Easter 7 2014

Easter 7, 2014

The Ascension is an odd thing. This was when Jesus ascended back to the Father 40 days after his resurrection. This was the Feast Day that we celebrated on Thursday, in fact, but given that it was a Thursday, it is a little difficult to get to church for most people. Jesus might have planned a little better, perhaps.

Anyway, I say that the Ascension is odd because it’s either one of the better hoaxes in religion—or, it was exactly what was necessary for the promise of the Kingdom of God to leave Jerusalem and make its way throughout the world.

Now, it’s no mistake that this account in Acts includes the disciples asking Jesus when he’ll restore the kingdom. In all fairness, he had died and come back from the dead—shouldn’t he be getting on to the business that all of them expected? Shouldn’t he be running the Romans out, and reclaiming the throne of David? That was, after all, what Messiah was expected to do, and if your people had been under one form of oppression or another since the 7^th century BCE—well, someone ought to ask Jesus if he was gonna get around to things, I suppose. So they did.

However, what the disciples had continued to miss up to this point was that Jesus was heralding in a different kind of kingdom—namely the Kingdom of God—which was far from any kind of earthly principality. Not only was this unlike anything on earth, but it happened to be a kingdom which was already and not yet. It is a kingdom which is somehow both “at hand” but also not fully realized.

While this might sound really good to an idealist; the realist on the other hand might think this sounds a bit far-fetched. But, I would have to say that the realist might be a bit short-sighted in this regard; because what we have to remember is that for the people of Israel, the land and the kingdom were signs of God’s promise and blessing on Israel. If we look back through the Old Testament, we can see how for hundreds of years after the fall of the monarchy the people were trying to figure out what it meant to lose their sovereignty—something that was promised to them as a sign from God.

What’s more, the Temple, which was the symbol of God’s Presence on earth, had already been destroyed at least once before Jesus was born—and would be destroyed finally in 70 CE. So, for Israel, the things that were considered infallible signs of God’s blessing and Presence with Israel were found to be temporal, and limited.

But in Jesus, all of these things, and a whole lot more were challenged. Not only did he give God a face and a name, Jesus embodied the loving heart of God—God who called the chosen people to look beyond the temporal symbols, and instead to look deeper to find a truer understanding of God. Jesus called into question the external observances of religious Law, and called God’s people to finally be transformed by the Law.

  

And as for the kingdom of Israel—well, that was one more limited human construct that was bound to have its end. Jesus came to establish an everlasting kingdom that isn’t made from temporal things, but eternal things—things which cannot only exist beyond our understanding, but can also somehow exist in our hearts as well…a kingdom that will never pass away.

In many ways, if we think about what St. Paul says about the Law, we understand that the Law was a kind of nursemaid for humanity until it was ready to grow from it, and understand it intuitively. Likewise, we might say the same thing about the kingdom of Israel, and the Temple—these were things that humanity needed for a time, and when it was time, God called all of us to see beyond these things so that we might grow closer to God through Jesus Christ.

But then…even Jesus ascended—and in a way seemed to go away. But in truth, Jesus doesn’t go away, Jesus moves beyond the limits of space and time by ascending to the Father, and thereby becomes far closer to all of us than he might have done while he was walking on Earth. He pulls everything that he is and everything that he taught out of history and places it in the care of the Church. And, as a promise that he has not left us, he sends the Holy Spirit to comfort us, teach us and guide us. Effectively, in this act of ascending back to the Father, Jesus challenges us—just as he challenged Israel and his disciples—to live and look more deeply for God. And in our searching, we’re also called to share the beauty and hope and love that we’ve found in our searching. So, in this way, we also continue to share the promise of the Kingdom of God, and in pursuing God, we come to know God ever more.

Now, there is another side to the Ascension, as well—only in this case, it’s about what the Ascension means for God. This might also seem like a strange thing to consider, as well—but is in fact really, really cool.

So, as we know, Jesus is the Incarnation of God—in other words, God pours God’s own self out and is born, through the Virgin Mary, to be human. For a good number of Early Church Fathers, this was the really big action of God in the world—and it really is, after all, we’re talking about God being with us. But, remember, that while he is divine, Jesus is also fully human—so, he was growing up like any child in First Century Palestine. In fact, it’s possible that his childhood was so normal that the Gospel writers had no interest in it.

 However, the point is, that Jesus experiences the world and being human not only with the same wonder, confusion and frustration that we do—but, possibly, even with this background cognition of divinity. So, while he’s growing and living, he also has this divine perspective.

What’s amazing, then, is that when Jesus returns to the Father, he takes all of this accumulated experience with him, along with humanness and creaturliness—and joins it to the Nature of God… I didn’t make this up—Karl Rahner, the theologian of Vatican II said this stuff.

Anyway, this is really important, because while God has created all things, and has slowly called humanity and all of Creation into relationship—God has never been ‘in’ Creation, as such. Yet in Jesus, God participates with us in the Creation, and God is somehow likely changed by this…

What a powerful thing—the God who knew us intimately and loved us already came to know us even more in Jesus.

Well, to wrap all of this up, I hope if you take nothing else from all of this talk of the Ascension, and the Nature of the Holy Trinity—I hope you’ll understand that God has gone to every length to show us love; and in Jesus, God has shown us how to love. What this means for us, then, is that we are not only loved, but we have a place in God’s Kingdom. And because of the hope that we ought to have from this promise, we should never tire in living and embodying the virtues of that Kingdom which is already and not yet. After all, this really is Good News that we should share; and one of the very reasons Jesus ascended back to the Father was so his disciples, and we could learn to do this very thing.