Ascensiontide: God has gone. Imagine that!
God has gone up with a shout! The Lord with the sound of the ram’s horn, Hallelujah!
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In the Church Year we have seven Principal Feasts, four of them lined up in the springtime like baby ducklings filing across the road: Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday.
This morning we observe the Ascension of Christ, that, depending on which of Luke’s stories you are reading (today we read both), the Ascension is either the Evening of Easter Day as Luke says in his Gospel; or Ascension happens forty days after Easter as Luke writes in his Book of the Acts of the Apostles (as we observe today in the Church calendar).
Over the centuries, artists have painted the Ascension with a startling image of Jesus' feet disappearing into the clouds as friends and loved ones, including Mary his Mother, stare up in astonishment. Some of this holy, religious art has an almost ludicrous air of the artist's pious imagination as we see that Jesus has left his shoes behind. But then, C S Lewis, in his book The Great Divorce, speaks of the soft green grass of heaven, so I imagine you do not need shoes there.
Not to be flippant, but this morning Ascension seems more likely to happen for Holy Nativity folks on Shell Island than for us here in this room - - though Jesus, who appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one as he will, including in rooms where doors are locked and barred, might ascend from here as well as from the seashore.
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Is the Ascension historic, or metaphor? Luke tells it as he heard it two thousand years ago. Artists imagine Jesus disappearing into the clouds and on up to Heaven. In our day, telescopes peer beyond the Firmament of Genesis One from, as Eucharistic Prayer C says, "this fragile earth our island home", into “the vast expanse of interstellar space (at) galaxies, suns, (and) the planets in their courses”*. However we imagine it, the Church takes Ascension seriously, along with Easter and Christmas.
What does it mean then, what does Ascension mean? If Christmas means our Creating God came to dwell among us as one of us, and Easter means God loves us so much that God comes back to us no matter how hatefully we abuse God, what does Ascension mean?
Well, the Church called it Ascensiontide, marking the end of God’s time on earth as a human being, for us opening a chasm, days of great emptiness until either Jesus returns or the Holy Spirit comes.
It’s a time for realizing that we cannot live this way, we cannot keep covenant alone. We cannot love our neighbor as ourselves, We cannot strive for justice and peace among all people. We cannot respect the dignity of every human being on our own - - because our human nature is Self Alone, we are not “for others” as Jesus is for others.
But covenant involves two parties: in our Baptismal Vows we covenant that we “will, with God’s help”, and Jesus said I will send the Holy Spirit to be with you and guide you into all truth, that’s the promise - -
so now there’s this time gap, an empty void, a spiritual vacuum, to remind us that we cannot, and indeed God does not expect us, to keep covenant alone.
Again, Ascensiontide, a time for being mindful that, because of our selfish human nature, we cannot Love God Love Others without help, and that's okay, it's part of God's plan of salvation.
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So, Jesus is Ascended and the Holy Spirit is yet to come, a vacuum, an experience of the absence of God.
We should EXPERIENCE that vacuum, not merely take note of it. Accordingly, this morning you will be offered the Body of Christ as your godly sustenance for the week ahead, but you are at risk: there will be no Absolution after your Confession of Sin, and there will be no Blessing at the end of worship.
Soteriologically (which means “from a salvation point of view”), Ascensiontide is threatening, risky - - not unlike Holy Saturday, a time of darkness when God the Creating Word lies dead in the tomb.
God has gone up with a shout! The Lord with the sound of the ram’s horn. Wait prayerfully in the void: your salvation is at risk.
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Homiletic endeavor for Ascension Sunday, May 16, 2021. The Rev Tom Weller, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida.
The read Propers for the Seventh Sunday of Easter: Ascension Sunday:
The Collect.
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
The Lesson. Acts 1:1-11
In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during 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," he said, "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 when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is 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; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."
Psalm 47
1 Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with a cry of joy.
2 For the Lord Most High is to be feared; he is the great King over all the earth.
3 He subdues the peoples under us, and the nations under our feet.
4 He chooses our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves.
5 God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of the ram's-horn.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.
7 For God is King of all the earth; sing praises with all your skill.
8 God reigns over the nations; God sits upon his holy throne.
9 The nobles of the peoples have gathered together with the people of the God of Abraham.
10 The rulers of the earth belong to God, and he is highly exalted.
The Gospel. Luke 24:44-53
Jesus said to his disciples, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you-- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
*Eucharistic Prayer C, BCP p.270