There is an article in the ancient creeds of the Christian Church that asserts
that, after Christ rose from the dead,
“he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
Since the reading from Acts states that Jesus “appeared to the disciples
for forty days after the resurrection, speaking about the kingdom of God.”
the Church celebrates the feast of the Ascension on a Thursday,
exactly 40 days after Easter.
Last Thursday was that feast day, so I thought that this Sunday
would be a proper occasion to reflect on the doctrine
of the Ascension of Christ into heaven.
Unfortunately, the symbolism of Jesus “going up” into heaven
doesn’t work very well for us anymore.
The cosmology of God being “up” and the world being “down here”
and hell being “down below” beneath us in the nether world
is an outdated view of the world
It just doesn’t jibe with reality as we know it.
But on the other hand, we’re not going to make any sense
out of the doctrine of the ascension if we separate it completely
from the cosmology in which it was framed in the first place,
pre-scientific though it might be.
We can only begin to understand the concept of Jesus’ ascension
if we try to understand the meaning it had for the disciples and early Christians
who first affirmed it, and for the believers, preachers and theologians
who interpreted and valued the doctrine of the ascension
throughout all the centuries of “pre-scientific” understanding of the universe.
At the same time, I don’t think we need to be too literal
about Jesus “ascending to heaven on a cloud”
in order to affirm some theological or spiritual significance to the ascension.
Now some may assume that the feast of the ascension was something
that only Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox Christians valued & celebrated,
since these denominations consider Ascension Day a Holy Day of Obligation,
meaning that Thursday is elevated to the status of a Sunday,
when every member is obligated to go to Mass.
But I recently came across an article by a Presbyterian theologian,
the Rev. Dr. John S. McClure from Vanderbilt seminary,
that highlighted the great value that the Reformer John Calvin
placed on the Ascension of Christ into heaven.
John Calvin is one of our spiritual ancestors,
one of the founders of the Protestant Reformation.
This article revealed some perspectives about the Ascension
that I had never considered before.
So for my sermon this morning, I’d like to share some of Dr. McClure’s insights.
First of all, he points out that The Ascension of Jesus Christ
marked the end of Christ's earthly existence
and the beginning of a new period of time,
one in which Christ's relationship with the Church
is not restricted by the boundaries of time and space.
Christ is now available to all people, all of the time, for all time
through the work of the Holy Spirit.
This is most evident, as John Calvin points out,
in the experience of Christ “transfusing us with his power.”
This is the experience that the disciples first had at Pentecost
(which we’ll celebrate next Sunday, on the 50th day after Easter)
when the Holy Spirit comes with fire and light and breath,
and turns fearful followers into bold witnesses.
They were “transfused with Christ’s power.”
But that experience isn’t limited to the disciples back then;
Christ still emboldens and empowers disciples to preach and teach
and give witness to the Gospel by their lives.
Calvin envisions Jesus as high and lifted up, seated at the right hand of God,
where he “lavishes spiritual riches” upon “his own people.”
In his most striking commentary on the Ascension John Calvin says:
“Since (Christ) entered heaven in our flesh, as if in our name, it follows,
as the apostle says, that in a sense we already sit with God
in the heavenly places in Christ.
At the Ascension, our humanity, our “flesh,” has been “taken up”
by God's Beloved One into the very heart of God.
McClure goes on:
This is profound good news for us as Christians and for our whole world.
It means that we are more deeply valued, loved and held by God
than we may have known before.
We grow and change. We move from one place to another.
We endure disease and violence.
We live with the sometimes painful rhythm of suffering and death.
We make mistakes and we commit sins, knowingly and unknowingly.
But through it all, we carry with us a vision of our humanity
being taken up by Christ into God,
caught up within an ultimate, redemptive purpose for our lives.
Our fragility and transitoriness does not define us.
In Christ, we are already caught up in the heart of God.
This ascension of Jesus Christ is good news for us as Christians,
and through us, for our world.
It means that God loves, values, holds, and will transform
our fragile and broken humanity in Christ.
It means that, at the Ascension, Jesus took all of human life,
which he cared for so deeply,
and brought it “into the heavenly places,” into the very heart of God.
This includes the suffering refugee, the abused child or spouse,
the victim of war or terror, the lonely one in the nursing home,
the one who struggles with depression or a lost sense of worth and value,
those who are sick, all who are in difficult transitions in life.
This even includes all those we mourn and remember on this Memorial weekend,
all those young lives lost in the chaos and violence of our too, too many wars.
All of human life, at the Ascension, moves even more emphatically to God's side!
All, in Christ, are moving, sometimes with sparks flying,
more deeply into God's being and becoming.
In Christ's Ascension we have a vision of humanity in all of its depth and breadth
being taken up into, being pulled toward, the heart of God in Christ.
At the end of the Ascension story in Acts the disciples receive a promise
by two men in white robes that there will be a homecoming.
This humanity that has been “taken up” to the right hand of God
somehow returns to us in glory.
This is grand, poetic language.
We can take this to mean that while in Christ's Ascension
the world as we know it is constantly ending,
in Christ's Ascension also the world as God knows it is constantly coming.
Justice and compassion are rolling down.
The redemption of God is coming and will fill the earth.
When all is said and done, Luke's story of the Ascension
tells us that Christ's home-leaving, and our home-leaving in Christ at baptism,
leads finally to a homecoming — for us as the church, and for everyone
— the homecoming of all humanity to fullness of life in Christ.
So we have much to celebrate on Ascension Day.
We celebrate the Cosmic Christ, no longer contained in a human body,
but transcendent, infusing the church and the world in a mystical presence,
the living Body of Christ.
We celebrate the new spiritual power that is being “lavished” upon us every day.
And we celebrate that we are, in a sense, already seated with God
in the heavenly places with Christ.
And that, in spite of all our suffering and sinfulness, in Christ’s ascension
we are, in all of our humanity, held and valued and loved
and carried up into the very heart of God.
Amen.
