Feast of the Ascension

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The Feast of the Ascension is like a Going-Away Party, and the secret of the Feast is to understand why, given the departure of the physical Christ from the scene, which, among other things, is what the ascension involves, we are having a party rather than a wake!

He goes to prepare a way. There are many mansions in his Father’s house, he goes to prepare a place for us. Where he has gone, we hope to follow.

That’s part of it. But even here and now, and apart from that, as Jesus himself says in John’s Gospel, it is a good thing that he goes, and the real secret is to understand how that may be.

Apart from preparing a place for us, why then did Jesus have to go?

Because otherwise, first of all, he would be confined to Judea and Galilee (or wherever his physical presence was). Whereas now he is present wherever his disciples go: we are his continuing presence in the world, whether in London or N.Y. or New Haven, or Beijing or Belgium, or Herberton or Malanda or Yungaburra. He is there wherever his disciples gather, whether for the breaking of the bread or just to pray and meditate on the Scriptures. He is there, present, in the world also in and through our Christian lives, loving one another, and in our care for all his brethren. We are branches of his vine, members of his body. The Spirit that filled him now gets to fill us, now that, in consequence of the whole Jesus story, his Father has become our Father, his God our God, and we the sons and daughters, individually and collectively also the Beloved.

This is privilege, this is dignity and a further demonstration of God’s so-much-love for us in Christ. And it is also responsibility. “As the Father sent me, even so do I send you.” Resurrection and Ascension for Jesus means Mission for you and me, mission for us. As the angel says, why are you standing there, looking up to heaven. He is going to come back, just like you saw him going. In the interim: Go back to Jerusalem, get the Spirit and get on with the job! Jesus’ Mission has become our mission, to take the Good News, to take Jesus’ tender healing and forgiving presence to the ends of the earth; and filled with his Spirit to be Jesus’ healing and forgiving presence to the ends of the earth in so far as we can.

This is the ultimate manifestation of God’s love for us in Jesus. Or almost the ultimate! The ultimate = the gift of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ gift to us of what makes him work, God’s gift to us of what makes Jesus work, to make us really and truly the loved sons and daughter, and to make it really possible for us to be something like Christ’s healing and forgiving and reconciling, peace-making presence in our world. (That’s the story for next week!)

But the Ascension is more than just Jesus making space for us his disciples to flower! Plus the Spirit to make it all possible, the ultimate gift and the where-with-all for our flowering and our mission. Though that would be love enough.

Jesus ascending into heaven, going into God so to speak, to sit at the right hand of the Father of glory, in doing so himself gets to be more powerful than if he had stayed around, much more powerful even. Somehow or other he becomes part of the Divine background of the universe, an element of God at work in the world, including our world, here on earth, “above every Sovereignty, Authority, Power or Domination … ruler of everything”, filling the whole creation.

This is way beyond working with or in or through or by means of his group of disciples, though that also; even way beyond working only among people who happen to know about him, though that also: his presence fills the whole of creation. That’s very interesting! Though that also, as St Paul says in the same passage: God has made him, “as the ruler of everything, the head of the Church; which is his body, the fullness of him who fills the whole creation.” And that brings the two ideas together. We are not Christ, we do not fill the whole of creation, our power and love does not exhaust his power and the extent of his love; and yet we are the fullness of him who fills the whole creation, members of his body, branches of his vine.

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