Ascension: Dumbstruck by loss and promise
Link to video: https://www.facebook.com/138797592802860/videos/2624515134450404
Video begins with reading of the Ascension Story as retold by Edward Hays
Clare L. Hickman
Ascension 2020
I love that Edward Hays story about the Ascension. I love the way it reminds us that Jesus has taken his full humanity—his flesh and spirit, his wounds and his breaking heart, his knowledge of what it’s really like to walk about on this earth (to love and to serve, to get tired and get annoyed, to be hurt and to be forgiven, to grow and learn and change and hate and appreciate it all)—he has taken all that right up to the right hand of God. He has taken our reality all the way to heaven, which is perfect and eternal and thus it sometimes seems as though it has nothing to do with this world. Like it knows nothing about what it’s really like. I love that the Ascension takes the Incarnation right up into the heart of all that.
So that we KNOW, deep down, that God knows. God knows how hard it is. God knows how aching it all is. How beautiful. How heartbreaking. How boring. How confusing. How sweet, so that even when we hardly know how to hang on, we mostly can’t bear to think of losing it.
All that, taken right up to the eternal reality of God, to heaven. So that, somehow, we are all up there too. Right now. Always.
Which helps.
Because without that reminder … the Ascension just feels like loss. Feels like the gut punch of being told that you cannot be together. That you will have to be content with a remote connection. That you will still know that the most important person in your whole life is with you, but you won’t be able to touch them, hear them, smell them. They will still, always, be with you. But … different.
So, why are the disciples staring up into the sky? Because they are dumbstruck. And because they are grieving. They are completely undone by a loss they thought they had been saved from, forty days ago. He’s gone, and of course they are staring up at the dang sky!
We are too. Of course, we are grieving. Of course, we are unsure of the bargain we’ve been offered, unsure of our ability to be happy with what we are given instead, overburdened with what it asks of us.
It’s a lot. A lot to give up: for the disciples (and us, by extension) to give up that astonishing gift of being WITH JESUS in person, every day. For us, to know that we will never have it quite the way they did. And for us, in this moment, to give up so much of the personal contact that gives our life meaning. That strengthens and sustains us. That keeps us able to carry on with our daily tasks, and inspires us to give our energy to others.
And there it is: the part that’s a lot to take up. Because, when Jesus ascended to Heaven, and promised to send the Spirit to walk alongside us, it was so that WE (his disciples) could be for the world, what he had been for us. So that we can go to the poor and the outcast, to the lost and the lonely, to rich and poor, powerful and powerless, to those who love us and those who despise us, and see them (all of them!), talk to them, ask them what they need, and try to meet that need.
But … I do not want to rush too quickly to this truth of Christian mission, as though it were as easy as it is obvious. Because we are currently in a place to sympathize deeply with the disciples as they stood, bereft, looking up. To tell them that this just means they should follow Jesus out into the world is akin to telling the recently bereaved that they need to “keep living”—it may be true, but it’s too soon, and it’s a truth that needs to be lived into, rather than commanded from outside.
First, there is the loss, the incomprehension, and the deprivation. There is a time of utter bafflement, as you just stare up into the sky, unable to take in what has happened, what has changed, what is GONE. And after that, there will still be periods when that sense returns. Because everything has been turned upside down, and that’s a reality that will continue to insist on shaking you to your core. What on earth is going on, and how are you supposed to live this way?
Disorientation. Deprivation. Loss. What the disciples felt on that day. What we feel in this time of pandemic and societal shutdown. It is often awful, and we hate it. But … it is also (terribly, wonderfully) the exact kind of thing that makes a space for the Holy Spirit. When our certainty breaks down. When our routines and self-assurance and our sense of what is, what has been, and what will be are shaken. Then, then, the Spirit moves in. Slipping through the cracks, coming alongside us. And we are grateful, even if we do not know what She will make of us or where She will lead us. Advocating for us, clearing the way for what we truly need and who we truly are.
We too have been left open, searching and hungry. And just as the disciples went immediately to the Temple, to pray and praise God until the Spirit arrived at Pentecost, this time invites us to the same activity. To pray and discern, to sit and wait for the Spirit to move, to come, to speak into our hearts and souls.
For this is a strange time. We have been sent out of our church buildings, which is entirely of a piece with the Gospel. But we can’t exactly be sent into the world. Not freely, not safely, not in the way the disciples were. So, we would do well to stop and pray, and see how the Spirit will comfort us. How she will guide us. And what new things She will blow us toward. May our deep need give us the courage and patience to make it so. Amen.