Ascension - Homily 4 - 2022

Homily 4 - 2022

Today is a truly great Feast. Sadly, for most of my life until recently, I have allowed its importance to be overshadowed by Easter and Pentecost — but really, it stands there between them on its own two feet. What is it about, beyond a fairly irrelevant story tying up a few loose ends: explaining Jesus’ current absence and getting him up to heaven? And what is this business in the Creed about sitting at the right hand of God, the Father almighty?

Luke is the only writer to give any account of an ascension in the Gospels. And he repeated it in his subsequent volume, The Acts of Apostles [as we heard in today’s First Reading]. We know from his Infancy Narratives that Luke was an excellent story writer. He used story instead of writing a theological treatise whenever he tried to give his readers a taste for what is otherwise mystery beyond our comprehension. And by and large it worked well — except when we have taken it as a literal, historical record.

Between them the Gospel and the Acts spoke of Jesus being “lifted up”, “withdrawing”, “taken up to heaven”, “taken from their sight … by a cloud”. Though not to be understood literally, these details are highly important if we are to get the message. Luke pictured Jesus’ departure as it might be seen from down below, here on earth. It helps to know a little about the Book of Daniel if we are to picture Jesus’ arrival up above, in heaven. The Book of Daniel had written about an unidentified “Son of Man [or one like a human being]] … coming with the clouds of heaven … presented to … the Ancient One … given dominion and glory and kingship … a kingship that shall never be destroyed”. [The same text from Daniel explains why Jesus’ favoured title when referring to himself was so often “Son of Man”.]

So what Luke was leading up to and expressing in story was the finale of Jesus’ life among us on earth, his death from love and his resurrection from death, all culminating in his becoming King.

But lest we get carried away, we know Jesus’ attitudes to worldly power and prestige. Jesus’ life and death radically re-defined and turned on their heads all secular ideas of kingship and power. His ultimately invincible power as King is the power of love — the only truly creative power there is, the only power that can change for the good the world in which we still live. Jesus did not ascend to heaven in order to sit triumphantly at the right hand of God and to soak up whatever secular glory we might give him. He is at God’s right hand, [which signifies he shares in God’s power,] and calls us, invites us, to draw on that power. As we shall see next weekend, Pentecost is just around the corner, when Jesus will pour on the Church his Spirit — the same power for the same mission to love and serve to which he confidently called his first disciples while he was among them.

Today’s celebrating of Jesus’ Ascension reminds us that we, twenty centuries later, have been called to share in enthusiastically establishing Christ’s Kingdom — sent into our world to make his kingdom as real “on earth as it is in heaven”.

We had one significant opportunity to do just that last Saturday, when we went thoughtfully to cast our vote.