Dear People of Christ Church,
Today is Ascension Day, which you will be forgiven for not realizing as the Thursday 40 days after Easter. It’s one of the odder days of observance in the Christian tradition-we’ll hear that Scripture from the book of Acts that describes Jesus being lifted up and disappearing into the clouds. It’s an important one-for brothers and sisters in Roman Catholic side of the Christian family, it’s a holy day of obligation (which in some places can be moved to Sunday, but not, apparently, in Boston.
We affirm the Ascension in the Nicene Creed-quite clearly, we declare that Jesus “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” We say this every Sunday. There’s something about the literalism of the image-Jesus either did or did not levitate into the sky-that I find particularly difficult. As a doctrine, it solves some intractable issues-how, for example, would Jesus have been buried, and what would we make of his divinity alongside his holy but also mortal and dead body-but in our children’s sermon this Sunday I will graciously sidestep whether it actually happened that way.Ascension Day is one of those times that, as I believe God will be gentle with me, I also will be gentle with our tradition. The truth is, I don’t know. It seems implausible, but, then again, the whole marvelous story is implausible.
As contemporary believers, we just can’t go back to a spatially three tiered universe of heaven, hell, and us in between. We can haz science. Why did Jesus go into the sky? Well, if you think that heaven is “up there,” then that makes perfect sense. But the Ascension is much more about Jesus coming “in here.”
The resurrection appearances of Jesus were a marvel, but they were also quite localized to a particular band of followers; individually Simon and Peter and James and John might have wanted to keep that exclusive connection to themselves, but Jesus is pretty clear that their relationship with him is not only a personal affair. The ascension is about the transcendence of the risen Christ, about how humanity and divinity are joined in a universal and no longer only particular way. St Gregory of Nazianzus (around 390) said that Christ’s ascension is our ascension. Our humanity rose with Christ. That doesn’t depend on whether or not Jesus levitated. It doesn’t depend on how loudly I say the Creed or whether I am, occasionally, just too doubtful. That depends on so much more that I can’t even wrap my brain around it, which, frankly, is a pretty good place for a person of faith to stand. More mystery, less judgment.
Thanks be to God (and the long legacy of Anglicanism) for that.
Blessings,
Sara+