The Holiday that Changed the World
The Revd. Deacon Polly M. Bowen
(Note: On May 24, the Southern Erie Deanery held an Ascension Eve service at St. Matthias. It was a joyful occasion: Bishop Garrison confirmed several people, welcomed others into our communion of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and blessed the graduating members of the Education for Ministry program. The sermon, originally written in a much shorter form as a Deacon’s Page and adapted as a sermon, follows.)
May was a month with a lot of holidays. It started out with May Day – I have a friend who actually used to go around to her friend’s houses and leave May Baskets at their doors. She’s not able to do that any more, and I miss it – it was always such a nice surprise. And then there was Cinco de Mayo. We had a great festival here on the 5th of May – I am hoping it will become an annual event. Then of course there’s Mother’s Day, and Memorial Day. And we all know there’s yet another one – Ascension Day – an important day for Christians.
But what’s of great importance to the Church isn’t necessarily important to the world. One way of measuring how important something is to the world is to put your finger on the Hallmark pulse. I didn’t get a single Ascension Day card, and I’ll bet you didn’t either. What’s more, I’ll bet Hallmark doesn’t even know about Ascension Day!
But we know, and we care - not that we can prove it. The New Testament writers were a little vague about what really happened. They used words like “exalted” and “glorified,” and that favorite of Hollywood producers, “a cloud took him out of their sight.” It was also a favorite of artists. I remember one Ascension Eve preacher reminding us of all the medieval paintings of people staring piously up at a pair of dangling feet. A great image! But the truth is, we don’t really know what happened.
They used a lot of ascending-descending language in the Bible, and sometimes it’s hard to figure out just what they meant. But we use it, too. Human life is full of ups and downs. We talk about climbing the ladder of success, of falling off the wagon, of getting high, crashing, coming up in the world, hitting rock bottom. These are metaphors. WE know what we mean, but they’ll probably sound a little crazy to people a couple of thousand years from now. The Bible is full of metaphor, too, and sometimes we have a hard time with that.
It would be easier for us if only Jesus had appeared to some of the people who did him in - Pontius Pilate, for instance, or the soldiers at the cross, or even the temple authorities. But he didn’t. It wasn’t a public event, and it didn’t get turned into a media circus.
Only believers saw the resurrection appearances and the ascension. That’s uncomfortable for us, and it raises some questions as to just exactly what they saw. A ghost? A vision? Some sort of shape-shifting ethereal vapor that drifted through doors and appeared and disappeared and finally disappeared for good into some other dimension? Not according to those who saw him. They went to great lengths to convince us how real he was – whatever “real” meant to them.
We know he was different. The post-resurrection texts don’t say, “We have seen Jesus” – they say, “We have seen THE LORD.” Somehow their sight was turned to insight. We know that in some rare and precious and mysterious way, they were graced with special glimpses of Glory. But that’s all we know.
So we struggle to make some sense out of it, but our minds are steeped in scientific knowledge and demanding of accuracy. We are as limited and trapped in our scientific world as the New Testament writers were limited and trapped in the world of the first century. We just don’t think alike. They believed in a three-tiered universe – heaven was “up” and if you fell off the edge of the earth you were lost to the monsters of chaos. Now we know that the world isn’t flat, and one person’s UP is someone else’s DOWN, and astronauts fly into space and report that they don’t see any angels, and the non-Christian world snickers at us for clinging to our “beam-me-up” Jesus. A silly idea, they say. Of course, some of the scoffers are the same people who rush to every Elvis sighting in hopes of getting a glimpse of that sort of wonder. The King of Rock and Roll lives on, but not the King of Glory? I don’t think so.
It might comfort you (or perhaps it might discomfort you) to know that theologians struggle with the same questions. What did they see? Where did he go? And every so often one of them tries to enlighten us, and then you get the three-volume explanation, and you still don’t really understand.
Which all goes to show that there are more important things than historical verifiability when it comes to the Jesus event. Whatever it was that happened, the disciples’ lives were radically changed. It was the impact that made the difference, not the details. They were a bunch of pretty ordinary guys, and their world fell apart when Jesus was crucified. There they were, cringing in fear in a locked room until they somehow understood that Jesus had overcome death. Then they were no longer powerless - they became powerful. They were bold and sure of themselves and willing to die for what they believed in. This wasn’t what they had expected, and yet they were convinced that Jesus was the Son of God, that he still lived, and that they were standing at the threshold of God’s kingdom.
And so are we. There’s a fuzziness in all this that we may not like. We can’t really prove it. But if we had scientific proof, we wouldn’t need faith. That’s God’s way. Faith is never forced – there’s always enough there to support our belief, but there’s always wiggle-room if we choose not to believe.
For those of us who do choose to believe, I’d like to suggest a couple of things we need to remember:
“A cloud took him out of their sight.” We need to remember that they still remained in his sight. And so do we. He is actively involved in our world. The Ascension is the guarantee that what happens in our lives has eternal significance.
We need to remember that Jesus took his humanness with him when he was glorified. He made us a part of his relationship with the Father, sharing his glory with us.
We need to remember that in the cycle of descent and ascent, Jesus’ ascension was followed by another descent – the descent of the Holy Spirit to renew the face of the earth. The Resurrection, Exaltation, and Giving of the Spirit work together as one great eschatological event. They signal the beginning of the End Time, the beginning of a shared mission, an empowerment of the apostles – and us – to proclaim, and not just to proclaim but to act upon – a new world of justice and peace and love.
And with all that in mind, there is one final thing I would ask you to remember. Ascension Day always falls on a Thursday. It’s an ordinary workday. It will never be a national holiday. Nobody will ever give you the day off for it. Probably the Hallmark people will never find out and nobody will ever send you an Ascension Day card – although knowing the enterprising marketing skills of the greeting card industry, I really can’t guarantee that one. But all this serves to emphasize the fact that our mission is for every day – the Thursdays as well as the Sundays. Our commitment to justice and peace and love is an every day commitment. That’s the challenge that goes with the promise of sharing in Christ’s glory.
Are we up to that challenge? I think we are. I pray that we are. Amen.
