The Seventh Sunday of Easter - May 24, 2009

"The Mystery of the Ascension"

The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

Today is a transition Sunday. Coming in the midst of three principal liturgical feasts, it forms the bridge between Ascension Day, which we celebrated on Thursday, Pentecost a week from today, and Trinity Sunday one week later. If we imagine the seven weeks of the Easter season as an extended display of celebratory fireworks, these three major feasts form the final intense barrage of pyrotechnics, which signal the completion of the joyous celebration. These are the final, intense Easter season highpoints from the Church’s theological and liturgical storehouse.

Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, we are more acquainted with, occurring each year on a Sunday and occupying a more familiar niche in the awareness of most Episcopalians. We will be hearing more about them the next two weeks. But what about the Ascension? Since it is the only one of the seven principal feasts of the Church year which never occurs on a Sunday, we are much less exposed to this key part of the Christian faith. Besides that, it involves a curious story about Jesus in front of his disciples being “lifted up and a cloud [taking] him out of their sight.” As Dr. Joyner reminded those of us here on Thursday night, a famous stained glass window at King’s College, Cambridge, shows the disciples looking up above their heads, seeing only Jesus’ feet disappearing into a cloud at the top of the window. Are we to take this scriptural account that literally; and if we cannot, does it have any essential meaning for us as followers of Jesus?

The Good News that we proclaim through the mystery of the Ascension is not that Jesus' glorified body elevated before the apostles' very eyes until he was just a dot, too small to be seen. The Church does not insist that Jesus’ body kept relentlessly rising until he finally reached the extra-terrestrial throne of his Father, as yet undiscovered by the astronauts or the newly revived Hubble space telescope! To use the jargon of a current popular movie prequel, the Ascension is not a “beam me up” story. In fact the hymn that we just sang before the Gospel questions that literalism: “And have the bright immensities received our risen Lord, where light-years frame the Pleiades and point Orion’s sword? Do flaming suns his footsteps trace through corridors sublime, the Lord of interstellar space and conqueror of time?”

That last phrase, beginning with “Lord,” hints at the real meaning of the mystery of the Ascension. When we say Jesus ascended, we mean it in the same sense as "the king ascended to the throne." We mean that, just as the Father raised Jesus from the dead, so too did he elevate him to dominion over heaven and earth. When the Letter to the Ephesians, from the liturgy for the Ascension, declares that God made Jesus “sit at his right hand in the heavenly places,” it means, as it goes on to say, that Jesus is “above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” Jesus is Lord, this intriguing mystery of the Ascension reveals to us, not any Herods or Caesars or any of their distant successors. Jesus is Lord, not only of interstellar space, but of all his Father’s creation, a truth which is to be both an assurance and a reminder for us, as well as a call to believe and an invitation to yield to its demands on our lives. “Jesus is Lord over all” lies at the heart of our Baptismal Covenant, and we are to live each day in the light of that mystery.

In addition to proclaiming Jesus’ universal Lordship, the Ascension also declares (in close connection) Jesus’ omni-presence. Rather than affirming that Jesus has left, not only the building, but the earth and the cosmos itself, leaving us desolate and adrift, the Ascension asserts the reality that in Jesus’ words, he is “with [us] always, to the close of the age.” Although Jesus no longer appears in bodily form as he did to his first followers for a time after his resurrection, since Jesus is one with the Father, he is universally present throughout creation, just as his Father is. And not only in creation. Jesus is present to us through the Gospels, through the sacraments and liturgy of the Church, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, through “the least of these my brethren,” indeed, “wherever two or three are gathered together” in his name. Our hymn answers in the second verse its own question about where the ascended Jesus is present: “The heaven that hides him from our sight knows neither near nor far; an altar candle sheds its light as surely as a star: and where his loving people meet to share the gift divine, there stands he with unhurrying feet; there heavenly splendors shine.” Jesus’ presence is not limited to distant galaxies, but is real and continuous all around us. The Lord of Lords is “with [us] always, to the close of the age.”

Today, then, we acknowledge the mystery of the Ascension, and we look forward to celebrating the unleashing of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the rich but impenetrable mystery of the Holy Trinity. As we proclaim Jesus’ lordship and declare his omni-presence and his dominion over all things, let our prayer be that of the feast of the Ascension:

"Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides[th] with his Church on earth, even [un]to the end of the ages; through Jesus Christ our Lord." Amen.