “I will
take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” In Revelation
we read “I will give a place with me on my throne.” From Ephesians: “God raised
us up with Jesus and seated us with him in the heavenly places… where we have
access to God in boldness and confidence.”
Through
the life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus, you are brought to God’s
right hand – and Jesus makes us worthy to be there. It is a radical claim –
that you are worthy of being at the throne of God, but that is where Jesus
tells us that he brings us. This is the second way that the Ascension changes
us – it tells us that our ultimate trajectory is to God.
And
the third thing that the Ascension does to us is to change our perspective. If
it is true, and Scripture tells us that it is, that we are destined to be next
to God on God’s throne, then it means we see things from a different angle.
Think about when a parent wants to teach a child something, or wants to comfort
them, or simply wants to be near them in love. What is that the parent says to
the child? The parent motions to the child and says “Come, sit next to me.”
As
you go forth from this Feast of the Ascension, take this image with you – that
God invites you to sit next to God; that you can lean over and hear the
heartbeat of God, which is the same as your own if you can listen closely. And
it means that you might be able to see things from God’s perspective – that you
might see things from a place of mercy, of love, of peace.
It
might also change the way you pray. So often we think of praying in a way that
puts us in front of God, in the way that we’d come before an adversary. But
what if you prayed not from the position of coming before God, but rather from
the place of being next to God, as if you were on the same team? It might change
some things. Instead of presenting a list of things that you’d like God to do,
you might simply show God some things in the way that friends might point
things out as they look out at a landscape. Perhaps God will do the same to you
– as you pray from the position of being next to God, you might be shown the
things that God wants you to see. You might be shown places where God is proud
of you, you might be shown places where God wants you to carry the message of
love.
Now
maybe this sounds a little confusing – how do I pray next to God instead of in
front of God? And if you’re not following me that’s okay. Just spend some time
being quiet and closing your eyes and picture yourself sitting next to Jesus
wherever it is that you’re sitting. You don’t have to talk, you don’t have to
have Jesus say anything to you. Just be in his presence, know that he’s brought
you to this place where he is, thank him for giving you this seat in God’s
glory.
In
order that he might fill all things, Jesus has ascended to the right hand of
the Father, and he has saved a seat for you.
