Today we are thinking about the Feast of the Ascension. The
Ascension is just as much a part of the rhythm of the Church year as Easter and
Pentecost but, because it falls on a Thursday, it is often the poor relative
when it comes to us actually paying attention to it.
As many of you know, the Ascension is always celebrated 40
days after Easter. The date of Easter moves each year so the date of the Feast
of the Ascension moves with it. Ten days later we have the Feast of Pentecost,
which always falls on a Sunday.
This great movement from Advent to Pentecost summarizes
Jesus’ life and ministry. Advent, the season of anticipation, Holy Week and
Easter, the remembrance of death and the celebration of the Resurrection. The
church calendar leaves 40 days for us to rejoice in the presence of the Risen
Lord and then comes the Ascension, Jesus returns to heaven and we wait, again
in eager expectation, for Pentecost.
The Ascension is one of those Festivals where we are invited
to experience the moment. The Biblical narrative gives us idea of what
happened, somehow Jesus was taken up into heaven, The Gospels give slightly
different pictures but the best account, telling us what we do with this
experience is at the beginning of Acts.
Interestingly in Acts Luke has the disciples asking a
question about restoring the Kingdom to Israel. The end of the Gospel does not
contain this and we have to wonder what Luke’s motivation was in including this
information – after all it seems like a step backwards in the story.
To understand this we have to look a little bit at Luke and
Acts as a team act. Luke wrote both the Gospel and Acts. It can be hard for us
to understand but giving precise dates to these ancient texts is not possible –
all we can do is guess by looking at what is and is not included in the
writings. Because Luke does not mention the invasion of Jerusalem and the
destruction of the Temple in either book many scholars would say that both
books were written before AD 70 – so in the very early days of the Church.
So what is Luke saying in these early and formative days –
well again and again his message is that this great story of Jesus is not only
for the Jews? So the Disciples asking that question gives him a frame – he does
not alienate the Jews by saying “That will never happen,” but sidelines the
question by saying it is not for them to know what they need to get on with is
the great work of mission.
Acts really is a book of mission. Paul, in later chapters,
is the great carrier of the Gospel to lands afar but in these early verses we
are still in Jerusalem with the twelve and those who travelled with them. Jesus
stays forty days. One day for each year in the Wilderness in Exodus and an
exact mirror of his own self-imposed exile at the beginning of the Gospel. The
beginning and end of Jesus’ earthly ministry are wrapped around with this
numerical reminder that God is saving God’s people from slavery and bringing
them into a new covenant relationship of hope and promise.
These times of forty are times of preparation and prayer.
The Israelites re-learn what it means to be a covenant people in the forty
years. Jesus explores his vocation in the forty days and now the disciples have
been learning what it means to be a resurrection people.
The fact that Luke has them still not really getting what is
going on gives leverage to his story of a Gospel for the whole world but it
should also give us profound reassurance. This core group have just spent forty
days of preparation for being the foundation of the Church, they have walked
and talked and broken bread with Jesus – and still they have not quite got the
story straight.
Jesus gives them the final task of taking the Gospel to
Jerusalem, all Judea and to the ends of the earth. This story is for everyone.
But they are not left alone in this, they are to wait for the Gift of the Holy
Spirit.
I have to say, I always wonder what they did for those 10
days. Were they excited, sad, afraid – probably all of the above. We tend to
read these passages in a rather staid voice, but I rather wonder whether Jesus
actually said it a little differently,
“Guys, this is really amazing, it is going to be so good. I
have the best gift ever for you – if only you will be patient, hang on in here
with me. Don’t worry about building an earthly kingdom – you really have
something much better to do with your time. Tell my story, tell it to everyone.
Tell the people in this city, in the suburbs and you know what, you will be
able to take it all over the world.”
That excitement is part of our story too. We are invited to
be a part of the Ascension in the church calendar not so we will spend our time
worrying about physics and how that worked but rather that we can simply exist
in wonder in a moment of God’s glory. Sometimes we look at the Gospels and
think that we have to validate these experiences against our own – but these
stories which are shared with us, these ancient foundations of our faith, are
not shared as hypotheses, methods and conclusions they are shared as experiences
of God’s glory and grace.
It is from these shared experiences of Jesus’s life and
resurrection that we are bound as one Church throughout the ages. Those first
Disciples received a clear charge – to go and tell people about this amazing
story and we are told the same.
There are things in human experience which we cannot explain
or label. We need to be careful not to try to stick everything in our life in a
box of reason and logic – some things have to be allowed to be mystical and
wonderful – just because they are.
We get excited about things we can see and just about
explain like sunrise – how much more should we get excited about the eternal
and glorious God of heaven and earth? If we make that which is unseen by human
eyes somehow not real we limit out capacity to grow as human beings. Wonder is
not a childish trait, it is a human trait and not the sort of wonder which
seeks to categorize, label and hold on to – but the sort of wonder which allows
a life-changing “Wow!”
If we allow ourselves to believe in the possibility of a God
who is far beyond what we can ask or imagine then our asking becomes framed in
that mystery. No longer are the earthly preoccupations with which we surround
ourselves as important as ever entering deeper into that mystery which is the
source of life. St Teresa of Avila was someone who knew that mystery and as she
writes interior castle she warns that our prayers eventually run out of words
as we exist in God, in a place where words make no sense.
Perhaps the Ascension is like that – words make no sense but
we can experience the glory and presence of the Risen Christ and we can wait
patiently, in eager anticipation, with those excited and scared and hopeful
Disciples for the next and wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit.
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