Ascension

See Commentary on Luke 24:46-53 in Luke 24:36-49 & Luke 24:50-53

Homily 1 - 2010 

What is it about our being who we are – Christians, Catholics – that is different from what we would be if we weren’t? Do we feel different? Perhaps, for most of us, that’s hard to answer because we have never not been Christian, Catholic. 

But, then … perhaps it’s not so hard, because being Christian is not a simple question of Yes” or “No”, but a question of “how much”. Being a follower of Jesus is not a once-and-for-all given. It is a process – a process of growing – or, at least, it can be. And, I think that, for most of us, the very fact that we are here tonight is an indication that it has been an unfolding process: to be a Catholic today calls for a much more deliberate, more aware, decision than it might have been for our mothers or fathers.

Be that as it may, the fact that we have grown across the years gives us the chance to reflect on what has changed in us. 

To-night’s Second Reading spoke of progress, of growing: May the God of Jesus bring you to full knowledge. May the God of Jesus enlighten the eyes of your mind. What have you come to see and to appreciate more clearly as you have grown and matured?

The Gospel helps us to recognise and to put words on what might have been our experience. It talks about something happening to us, happening in us, that it colourfully describes as being clothed with power from on high something, then, that hasn’t happened though our own efforts (though it has called for our openness and willingness to let it be), but something that has happened all the same, something that we didn’t precisely seek, or expect, but that we can  recognise now as we look back. Because we somehow see and evaluate things differently, life affects us differently.

The Gospel called it the forgiveness of sins – a really rich and complex experience. The sin that cripples is not the mass of mistakes that we make from weakness and inattention, or sheer laziness, (and that we are only too well aware of). The sin that cripples is the sin that blinds us, that we are not aware of, that that we don’t see as sin, that we are used to, and take for granted and assume as normal.

A painful example has been the instinctive defensiveness shown by certain bishops in the light of the sexual abuse of children by clergy. It went on for so many years without coming to the surface. (Thank God that the media finally allowed victims to be heard.)

The blinding power of sin is all too alive and well in ourselves personally, but, in ourselves largely because it is embedded in the air we breathe – in the unquestioned attitudes of our culture and our sub-cultures: in the general, unrecognised violence, in our competitiveness, our instinctive defensiveness when criticised, our unthinking collusion in injustice.

As the power from on high slowly gives light to eyes of our mind, as we slowly grow in wisdom and perception (to use the words of tonight’s Second Reading), we begin to make out our sin more clearly. It’s everywhere.

But the wonderful thing that we also see, the wonderful thing that enables us, in the face of it all, not to despair, but to hope and to draw on the energy for change that hope releases is the dawning awareness of the powerful and liberating certainty of forgiveness.

Our God is really a God whose instinctive, and constant, life is love. The difference that can happen to us across life is that we become humble, able to love, ourselves and others, and irrepressibly hopeful.

The insight usually comes the hard way – within and through the experience of life and life’s inevitable hardness. No one can duck that hardness. It crushes some; it leads others to wisdom, to understanding, to gentleness and humble acceptance.

What confirms us in all this is the memory of Jesus about whom it was written that the Messiah would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead (as tonight’s Gospel insisted). 

That he rose from the dead enables us to do more than simply remember him. Mysteriously, though he has undeniably withdrawn from us (as the image of Ascension endeavours to express the reality), equally undeniably, he transforms us. He changes us by the power from on high. Slowly, gradually, we are undergoing God.

 Homily 2 - 2016

I used to think that Easter was “it”. What more could you get than resurrection? With resurrection, it was as if Jesus returned to his rightful place in the inner life of the Trinity, fitting back where he belonged somewhere between Father and Spirit. And not only that, it was his human body that was raised. So, in and through him, we too might eventually merit heaven. But we had to get there first. And that would mean relentless vigilance and constant work on our part.

Against that scenario, the Ascension seemed something of a second thought, tying up the loose ends, perhaps. It even made less of a stir than the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost – which at least seemed to have some use if we were to save our souls.

Of recent years I have begun to see things differently. And in this new development, the Ascension has become the climax towards which everything else is ordered. I think the insight started when I began to reflect on the fact that God loves all of us unconditionally, totally and without exception. God’s hope is to save the whole human race – and it as one of the human race that I fit in. I realized I am not all that important, none of us is; or, rather, I am important, we are all important, but none of us is especially important, more important than anyone else. God does not have favourites. God cannot love me more than anyone else. God cannot love anyone else more than God already loves me. If God were to stop loving anyone, God would stop being God!

I also realized that it is this love – the only kind of love – that God both feels towards us and pours into us. When we truly vibrate with the life of God, we love. Grace is simply the divine energy that empowers us to love God, each other, ourselves. That changes the focus somewhat. Heaven is not the isolated me saving my soul. Heaven is about being in love – with everyone. Heaven is us related, relating to each other – being loved, giving love; and enjoying it! It is a social experience. Heaven has the shape of a unique society. If we wish to use the old terminology of biblical times, it is a kingdom [or, as the Book of the Apocalypse prefers, it is a city, a resplendent city]. And the one taking care of it all is Jesus. 

The prophet Daniel introduced the imagery in an apocalyptic vision he described a couple of centuries before Jesus: "I saw one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His … kingship is one that shall never be destroyed". Daniel’s imagery helps us understand why Jesus always referred to himself as the Son of Man. It explains why Luke, when picturing Jesus’ Ascension, spoke of the cloud taking Jesus from their sight. It explains Paul’s reference to Jesus sitting at God’s right hand [which means, sharing the responsibility of God]. And it is helpful to remember that kingdoms and cities are essentially people, people together, organized and relating to each other under the authority of their leader – in Jesus’ case, not by force and by law, but by love and in perfect freedom.

When we see things in this light, we recognise that discipleship is not being engrossed in a future heaven, gripped by the self-interested, self-serving business of saving our souls. Rather, discipleship means sharing a mission to show the way of Jesus now to our present world, as we seek to live responsibly in love, focussed on others. Naturally, we are responsible citizens in our global village – we care for refugees; we preferentially opt for the poor and powerless; co-incidentally preparing for eternity, to be shared later, and enjoyed, together in heaven.

Homily 3 - 2019

Today’s Gospel concluded Luke’s story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus with a brief account of what he called Jesus’ “withdrawing from the disciples and being carried up to heaven”. Appropriately, he closely connected it with Jesus’ resurrection and, you will have noticed, even timed it as occurring on the same day – the resurrection in the morning and the withdrawal to heaven in the evening.

The First Reading tonight was taken from a second volume of Luke’s, the Acts of the Apostles. This volume dealt no longer with the life and teaching of Jesus, but with the beginning of the Church and its early history. You know from your familiarity with the Gospel that Luke prefaced Jesus’ public ministry with a forty-day novitiate in the desert at the end of which he was tempted. In this second volume, Luke prefaced the launching of the Church also with a forty-day novitiate, “For forty days he had continued to appear to them and tell them about the Kingdom of God”. It was only then that he recounted Jesus’ Ascension, connecting it somehow with the coming Kingdom. He described it as he had in his Gospel, with a few significant additions. “He was lifted up… and a cloud took him from their sight”.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, a cloud was often the symbol of the presence of the unknowable God. But here it has a further significance. During his ministry, Jesus regularly referred to himself as the Son of Man. That was a title that he borrowed from the Book of Daniel. It occurred in Daniel’s description of a mysterious vision he had of God, "As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne…” The vision continued, “As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven… To him was given dominion and glory and kingship”.

For Luke, the Ascension is the celebration of Jesus’ sharing in the dominion of God. This is the feast of Christ the King.

The Gospel account of Jesus’ withdrawal had mentioned that Jesus had taken the disciples out "as far as the outskirts of Bethany”. Bethany was the spot from where, six days before he was killed, Jesus had begun his symbolic entry into Jerusalem, where the disciples and the crowds acclaimed him as king. But let us not get too carried away. Quite deliberately, Jesus chose to enter mounted of all things on a donkey. For Jesus, kingship is not about what the world understands as kingship – power and wealth and whatever. His kingship is based on the vulnerability of love and service, of simplicity and humility.

Let us get back to the visions of Daniel. After the "dominion and glory and kingship” were given to the Son of Man, Daniel was then told by the interpreting angel, “sovereignty and kingship … will be given to the people of the saints of the Most High”. So the Church shares ultimately the same experience of Jesus, the Son of Man.

Through his account of Jesus’ Ascension, Luke removed the veil on the ultimate destiny of the Church – not unlike what he had done at the start of his Gospel when, by means of his infancy narratives, he had revealed to his readers the deeper mystery of Jesus.

But Jesus had a job to do before he entered into his glory. He had to preach the Kingdom of God, to demonstrate it through his deeds and his words, to call the world to conversion and to radical and unfamiliar change. His unshakeable commitment to the way of love would lead to his tortured, dehumanising death – as we read about in Luke’s Gospel. Likewise, as Luke would illustrate in his Acts of the Apostles, the early Church called the world to conversion despite experiencing a similar reaction to what Jesus experienced – opposition, often fierce, and for some, martyrdom.

The task continues today. And we are the ones on whom God relies.

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.