Recent Sermons
St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
For More Information Contact the Office
Notice any errors? Have a suggestion? Or a comment? Then ....
Ascension 2007
St. Andrew's Church, Grimsby
20 May 2007
Acts 1: 1-11
Luke 24: 44-45
When I was a kid I always had a problem with the feast of the Ascension. I never really got anyone to explain it to me properly. It didn't make sense to me. Here was this feast day, which I knew was supposed to be a celebratory day - and yet we what we seemed to be celebrating was the fact that Jesus left! Actually, to hear the story from Acts - Jesus "up and left" - literally!
What's so wonderful about that? Why are we supposed to celebrate that? Wouldn't this be a sad day for Jesus' disciples. They had three good, amazing years with him and then it all ended with Jesus death on the cross. And then Jesus, miraculously, appears again to them. And then, just when they've gotten used to having Jesus around again, he "up" and leaves them again! O.K., Lord, do you want to make up your mind here?
No wonder Luke paints the picture of all the disciples standing there agog gazing up into heaven. I wonder what Monty Python would do with this scene! And as they are standing there dumbfounded, suddenly two men in white appear to them and say, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand there looking up toward heaven?" They've got a point. What are they accomplishing?
Are these the same two men who spoke to the women at the tomb? They asked them, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead?" They always seem to show up to ask why people are looking for Jesus in the wrong place. Well, this event did accomplish one thing for the disciples: it forced them to look up.
Looking Up, by Jim Taylor:
When I was young, most people playing hide and seek hid under bushes, or crouched behind walls. That was the first place the searchers looked - along the ground. I climbed a tree. Or a wall. It didn't matter how high it was, or how much cover it offered, as long as it was significantly above eye level. Unless I attracted attention by making a noise, no one ever looked up!
It seems to be a characteristic of the human race. We watch where we put our feet, not our heads. In politics we're much more likely to examine our politicians' clay feet that to explore their ideas. Even when we do look up, we avoid eye contact. Professional hockey players and monkeys, I'm told, initiate fights by looking an opponent in the eye. Stare at the banana or the puck all you want - but don't look up. City people avoid unintentional eye contact with anyone on the street. And there's more navel gazing in crowded elevators that in any Buddhist monastery!
If you look up into someone's eyes, you acknowledge a relationship. You might have to take some responsibility for that other person. Urban life is only possible by looking down and ignoring most of those who throng around us. No wonder we have trouble - theologically and scientifically - with Jesus' ascension into heaven. It forces us to look up.
Still, so now the disciples are looking up, instead of down. Now what do they do? I think the direction of their gaze indicates a progression. They start looking down and concerned with their own individual situations: a selfish stance. Then, Jesus forces them to look up, which is an improvement: but a passive stance. Finally, they end up looking around them horizontally at eye-level - looking at other people, an improvement again: an active stance which is ready to engage others.
It only makes sense if we can drop the literal understanding of the story and can begin to grasp its metaphorical truth - which is how the writer, Luke, intended for it to be understood.
There is a wonderful quote from Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth. In discussing the ascension of Christ, Campbell says it sounds like someone has just floated up in the air. Literally, that is what is being said. But the meaning is quite different. Campbell says:
The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That's literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would [today] still be in the galaxy. Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility.
Joseph Campbell goes on to say:
But if you read "Jesus ascended to heaven" in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone . . . not into outer space but inward space, to the place from which all being comes . . . to the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward . . . It is a metaphor of returning to the source . . .
It is important to hear Jesus' words in the Gospel lesson:
"Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."
Jesus has got something for his disciples to do. They are not to remain looking up into the sky, but they are to be witnesses to those around them. You will notice that from this point on, the disciples - so often portrayed in the Gospel stories as immature and sometimes self-centred - now become fearless and powerful people, reaching out to those around them with the message of the New Kingdom. But it happens only after the theological corollary of the Ascension happens, which Jesus alludes to in today's Gospel lesson: "And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
But that is next week's sermon...
