NewCreation

Homily for Ascension Thursday, Year C

The Homily for the Solemnity of the Ascension. Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the Solemnity of the Ascension. For some of you the Solemnity is celebrated on Thursday and for some on Sunday. So this year I'm going to be preparing a homily for both the Ascension and the Seventh Sunday, and we'll put them side by side so you can choose which one you go for, or have them both if you want. This year, following the reading of Luke's Gospel, we get both the Acts 1 picture of Ascension by Luke, and then the Ascension in the Gospel, also by Luke, the very end of Luke's Gospel. And as we'll see, there are some interesting ways of tying them together which are not obvious. I hope you'll see that that's rather fun. But before I do that, I want to bring out something which it's important we understand from the get-go, which is that our word "ascension," in our minds, is far too frequently associated with geographical liftoff, the notion of vertical departure from Jesus. And it fits into, if you like, a picture which I think is seriously mistaken: of the resurrection being a happy ending to the nasty story of Jesus having gone to his death to pay for our sins. So there's the happy ending of the resurrection, then Jesus hangs around for a bit giving instructions, and then off he goes. So, if you like, it's the happy departure at the end of the party. And I want to say that I think this is completely misleading, because, as I hope I brought out during our early Easter sessions, the resurrection is a beginning, not a happy ending. It's a rather disturbing beginning. It's the opening up of everything new in such a way that none of the old certainties and structures bound by death hold. It's a big shock to the system. Then Jesus appears over some time. But one of the things that is understood pretty quickly is that his going wasn't simply, as it were, a farewell departure — it was his being enthroned. And that was the way in which the ancient rite of atonement was followed by the rite of enthronement, which meant that after God, in the form of the high priest, in the form of the lamb, had given himself for the cleansing of the earth for the weaving together of creation, for the blessing of God's people. After that, the next ceremony was the enthronement, the being raised up to sit on the throne at the right hand of God, from which point God would begin to reign over all. We have the psalms to do with God reigning over all. That's what's going on in the Ascension. The Ascension is not, as it were, the happy farewell party. The Ascension is the fact that it's all over, that it's happened. The heavenly rite which had been fulfilled in heaven long before the foundation of the world has now happened on earth. Jesus has taken human flesh, he's been baptized, he's taught, he's gone up to his death, he's occupied the space of death, fulfilling the rite of atonement. This was the sign of the resurrection, life being made available, which now starts to become available. And now he is enthroned and sitting on the right hand of God. Once this has been fulfilled, then all the power of that can be unleashed upon us. And it's that that we're going to be seeing from Pentecost onwards: the unleashing of the great power of that which had been definitively achieved for all time. Humanity taken into heaven. Human nature become part of the heavenly story, the heavenly narrative actually having become a human narrative, which means the human narrative having become a heavenly narrative. And that's for good, that's not interruptible, nothing can happen any longer to make that change. The whole of creation is on a slightly different axis, if you like, from what it was before. That's the meaning of the Ascension, it's the great ending of everything. And it's from then that the whole of the life that that opened up can now flow upon us. Now, with that as a background, let's see how that's explained by Luke. Because in Luke we get what I would call a staggered ascension. We get an ascension immediately — a sort of mini-ascension, as I will show you — on the first Sunday of Easter. As in St John's Gospel, the resurrection and ascension are only, with great difficulty, distinguished. And then we get one forty days later. But so remember that on the first evening after the resurrection, in Luke's Gospel, the disciples have gone to Emmaus. They've been brought back after they came back, after they saw Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They've had their witness confirmed by the apostolic group. And then suddenly Jesus is in the midst of them, saying, "Peace be with you." And they were startled and terrified, and thought they were seeing a ghost. He says, "Why are you frightened? Why do doubts arise in your heart? Look at my hands and my feet, and see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh bones as you see that I have." In other words, we get elements which in John are staggered, here in Luke brought out in a single evening. "When he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' And they gave him a piece of broiled fish." Well, remember that we had broiled fish not so long ago in John's account as well. So Luke is treating those things all with a density here, so that he can make the point of the ascension in a slightly different way from John. John makes a distinction between his appearance to Mary Magdalene and not touching him, and what happens when he comes into the midst of the whole group, when it's clearly the one who is in fullness who is sending us. So it's at that point that this Sunday's Gospel begins. So we're still in, if you like, what John called "that locked room for fear of the Jews," but which for Luke is just a space. And Jesus says to them, "These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you" — "while I was still with you" suggesting that this is a different mode of presence from the one that he enjoyed before his death. He's talking about being still with them as something in the past. So this is definitely a post-resurrection appearance. "Everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." He had just explained to the disciples on the road to Emmaus about Moses and the prophets. Here he adds the Psalms. And maybe that's important, since so many of the Psalms refer to the enthronement — Psalms singing the praise of the king being enthroned, the enthroned part of the ritual. "Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And he said to them, 'Thus it is written, that the anointed one, the Messiah, is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day'" — to rise from the dead, and remember that "on the third day" meant a short time thereafter — "and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." So what has he been doing? He's been occupying the space of the kind of awful thing we do to people, putting them to death, and that his occupying that space fully — the shame, the death, sucking it all up, as it were — that is what enables us to be able to say, without fear of revenge, "Oh my God, that's what I've been caught up in." But because I know he did that for me, I know that we are loved even so. I know I'm loved even so. So repentance becomes possible. And with that, forgiveness of sins. Actually, forgiveness of sins is what makes repentance possible. With that, repentance and forgiveness of sins is able to be preached in his name to all nations. In other words, he is, if you like, the living atonement package, which is now going to be preached to all nations, starting from Jerusalem. And there are only little hints in Luke that it was going to be all nations, rather than a Jerusalem-related thing, rather than a specifically intra-Israel thing. But here it makes it quite clear: this is going to be for all nations. "You are witnesses of these things." In other words, what have they witnessed? They've witnessed him suffering and rising from the dead on the third day. They've witnessed his teaching of the words. They've witnessed, if you like, the integrity of what the interpretation becomes possible of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. And then he says, "And see, I am sending upon you what my Father has promised. Stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." So there's a power coming upon them. This will be the power when God reigns over all. But they don't yet get that. Then he led them out as far as Bethany — curiously, not the Mount of Olives here; he's gone to Bethany — so back to a more domestic place. And lifting up his hands — and this is a key word, the lifting up — he gives them a high priestly blessing. This is the priestly blessing: lifting up his hands. But here, please notice, he's the priest. He's not yet the holy place enthroned in the Temple. That we're going to get in the beginning of Acts. For the moment here, it is the high priest. So he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them — that's just movement backwards — and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem. They worshipped — they prostrated themselves before him. So here they are going down to the ground and he's gone up. They ran to the ground, and then they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the Temple blessing God. They knew they had a great high priest. But as yet, Jerusalem and its Temple was still the centre of their lives, in terms of their understanding of where God was. They understood that the great high priest had done these things, that therefore the atonement could now begin to be preached. But apart from that, they didn't really understand much more. They did understand that all this had been for joy. Well, the Acts of the Apostles, which is our first reading, then comes and it says: "After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. This is what you have heard from me, for John baptized with water but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." So there's a period of time in which the teaching goes on, above all when they're united, when they're up together. And so here we have another occasion when they had come together — so there's a coming together here, the beginnings of a gathering together that will be the Church. "And they asked him, 'Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?'" So they were expecting the enthronement and the kingdom to come, but they had a misleading understanding of the throne of the kingdom. "And he replied, 'It's not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.'" So that's the important thing: you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. That's the power of once the Lord is reigning over all — it's the Lord's power that will begin to cover the earth, as following the Psalms. "And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." So first thing: before, they had been witness to things, to things that had happened. Now they will be his witnesses. Now they will be bearing witness to him. They will in fact be him being impelled across the world. And whereas they had asked about the kingdom of Israel, he said: "My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." "The ends of the earth" was slang at that time for Rome — it was one of the titles which Rome had for itself. "The ends of the earth" is quite simply the ancient Greek way at that time of referring to Rome. "When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight." Remember, before he lifted up his hands in the blessing, but here he is lifted up. And this is the fulfillment at last of the great Isaiah throne vision — the beginning of Isaiah 6: "I saw the Lord, high and lifted up on his throne, and his train filled the Temple, and the house was filled with smoke, and the posts of the door shook." We're going to get elements of that being fulfilled over the next days — houses shaking, a house being filled with smoke. But initially it was the vision of the Lord lifted up and enthroned, with the seraph crying, "Glory, glory, glory" — absolutely central. vision in the Hebrew scriptures. So here that is literally being fulfilled before him: just being the priest, it was the holy one lifted up before, it being his hands; now it's the whole of him. And when he'd said this, as he was watching, he was lifted up while he was going, and they were gazing up towards heaven. Suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. So the two men in white robes are obviously angelic figures standing in for the seraphim in the holy place, the ones who cried "Holy, holy, holy." They are at the same level as they, not up there. Remember that in version one he blessed them and they had bowed down and worshipped; here his hands lifted up and they're gazing upwards. This is Luke's way of saying neither the one nor the other. So the angel said to them, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven?" So they bowed down when it was the priest blessing them; they're gazing up when it was the holy place vision. "This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." And that means in the crucifixion, at the same level as they — that is where you will see him come. He will come in clouds of glory, bearing, if you like, the cloud which came here as the sign of the holy place being filled with incense. But he will come as the priest who is giving himself up to death in your midst, at your level. That's the one who said to the thief beside him, "This day you will be with me in paradise." That is how you will see him. That's the way he's going to be made present to you. So then they return to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, and we get Pentecost. But what I wanted to bring out here is how beautifully Luke gives this staggered account of the difference between the priestly blessing and the priestly blessing enthroned, the enthroned vision, so that we are now caught up in that. That's never going to go away, and now the power of the one who reigns over all creation is going to come upon us and take us into it, so that we may worship with love and with joy on the inside of that, unstoppably and forever. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Thank you.