Ascension: Preparing a place
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
May 21, 2023—Ascension (tr)
Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53
So often, we hear them as a reproach, the words those mysterious men in white robes say to the disciples in the Acts story: “Why do you stand, looking up into heaven?” (Acts 1:11). As though it is, without a doubt, nothing but a scornful command to stop standing around and get on with what really needs to be done!
But their next words aren’t some kind of “Get on with it!” Instead, they are a reassurance, a recognition of the sense of abandonment, the fear of the unknown the disciples have been left with. What the men say is, He will come back. Some day, we promise, he will return.
It won’t be forever. But man, right now … it feels like forever. They are staring into the sky, we are staring into the sky, because we … miss Jesus. Can’t believe he’s gone. Don’t know what to do without him. He died, and the grief was unbearable. But then, miracle and joy and astonishing power of God, He rose from the dead.
And now… But now… (insert string of expletives) now… He’s left. He’s returned to the eternity from which he came. And we are left … staring up into heaven. Wondering what it means. Completely unsure what we are going to do, and how we are going to carry on his mission.
We will. We will carry on the mission. He promised us that the Spirit would come and fill us with power and accompany us in the work.
But now, right now, we are bereft. We are at sea. We are standing there, staring up into the sky, wondering what the heck this is all about. Why has Jesus left us alone? Why has God abandoned us?
The Feast of the Ascension resounds with these questions. Recognizes the power and significance of such feelings as a legitimate part of a life of faith.
You left us. Why, why, WHY did you leave us?
Honestly, the question of what we do next can wait. In the liturgical year, we are given a week, until the Spirit fills us with power at Pentecost and sends us out to BE the church. In life, the period after a big loss can take a bit longer. It’s good, it’s useful, it’s necessary to sit in the moment for a while. To feel the abandonment. The shock. The rage at the one who left and the world that forces such losses upon us.
All those emotions are part of the Feast of the Ascension.
It’s why I picked that Sequence Hymn. For its yearning. For its expression of love and longing for the Jesus we love so dearly.
For the Jesus who doesn’t always seem so nearby. Who perhaps feels like he has just floated off into the sky, and left us here to flounder and grieve and wonder: Why did he go? And where has he gone?
Our best biblical answer to that question actually comes from a different gospel writer. John is the one who is most interested in these kind of cosmic level “why”s, and he touched on this very subject in a passage we heard just a few weeks ago: I go before you, to prepare you a place (John 14:3).
That’s why he left. He had to go some time, honestly, because he was fully human as well as fully divine. So, even though he was raised from the dead … he couldn’t live forever. So he had to leave, and he left. He returned to the eternity from which he came, taking (and this is important) the finite form of humanity with him.
Jesus takes his humanity with him, when he returns to the Infinite. The Rev. Sally Hitchiner of St. Martin in the Fields Church in London, invites us to imagine one of those maps you see in parks or malls, with the whole place laid out and an arrow marking, “You are here.” But this is a map of the Trinity, of the Godhead itself, of the way we imagine Divinity. And there is this huge arrow, pointing to the Son, the redeemer, the second person of the Trinity, and it says (now and for all eternity): YOU are HERE.
Jesus has gone on before us, taking our humanity into the very center of Divinity, so that we in fact have a place in eternity. In heaven, if you will. In our Father’s house, if you will. We have a place. We belong.
Some of you perhaps have an ancestor who emigrated to this country ahead of the rest of the family. Setting out alone, they came here to find a job, and save some money, and prepare the way. So they sent money home, and letters describing the ways in which they were trying to make sense of things, trying to make a place for the old world here in the new world. They filled out paperwork and signed contracts and just in general got the lay of the land.[i]
They went ahead, to make a place.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but somehow, this is what Jesus is doing for us in the Ascension. He goes on before us, taking our full (and therefore infinitely breakable) humanity with him. Into the Trinity. Into eternity. Into … well … into heaven.
I don’t talk about heaven much. As you’ve probably noticed, I think Jesus mostly focused on the Kingdom of God as it breaks through on this side of eternity. And I’m confident that if we keep our focus on that, then we will be all set for whatever happens on the other side.
But the Feast of the Ascension is a whole lot about heaven, and about the place Jesus prepares for us there. About the way in which his presence there opens things up for us. Because his presence there means that the full beauty and awfulness and absurdity of human nature is known and held and understood. So that we might well stand before God at the Last and find all those parts of us that are not of God’s kingdom burnt away (and believe me, that sounds … striking). But even through all that, we will be held and sustained by a Godhead that contains the deep down, fundamental Truth that those things are never the totality of a human being.
In this way, Jesus has prepared a place for us. Going before us. Sending us postcards, and envelopes of money, and all he can, to make our lives here better. And promising something more.
We still miss the hell out of him. But it won’t be forever. May it be so. Amen.
[i] HeartEdge Sermon Workshop, https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=582380350698230