Ascension

1990 (Year A), 27 May /
Easter 7

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

In a couple of week’s time I suppose that I’ll be sitting down, along with millions of other zombies, to watch D.S.A. play Tunisia or North Korea at football. Riveting stuff it will be, and most important that I watch. All of us, the comatose ones, will be lying in front of our televisions listening to words blasted at us by the brain dead. And at the end of this three-week marathon the final, final whistle will go, a great cheer will go up and that will be that. The winners will have won, and nothing will be able to change it except that there is one more act to take place. The victorious captain must be presented with the cup.

The process is a very curious ritual, for when he has got the cup in his hands he raises it above his head, an even bigger cheer goes up than at the final whistle. It’s as if the crowd had not been certain of the victory until that moment, and that the final whistle had counted for nothing.

You’re probably way ahead of me, but the parallel is inviting. The final whistle blown at the resurrection, and the game won; life routed death about ten nil. And now we’ve reached that final act before the victory celebrations can start in earnest. The prize is being lifted up amid all the cheers from the Christian side. It’s all a bit crude, but maybe that was the intention of Luke as he told the story of Christ’s Ascension in his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.

And it’s a good analogy as far as it goes, but like all analogies it starts to break down if you push it too far, for with the lifting up of the cup by the footballers we’ve reached their end, there is no more to be done – until all the hype starts again in a few years time. With the Ascension it’s different.

Yet of course in a sense we have reached the end, as far as Jesus is concerned, at any rate since he has apparently returned from whence he came, taken to be with the Father, for the cloud is symbolic language for the presence of God. But the end did not come for those who saw him go. It has not happened yet for those who follow now, generations later.

Great and mighty deeds have been recorded but things, on the face of it, carry on just the same. After experiencing this amazing miracle, St Luke records that the disciples simply returned from the mount of Olivet to Jerusalem. For us it’s much the same, after the first flush of enthusiasm of conversion we quickly return to normality with a feeling that nothing has changed very much after all. It’s a feeling that the adult confirmation group will probably experience after all the preparation and fuss of the service at Holy Trinity in a two weeks time.

Babies are born, people die, we continue to endanger the existence of God’s creation by the way we live, and we get ill; we get better. Jesus might’ve gone into the presence of God but nothing seems to have happened for us yet.

The songs we sing at Ascensiontide tell of Christ the King and Lord of All. Tradition has it that he ascended and reached this exalted position so that he might fill the universe with his divine activity as its sovereign and its governor. But this can only happen if the people of his creation cease to live for themselves and start living for God and for other people, for it is through the people of his creation that Christ Chooses to exercise his Kingship and continue his work of salvation.

Christ ascended so that he might fill all things. The only way he can do this is if we cease living as individuals and begin to live in community, recognising our limitations and our need of others and God.

It can only happen if we are able to transcend ourselves and so, see ourselves as an integral part of a greater whole. We must see this for ultimately it is our only hope; not only for ourselves but for the world God so lovingly created. For the most part, we see change, only dimly, but every so often we can see that this is the only way that makes any sense at all.

The divine presence received Christ and now it adopts us and we are called into God’s presence. Each week we are asked to lift up our hearts and put them with the Lord.  Each week the saving acts of God continue and the Ascension is enacted anew. We have to remember that we are in God’s embrace, known and loved through and through. The victory is assured and now it is acclaimed for Jesus said, ‘And know that I am with you always; yes to the end of time.’ AMEN