Thoughts

A sermon on the Ascension of Christ, the “present tense” of the gospel, from the texts for Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary (Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53).

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The good news of the Ascension

The ascension of Jesus can seem a bit weird to us today. We don’t share the cosmology of those who first told this story, and thus we find it a bit odd to imagine Jesus floating upward into the sky. Some have gone so far as to mock the ascension with the epithet “Spaceman Jesus”.

But this is unnecessary. “Ascension” is symbolic language. For Jesus to be “taken up into heaven” doesn’t mean vertically upwards toward outer space, it means to be taken into God’s realm (“heaven”) as king of the whole universe. Jesus hasn’t moved to another location in the cosmos, but rather has moved into heaven (which overlaps and interlocks with “earth” in a variety of ways).

The good news, then, of ascension is that Jesus the Human One is Lord of the whole cosmos right now, and he rules by sharing his power with us, his body the church, authorizing us to bear witness to his lordship in every place where his kingdom hasn’t been fully manifested.

[Read more…] about The Ascension is the Present Tense of the Gospel

The ascension of Jesus into heaven is an endlessly fascinating facet of the gospel for me. It has gone from an odd curiosity to a core theological truth that fuels my imagination of what daily Christian faithfulness looks like.

In fact, some of my recent musings on quantum entanglement and union with God are brought to you by the doctrine of the ascension!

Here are a couple quotes that get to the heart of the ascension and help us see why it’s so important:

Just as [Jesus] remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him… Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear… While in heaven he is also with us, and we while on earth are with him.

Augustine, Sermon for the Lord’s Ascension (430 AD)

[Jesus] had not left his Father when he came down to earth, nor had he abandoned his disciples when he ascended to heaven… once he had entered into the Father’s glory, he now began to be indescribably more present in divinity to those from whom he was further removed in humanity.

Leo the Great, Sermon 2 on the Ascension (461 AD)

I think it’s the both/and of presence-in-absence that is such rich soil for contemplation. It’s both “Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Heb 9:24) and “Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age” (Matt 28:20).

These themes are echoed in the Collect for Ascension Day, from the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Happy Ascension Day!

Quantum physics (at least as much of it as I can understand) has been fertile ground for some of my most significant paradigm shifts in Christian spirituality.

For example, it seems the universe isn’t made up of solid “building blocks” but rather tiny particles in relationship with each other with vast quantities of “empty space” between them. What is it that fills the “space” between the particles? Well, perhaps it’s God’s presence, holding everything together (Col 1:17). Maybe we’re swimming in God.

Another concept from quantum physics that I find intriguing is “quantum entanglement,” which is the phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles seem to be connected in a way that you can’t observe with Newtonian physics. When one particle changes state, other entangled particles change at the exact same time, even when separated by vast differences. It’s like they’re connected through some unseen “medium”, almost like being in two places at once.

What’s all this got to do with Christian spirituality? The New Testament writers talk often as if we are in two places at once. In Romans 6, Paul says, “all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death… Therefore, we were buried together with [Christ] through baptism into his death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too can walk in newness of life.”

In other words, in our baptism, we’ve already died and been raised from the dead! We die before we die, and we rise before we rise. In Colossians 3, Paul writes “You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” We exist in two realms at the same time (just like Jesus, who is in heaven with God but also with us to the end of the age).

It’s like we have quantum entanglement with Jesus! Our bodies are here on earth, subject to corruption and disease and sin, but also we’re already dead to all that and we are connected to the resurrected body of Jesus in heaven.

Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it eloquently:

So it is that not only Christ, but our love for him is already in heaven; it is in heaven that we receive him at Holy Mass, in heaven we seek and find him in prayer and contemplation, Indeed in loving our neighbor in the most ordinary earthly matters, we are encountering Christ in heaven. All this is hidden, of course, from our earthly senses at present, but when the Lord returns in will become manifest, along with him, as something that was always there.

Prayer, p. 281.

Contemplating quantum entanglement helps take these biblical ideas from wishful thinking to plausibility for me. I’m able to live with a more consistent awareness of the fact that I really do have a life hidden with Christ in God, so “setting my mind on things above” is not a flight from reality, but rather a grounding in reality.

The story of the Greeks at the festival who want to see Jesus (John 12:20-26) came up in the Daily Office Lectionary today. Jesus’ response always seemed like a bit of a non sequitur to me:

The time has come for the Human One to be glorified. I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their lives will lose them, and those who hate their lives in this world will keep them forever. Whoever serves me must follow me. Wherever I am, there my servant will also be. My Father will honor whoever serves me.

What seems to be happening here, though, is that Jesus’ “celebrity factor” is growing. His miracles and direct challenge to the religious powers that be is gaining him a bit of fame far and wide. And now some Greeks are getting in on the action: “We’d like an audience with Jesus, please.”

Perhaps their motivations were sincere, like those who sought Jesus out for healing or provision. Perhaps their motivations were more along the lines of those who sought to trap him or use him to advance their own political agendas. We don’t really know.

But it seems that Jesus isn’t interested in leveraging his growing fame and popularity to consolidate more status and power among the people. Instead Jesus consistently moves in the opposite direction, because he knows that the glory the crowds seek to give him is fleeting and fickle. He also knows that the true “glory” he is entering into is bound up in his impending death.

So, in response to a new group of people wanting to see him, Jesus says, in essence, “You want to see me? You want to walk with me? You want to figure out what my deal is? You want to participate in my ‘glory’? Well, you can, but it looks very different than what you’re expecting. My ‘glory’ is to fall to the ground and be buried. My ‘glory’ is to turn away from a life of status-seeking and self-preservation. My ‘glory’ is to die (to produce much fruit).”

We’re invited to walk the path

Jesus is, of course, talking about his coming death. But notice that he doesn’t talk about it merely as a singular act he will do our on our behalf (though it is that). He also says, “Whoever serves me must follow me. Wherever I am, there my servant will also be.”

And so Jesus’ “non-answer” to the Greeks who wanted to see him is in fact an answer, and an invitation to them and us and everyone: if you want to see Jesus, walk the way of the cross.

This is our pattern as disciples of Jesus: we follow him where he goes.

We walk the way of the seed that goes into the ground (trusting that it is also the way of abundant fruit).

We make choices that seem insane from the perspective of the powers and principalities that order our world, as if we “hate” our lives (trusting that we are in fact investing in a new kind of life that can never die).

We walk the way of the cross, following Jesus to death, trusting it to be none other than the way of life and peace, a path of hidden glory the world cannot perceive.

I find the permanence of the Incarnation to be an endlessly verdant theological idea. Jesus doesn’t “shed” his resurrection body in order to ascend to heaven, but rather enters into the Father’s presence as a resurrected human, permanently uniting divinity and humanity.

God’s entering into flesh must not be seen as a mere means to our redemption, nor as a preliminary stage on the way to our “divinization”; it is not something that passes away, as it were, is extinguished, is canceled by the Risen Lord’s return to the Father. The Risen One returns to the Father with his whole humanity, including his body.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer

It’s also an under-explored idea, it seems to me. Whenever I teach this in our church, almost everyone is surprised to hear it. But of course, Christian theology makes no sense unless it’s true.

God created the world in order that he might enter into a covenant relationship with humankind…. Even if humans had not sinned, Jesus Christ would still have needed to come in the fullness of time, because only through that revelation is covenantal relationship realized in the fullest measure—as communion with the triune God.

Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology

If Jesus stops being the Incarnate Word, the communion also stops, or at least is severely diminished. In the Incarnation, God becomes what God loves, and remains so permanently, eternally. It’s an astonishing and glorious display of the humility of God.