Ascension Day 2022

 

This week saw the first showing of the final episode of This Is Us, an American drama that, for six seasons, has told the story of one family, the Pearsons. It is a stunning exploration of trauma, and the possibility of healing, and the finest television storytelling I have had the pleasure to know. And in the wake of its passing, I shall know bereavement, for I am the better for having witnessed the alienation and restoration of these relationships. Yes, they may be fictional characters, but all humanity is held here.

On Ascension Day, we hear again the story of Jesus’ return to the one he called Father, in heaven. In fact, we hear the story told and retold, told twice, by the same storyteller, Luke. This story, so important that it demands to be heard again, is the bridge between Luke’s first and second volumes, the Gospel According to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. This story is the bridge between Jesus’ excruciating torture and dying, and death-confounding resurrection, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This story is the bridge between the revealed committed desire of God to be in relationship with human beings expressed through the promises to Abraham and Moses and David—the people from among whom God enters into our lives in the person of Jesus—and the revealed committed desire of God to be in relationship with all humanity expressed through the commissioning of the disciples as witnesses to the ends of the earth by Jesus—a people called out from every tribe and nation to know God and to follow where Jesus has shown the way, to be with the Father, in full and unbroken union, for ever.

This is the moment that holds within itself all moments, past, present, and future. Eternity as a fixed point in time and space. In Jesus, fully God and fully human, lifting-up his hands in blessing and being lifted up.

And two witnesses, whom we have not met before now and do not meet again hereafter, testify, ‘This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’

It will become clear that the disciples, and those who received their testimony, fully expected this Jesus to return within their lifetime, at least within the lifetime of the last remaining original witness. And, equally clearly, this was not to be. Which calls into question the testimony of the two men in white robes, and, indeed, of all who believed them. It is not for you, Jesus tells his disciples, to know the timescale on which the things you long to see restored will be restored; rather, it is yours to bear witness that God is, indeed, restoring all things through and in and with Jesus, and to invite everyone to enter-in through repentance and forgiveness. Repentance, our coming back to being with God, with our neighbour, with our undivided self, our heart and mind and soul and strength held together by love. And forgiveness, God—fully, now—and our neighbour and our self—ultimately—agreeing, yes! Yes, to the restoration of God’s desire to be with us, and us with God. But does it have to take so long?

Samuel Wells, vicar of St Martin-in-the-fields in central London, suggests that the answer to that question is that whatever will be gained then does not outweigh what would be lost: the joy of seeing new life birthed as men, women and children come to faith all over the world; the world-confounding peace of the Holy Spirit with us in our sorrow. Not to mention centuries of art, music, architecture, literature, advances in science. Not to mention the love and wonder known in countless human lives.

That thesis would bear out in the life of the local church here in Sunderland, where we have been blessed to have with us sisters and brothers from Iran, Afghanistan, from many corners of the world, most recently from Ukraine. We enter God’s restoration, while waiting for restoration that is yet unseen.

We trust that Jesus will return, will come again, in person, to be with us, to dwell with us. Until he comes, we look back and look forward, in the present moment that holds all moments. We worship in the holy place, and we go out to witness that every heart may be drawn home, to worship and to witness, to find our lives centred on Jesus, and, with him, with God. Never, again, alone, whether in persecution or vindication, suffering or rejoicing. Finding our place in a restoration far greater than anything we could imagine.

That is a story worth listening to twice over. More, this is a story that heals the heart. We Have not yet reached the final episode of the Last Chapter yet, but, for now and always, this is us.

 

Ascension Day 2019

Lectionary readings: Acts 1:1-11 and Ephesians 1:15-23 and Luke 24:44-53

Back in 2007, I visited artist Antony Gormley’s Blind Light installation at the Hayward Gallery in London. A room-sized glass-walled box filled with cloud, and brightly lit, into which people were permitted to enter a few at a time. From the outside, you could make out those on the inside, looming out of the mist, whenever they approached the walls. From the inside, you could not see more than a foot in front of your nose; had to move cautiously so as not to bump into others. It was a profound meditation on walking by faith, not sight—which is, of course, how we all walk into the future, whether people of faith or not...

Today is Ascension Day, a principal feast of the Church. The era of Christendom made the birth of Jesus the pivotal point of history—BC/AD—but I would respectfully suggest that the ascension is the more fitting pivot-point, between ‘what Jesus did with his disciples’ [see the Gospel According to Luke, which ends with an account of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, forty days after he was raised from the dead] and ‘what Jesus is doing through his disciples’ [beginning with the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s sequel, which starts with an account of Jesus’ ascension].

The pivot-point between what Jesus did with his disciples and what Jesus is doing through his disciples.

When the early church, including the writers of the New Testament, reflected on the significance of the ascension, they came to understand that we are caught up in it. Not in a standing-around-waiting looking-up-at-the-sky kind-of-a-way, but in a participating-in-the-rule-of-king-Jesus way. As the late American philosopher Dallas Willard put it, ‘Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.’

This is mystery: that Jesus is exercising God’s reign of justice and joy through ordinary women and men going about their ordinary business in the world, enabled by an extraordinary empowering. This is mystery, not a puzzle to be solved, or relegated to the Too-Hard-to-Understand category; but a wonder to be lived, with a sense of wonder.

Are you a scientist or an engineer, pioneering new solutions to the problems we face? Jesus is exercising God’s reign of justice and joy through you.

Are you an artist or an activist campaigner, enabling us to see the world from a new and life-affirming perspective? Jesus is exercising God’s reign of justice and joy through you.

Are you in marketing or promotion, telling good news stories about a place or product and connecting people to opportunities? Jesus is exercising God’s reign of justice and joy through you.

Are you a healthcare professional, enabling healing or supporting preventative well-being so lives can flourish? Jesus is exercising God’s reign of justice and joy through you.

Are you a teacher or trainer, (or a parent or grandparent,) investing in the next generation? Jesus is exercising God’s reign of justice and joy through you.

And, of course, if you are retired, or if you have had to flee your familiar world and seek asylum so that you are currently living in a limbo, these circumstances simply mean that Jesus is exercising God’s reign of justice and joy through you in ways that might differ from your previous working life. Once caught-up in the ascension, you don’t drop out again. You—yes, you, my friend—are a gift of Christ to the world.

Today is the Feast of the Ascension. So, raise a glass to all the women and men caught up in the greatest unfolding drama the world has ever known, in a myriad of ways as they go about their lives. Beginning with the chalice of communion, the toast to Christ our risen and ascended king, and the being caught-up in him all over again.

Ascension Day 2018

Daniel 7:9-14 and Acts 1:1-11 and Luke 24:44-53

There was a time when our family was carried off into exile. It was a devastating experience. By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion (Psalms, 137). How, we asked, could we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

At just the right time, Daniel gave us a vision, to keep hope alive. A vision of a courtroom being set up on the earth, and the Ancient One—the Lord God, King of the universe—coming to sit in judgement over the pagan nations. Then, as the trial unfolds, one like a human being comes from where they have been hidden in heaven, and is presented before the Ancient One, who confers upon him rule over the nations.

This language is a code, in which the one like a human being represents the people of Israel, who live under the rule of the pagan nations—but who are to view themselves as hidden by God in the heavens, waiting, until he passes judgement on those nations and restores his people to the glory they had lost. That is how we were to view ourselves.

But why speak in code? Why not declare openly that God would soon overturn the fortunes of the nations, stripping Babylon of her empire and restoring the throne of David? Well, for a start, Daniel—to whom this vision is attributed—served as a very high-ranking government official within the Babylonian empire. More, he did so in obedience to God’s instruction, given through the prophet Jeremiah, that his people in exile should settle and establish themselves and seek God’s blessing on their hosts. He wasn’t there as a traitor to his people, or as a double-agent, but to be a blessing.

What we needed, you see, was a form of language, a way of speaking, that held in tension our desire that God would make all things right, and our genuine love for the people among whom we lived. This was not like when we were slaves in Egypt, and God sent Moses and Aaron to confront Pharaoh, who hardened his heart; or even like the time God sent Jonah to Nineveh, to confront the Assyrians with imminent disaster, when they repented and changed their mind and their actions, and so God repented and changed his mind and intended actions. No, traumatic though being taken into exile was, the lived-experience of our family during those seventy years was, for the most part—though with occasional rough patches—that of being highly honoured.

Indeed, when Daniel’s vision came to pass, in the events of the fall of the Babylonian empire to the Persian empire, and the opportunity came about to return home to Jerusalem, many of us chose not to go.

By the time of Jesus, the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem was one of the wonders of the world. But Jerusalem and the whole Land had been taken first by the (Egyptian-based) Greeks, and then by the other (Syrian-based) Greeks, and then by the Romans. A new set of pagan nations. Recalling Daniel’s vision, Jesus declared that although the chief priests and the whole council rejected him, they would “see the Son of Man [him, and his followers] [first] seated at the right hand of Power and [then] coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). Code: a way of saying that God would judge the pagan nations of the Greco-Roman world, and then vindicate his people—but that now the people were to be understood as those who recognised Jesus as the one appointed for dominion and glory.

Hence, six weeks later, when Jesus was hidden in heaven, the angelic messengers declared that he will return in the same way: that is, with the clouds of heaven. The disciples had asked if Jesus was about to restore the kingdom to Israel; but this was still the time of being hidden until the judgement was passed. In the meantime, they were to invite all nations: that is, in the very midst of God sitting in judgement over the pagan nations, all who would name Jesus as Lord—whether from among the Jewish diaspora or the gentiles—would be included, incorporated into the one like a human, or, Son of Man.

All this came to pass, as across the Roman empire nations fell and rose, and Christianity spread across north Africa and Asia Minor and Europe, even to our own islands at the very end of the Roman world.

But what of us, who live so long after? We believe, in the words of the Nicene Creed, that Jesus ‘ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.’ But what does it mean to believe that?

It means, I think, that we need a code language that allows us to speak of our hope that the Lord God is at work in human history to bring about justice in a world that is full of injustice, and at the same time to hold before God all that is good and beautiful about the nations we are from and live in and that we want to see flourish and don’t want to see swept away. A language that enables our Iranian brothers and sisters to speak of all that is good about Persian society, and to endure the problems they face, ranging from being denied employment, to imprisonment and execution. A language that enables those of us who are British citizens to bless all that is wonderful about being British, and to speak prophetically to power (that, by the way, is what the Bishops are doing in the House of Lords: being Daniel in the court of Babylon). A language that holds us back from putting our nationality before God, but that keeps us from thinking the nations are of no concern. A language that affirms divine judgement and divine mercy.

One of our codes is that of art. At the west end of the Minster you will find a depiction, in stained-glass, of the gazing disciples and the two men in white robes and the cloud hiding Jesus from our sight. At the east end of the Minster you will find a depiction, in stained-glass, of the ascended Jesus seated on a throne in heaven. The ascension seen from both ends, if you like.

Another code is apocalypse, that fantastical genre in the Bible, in books such as Daniel and Revelation and in parts of the Gospels, that push language to its poetical limits to express faith. That, by the way, is a language that resonates with science fiction and fantasy in books and comics and films and tv dramas. It is not meant to be understood, so much as to immerse ourselves in.

Then there is music: both music directly inspired by the ascension, engaging us at an emotional level; and music that inspires us as we seek to live in the light of the ascension, lives hidden with Christ in heaven. This is the code David and the choir teach us, by which our life together is enriched.

What these codes have in common is the ability to express what reason cannot, to say what we don’t have the words for, to live with our feet on the ground and our head in the clouds, to grow deeper into mystery. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have produced a booklet, the Novena 2018, of daily images and prayers for each day between Ascension and Pentecost, a week on Sunday. Please take a copy, a gift to you. Whether you are just beginning to learn this language, or a fluent speaker, I commend it to you as a way we might speak together of our faith over the next few days.

This is the language of faith. May we find again our voice to sing the Lord’s song in the strange land in which we live.