Themes for Preaching
THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD (past published)
Full Circle from Glory to Glory
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez
Acts 1:1-11
Eph 1:17-23
Luke 24:46-53
With the Ascension of Jesus, the Christ-event has come full circle. Jesus, who is God, who became flesh and lived within the parameters of human existence, has “gone home” to God and to glory. Not for his own sake did he undertake the journey into the depths of human need, frailty and sin — but for ours. Because of Jesus’ willingness to become like us in all things except sin, human beings have been granted a glimpse “beyond the veil,” a glimpse of glory not unlike that which John the seer has shared with his readers over the past several weeks (Revelation, Easter 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
But Jesus’ willing presence in flesh and blood, in time and space, has also revealed a love the authenticity and intensity of which human beings could never have fathomed on their own. Indeed, someone had to surrender, to become one of us, in order to speak to us in our own language of the incomprehensible, illogical and irrepressible love of God for humankind. In Jesus, we learned that God loves us as Brother, as Father, as Mother, as Sister and even as a Bridegroom who loves his bride. In Jesus, God’s love became real, with hands to touch, ears to listen, a heart to ache and a body to suffer — in love, for love, because of love. As Karl Rahner (The Great Church Year, Crossroad Publications Co., New York, NY: 1994) has explained, in Jesus, there was at last someone in our midst who was not superfluous, someone who did not become a burden, but who bore the burden. Because Jesus was so unassumingly good, we were either suspicious of him or we almost took him for granted. Jesus gave a name to the incomprehensible cause behind all that exists. He called it his Father, and did so neither with naiveté nor with presumption. Indeed, Jesus almost led the world into the temptation of taking God for granted when he allowed us also to whisper into the divine darkness, “Abba-Daddy-Papa.” Jesus was God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s wisdom in our midst.
And now, he is gone away again and we are celebrating his going from us. Why? Because our Jesus has not returned to God and to glory unaccompanied. My faith and my consolation, insisted Rahner (op. cit.), are centered on this — that he has taken with him everything that is ours. Rahner admitted that he could not explain this mystery theologically. Furthermore, he defied those who would demythologize it or attempt to explain it away. He was simply content to believe that Jesus, in ascending to God, has taken us with him. Because he wanted to come close to us, definitively, he has gone away and taken us with him. Because he was lifted up on the cross, in his resurrection and in his ascension, he and everything in him have become near. The reason for this is that the Spirit is already in us now! When we lose sight of this nearness, the ascension seems to be separation, but we must will to believe in God’s nearness, in the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, the ascension, affirmed Rahner, is the universal event of salvation history that must recur in each believer through grace. It is also a paradox. When we become poor, then we become rich. When the lights of the world are darkened, then we are bathed in light. When we are seemingly distant or estranged from the nearness of Jesus’ presence, then we are more united with him. When we sense only an emptiness of heart, when all the joy of celebrating seems to be only a liturgical fuss, then we are, in truth, better prepared for the feast of the Ascension than we might imagine.
Elsewhere in his writings, Rahner (The Content of Faith, Crossroad Pub. Co., New York, NY: 1992) has expanded upon this paradox of what is here yet not fully here. When Jesus’ Spirit is in us, then we are the Lord’s and he is ours. And yet, there is still the pain of waiting for eternal life, the pain of hope not completely fulfilled, the pain of a pilgrimage not ended. Unfortunately, we are sometimes too content with this life. We settle for temporary and partial fulfillment. We do not look above or to the future like those who gazed up to the skies in Galilee so long ago. We keep our eyes fixed on the present. We are not those who wait, those who look, those who are unsatisfied. We are not those who hunger and thirst for that justice which will be fully known only in the future, that future which will bring us the return of the Lord if we keep watch for him and work to prepare for his final advent.
In our watching, waiting and working, the reality of Jesus’ ascension reminds us that a part of who we are — Jesus, who became one of us — has gone ahead of us, plotting the path, preparing the way. Since something of us already dwells in glory with Jesus, then the “first fruits” of who we are must summon the rest of our selves to a greater, deeper, holiness, here and now — not only at liturgy but in the course of our daily existence. To put it more bluntly, we are to live in accord with the gift that we are heaven-sent, rather than hell-bent. For, as Rahner (op. cit., Content of Faith) has insisted, “when the Spirit performs the miracle of faithfulness and courage in our poor lives from day to day, there is the Spirit of Christ. And where the Spirit of Christ is present, the true festival of the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated.”
Acts 1:1-11
Two Lucan versions of Jesus’ ascension are set before the praying assembly today, in this text from Acts and in the Gospel. Both include the essential kerygma; both include the promise of the Spirit as the powerful and ever-present enabler of Jesus’ continuing mission through the church. Both include the statement that Jesus was taken up from earth to heaven and both include the charge of the risen Jesus that his own should be witnesses of who he was and what he did before the world. However, they serve two different functions. The Gospel version of Jesus’ return to glory functions as a doxology that concludes the Lucan telling of the Good News, and the Acts account serves to introduce the mission of the church. Notice also, that while the Gospel recounts the ascension of Jesus on Easter Sunday evening, Luke, in Acts, has chose to separate the ascension from the resurrection by a period of 40 days. This, explains Roland Faley (Footprints on the Mountain, Paulist Press, New York, NY: 1994), enables the author of Luke/Acts to establish his own historical-theological framework, with its post-Easter instruction of the apostles stretched over a 40-day period. The number 40 was reminiscent of the experiences of Moses (who spent 40 days on Sinai being briefed by God on the commandments: Exodus 24:12-18) and of Elijah (who walked for 40 days and nights on the strength of the food God sent him: 1 Kings 19:8), and of the length of time Jesus spent preparing for his Spirit-driven ministry (Luke 4:2, 14-15).
What did the disciples learn from the risen Jesus during their special time with him? Did the reality of his resurrection take hold of them? Did they begin to perceive him as truly alive? Did they come to realize that the Jesus who died on the cross was the same Jesus who rose and appeared among them? Were they becoming cognizant of their place in God’s plan of salvation and the responsibilities they would assume after Jesus’ return to glory? If the Emmaus appearance was typical, then we can suppose that there was a great deal of reflection on the Jewish scriptures and on Jesus’ ministry and on how the one was fulfilled in the other. No doubt there were also many experiences of Eucharist in which they encountered their Lord who became known to them in the breaking of the bread.
After the disciples had spent so much time with the risen Jesus, their question to him about the restoration of the rule of Israel (v. 6) may seem dense or imperceptive. It may be, however, that Luke included the question to renew in his readers the hope for the kingdom. As the interim between Jesus’ advents grew into months, years and decades, the church’s fervor for Jesus’ return grew tepid. Luke would not have his readers lose that fervor, but he would also not have them engage in idle speculation about things they could not know. Without quashing their hopes, the risen Jesus deflected their question and reminded his own that the exact time was not theirs to know (v. 3). Rather, their job was to witness to his truth, work that would be empowered and directed by the Spirit, work that would be ably recounted by Luke in Acts so as to inspire future generations to continue to do as their ancestors, had done — to bring the good news to every human heart!
Eph 1:17-23
The fleeting reference to Jesus being seated at God’s right hand in heaven (v. 20) is no doubt the reason that this prayer of blessing has become part of today’s Liturgy of the Word. Sandwiched in between two more detailed accounts of Jesus’ ascension (Acts, Gospel), this prayer recalls the gifts that have come to humankind through Jesus: hope, the glorious heritage of salvation and the power of God at work in those who believe. Although a minority of contemporary scholars continues to assign a Pauline authorship to Ephesians, about 80 percent of critical scholarship holds that Paul did not write this missive. Nevertheless, as Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament, Doubleday, New York, NY: 1997) has noted, the ancient writer has been called the supreme interpreter of the apostle and “Paul’s best disciple.” This pseudonymous author, addressing Christians of the Pauline churches in western Asia Minor, wrote sometime in the 90s, intending to encourage and edify a readership whose safety and security were being more and more threatened by an empire that regarded them with enmity.
In the midst of an empire that touted itself as eternal and in the face of an emperor who would be revered as divine and addressed as “Dominus et Deus Noster” (Our Lord and God), the theological discourse called Ephesians affirms the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all heavenly and earthly powers. By the power of God, insists the ancient author, Jesus was raised and exalted above every principality, power, virtue and dominion (v. 21). These were regarded as cosmic powers or categories of heavenly beings that certain false teachers with a gnostic bent presented as being rivals of — or even superior to — Christ. This erroneous belief grew out of a highly developed, complex angelology popularized in the late first and early second Christian centuries. Like the author of Ephesians’ “sister letter,” Colossians (1:15-20), this ancient writer left no doubt as to the primacy of the risen and ascended Jesus Christ, above all, over all.
From that place of power, above all and over all, Jesus empowers the church. As Beverly Gaventa (Texts For Preaching, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 1994) has pointed out, the connection between the ascended Christ and the church becomes explicit in verses 22-23. Here, the metaphor of the church as the body of Christ serves not only to affirm its unity (as in 1 Corinthians 12) but also grounds the church itself in the power of God. Christ is the head; the church is the body, affirms William Barclay (“The Letter to the Ephesians,” The Daily Study Bible, The Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh, UK: 1976). Because the head must have a body through which it can work, the church is, quite literally, the hands that do Christ’s work, the feet that run his errands, the voice that speaks his words. Centuries before Barclay, Teresa of Avila underscored the church’s power and privilege to do the work of the ascended Christ with these words:
“Christ has no body now on earth, but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes from which the compassion of Christ will look out upon the world; yours are the feet with which Christ is to go about doing good and yours are the hands with which Christ is to bless us now.”
Luke 24:46-53
As recounted by the Lucan evangelist, the ascension of Jesus is both an ending and a beginning. At an end were the two to three years of companionship with the earthly Jesus; also concluding were his resurrection appearances among his disciples and the opportunity for instruction that these afforded. Ending, too, was the second stage in the story of salvation as perceived by Luke. According to Hans Conzelmann (The Theology of St. Luke, Ger. 1954; NY: 1960), the first of those stages was the period of Israel, from Moses to the appearance of John the Baptizer; the second was the period of Jesus’ ministry, from the inauguration of his public service to his ascension. That period was now ending, and the stage was set for the beginning of the final era of salvation history, in which we still live: the period of the church. Luke described the mission of the church as an intended part of God’s preordained plan of salvation and, as such, a mission that would be powered by the Spirit.
To be sure, insists Fred Craddock (Luke, John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 1990), the disciples did not immediately understand the nature of their mission (to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins) or its dimensions (to all nations). Indeed, it took repeated revelations and prodding by the Spirit before those early believers became aware that God accepts all without partiality. In fact, right within this brief ascension narrative are couched two of the major issues with which the early church had to struggle — coming to terms with a suffering and dying messiah and accepting non-Jews into their faith fellowship without distinction.
Jesus knew, says Craddock (op. cit.), that neither the message nor the universal scope of their mission would fit the natural inclination of his followers. They were not ready to carry forth a message shot through with pain and suffering and they were not ready to spend themselves on a worldwide mission. Therefore, they were told to wait for a power greater than themselves to open their minds, prepare their hearts and warm them to service. Although the contemporary church will celebrate the gift of that power next Sunday at Pentecost, Luke will tell of a waiting period of 50 days filled with prayer and continuing encounters with the risen Jesus.