Ascension Day - May 21, 2009

"Far Above All Heavens"

The Rev. Dr. Bill Joyner

The priest who presented me and my wife for confirmation almost forty years ago would never celebrate Ascension Day – he didn’t like the notion that the last thing the disciples saw of Jesus was his feet. Medieval art often portrayed the ascension this way, with only Jesus’ feet visible, sticking out from the cloud described in the lesson from Acts as the disciples look up. And indeed one of the two collects appointed in the prayer book for Ascension Day continues this point: “Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens, so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell.” This collect is about Jesus going away, going somewhere else, somewhere that we may eventually go, or go “in heart and mind,” but not now. The emphasis is on moving on to something better – as they say, “The brighter the vision of heaven, the gloomier the perception of earth.” This is a little like the chorus of one of the top country songs of 2008, by Kenny Chesney: “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven (But Nobody Wants to Go Now).”

But this is a bit at odds with today’s lessons. The other collect appointed for Ascension Day, also from ancient sources, says: “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 abideth with his Church on earth, even unto the end of the ages.” Ascension isn’t, in this collect, about Jesus leaving us. It’s about Jesus going from his forty days with the disciples after the resurrection to his time with us, being with the church, forever, to the end of the ages. The disciples didn’t stand around waiting to be taken up to heaven with Jesus – they didn’t try to grab onto Jesus’ feet and be pulled up. Luke’s gospel says they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God. In Mark’s gospel, or what may have been added to Mark’s gospel, they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere.

The Greek Orthodox prayer for Ascension Day combines both these notions in a wonderful way: “When you fulfilled your dispensation for our sake, uniting earthly things with things heavenly, you did ascend in glory, yet in no way departing, but abiding uninterruptedly with us, and crying unto them that love you: ‘I am with you, and no one shall be against you.’” In this sense, the ascension has less to do with speculation about the heaven that we do not know than with the humanity, our humanity, that we know only too well, and the new life God is bringing about here in our world through the birth and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The ascension means that Jesus is with us in a profound sense, not just with the disciples two thousand years ago – with us when two or three are gathered, with us in the word, with us in communion. This feast is in honor of the crucified, risen and ascended Christ who will be with us until the end of the age. Our response to the message of the angels at the ascension, as was the response of the disciples, is not fear or conflict but joy and prayer, for as they returned to the upper room and devoted themselves to regular prayer, so do we return here where, not in spite of, but because of, the ascension, Jesus is continually present with us as his church, as the body of Christ, not just on a hill in a faraway place, but here in Chapel Hill as well.

On the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem, the traditional site of the ascension is marked by a mosque, commemorating Jesus as a prophet of Islam, and if you give a dollar to one of the Palestinian boys who hover around there he will show you inside on a rock what is purported to be the last footprint of Jesus on earth. When you go outside maybe you will be tempted to look up, maybe looking for Jesus in the cloud, looking for his feet on their way up. But remember that in the lesson from Acts, the men in white robes yell at the disciples: “Why are standing around looking up?” The prayer we pray after each eucharist says that we are living members of the body of Christ, or in the traditional language, we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, today, here and now. The footprints of Jesus are not on a rock in Jerusalem, they are on the church all through history, and on us as its members today.

Today, when you look for Jesus, when you look for the body of Christ, don’t just look up into heaven for the feet, and don’t look far out into the future, waiting for a mystical presence. Rejoice today, like the disciples did. Proclaim the good news, like they did. The kingdom is here and now, and when you search for the body of Christ, look at the people you encounter out in the world, the world where the Spirit is at work today. Look at your neighbor. Look at the church. And look at yourselves.