The Paradoxes of the Ascension

This morning, we celebrate the Ascension. “Ascension” means going up, and we have just heard the story of the risen Jesus “going up to heaven.” Now he’s here. There he goes. Now he’s gone. Whenever I read this story of Jesus ascending into heaven, I can’t help but imagining a slightly different scenario. I want to be able to hear one of the disciples turn to another one and say, “Who was that masked man?” And then hear the reply, “I don’t know. But he left the Holy Spirit.”

Please forgive me if my comparison of a major event on the Church Calendar with the ending of every episode of the Lone Ranger seems to you to be frivolous or even irreverent. If there’s a parallel there, I honestly don’t think it’s frivolous, and I don’t think it’s sheer coincidence. Nor do I think that there’s a coincidence in the resemblance between the Event of the Ascension and the end of the movies Mary Poppins, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and Cocoon, all four of which end with benevolent visitors from a magical or extra-terrestrial realm going back to where they came from. Nor do I think there is a coincidence between the Ascension and the legend of King Arthur as the Once and Future King who is not really dead but is waiting to return someday and set up a new Round Table.

The Ascension (which we Christians believe is rooted in the real history and reality of God’s incarnation and resurrection in Jesus Christ) and these fictional stories all have in common the theme of the “hero” or the “Savior” who has accomplished his or her purpose and then returned to where he or she came from. This theme is found in fairy stories and myths throughout the world and it points to the fact that the gospel story speaks to needs and concerns deep within the human psyche. In light of this recurring literary and mythological theme, there is something almost humorous about theologians and Episcopal bishops who think that they need to update the gospel by removing what they think are mythological accretions (like the resurrection and ascension) that are not supposed to speak to the modern mind.

These stories of the hero’s departure help us to realize why we need not only a resurrection, but also an ascension. We have just spent six weeks celebrating Easter. In the Church Year, Lent is about Jesus confronting the powers of darkness, enduring the depths of evil and even death. Easter is about his triumph over those powers. “Up from the grave he arose!," we have sung Sunday after Sunday for the last six weeks. Why do we need an Ascension? Aren’t Ascension and Easter just the same thing (as some modern biblical scholars tell us)?

And of course in one sense, they are the same thing. The ascension is the culmination of the story of the resurrection. It is the pageantry of the triumph of the resurrection. The one who has come down from the highest heaven to fill a body that can fit in a manger, who has descended even further, who has endured a shameful death on a cross, who has gone to the very depths of hades, has now risen from the domain of death, has burst from the tomb, has appeared to his followers, and finally has returned gloriously to that place from which he came, taking with him that human nature and human body which he assumed for thirty three years. This is the Ascension.

But the Ascension says more than this. The Ascension also speaks about the fact of closure. The story must end sometime. When the hero has triumphed, he must return from whence he came. The hero finally leaves, and just so, the Ascension means that Jesus finally leaves. But the question that was never answered by the Lone Ranger or Mary Poppins or E.T. or the countless fairy-stories was “What happened afterwards?” Yes, everybody “lived happily ever after,” but what really happened afterwards? What happens to us who are left behind when the hero leaves? What does it mean for us who are left here on earth after he has returned from whence he came?

The Ascension does answer this question. The Ascension is a story not only about Jesus but also about us who are left behind. Much of the New Testament is devoted to answering this question: what happens afterwards? But the answers it gives are deliberately paradoxical. We theologians are fond of using paradox—we cleverly call it mystery—to keep ordinary people from asking too many questions. What I want to talk about in the next few moments are three paradoxical consequences of the ascension. What does happen afterwards?

First, the Ascension means that Jesus has been exalted as Lord. The very earliest writings of the New Testament are full of this exaltation language. One of the earliest hymns of the church was incorporated in Paul’s letter to the Philippians and affirms that “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11). Other passages tell us that Jesus intercedes for us “at the right hand of God” (Rom. 8:34), that Jesus Christ “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him” (1. Pet. 3:22). The Epistle to the Hebrews uses the language of worship and sacrifice to say that Jesus is now our high priest. “We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven . . .” (Heb. 8:1). In the epistle we read this morning, the author of Ephesians writes that God has “raised [Christ] from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; and he has put all things under his feet . . .” (Eph. 1:20-22).

Now, that Jesus is ascended “to the right hand of the Father” and that he “intercedes for us” before the Father means two things. First, it means that Jesus is the Lord of history, and that we can trust him to make things turn out right. As the old spiritual says: “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” Second, it means that God is for us, that Jesus has taken our humanity unto himself in the incarnation, and in the resurrection and ascension he has in some sense taken us with himself to heaven. As the writer of Ephesians says: “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loves us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ . . . and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus . . .” (Eph. 2: 4-6).

Now the first paradox of the Ascension is that as we look around us, this Lordship of Jesus over all creation does not appear to be obvious. The world goes on much as it did before Jesus came. The wealthy are still wealthy, the poor still poor. The powerful still crush the powerless and grind their faces in the dirt. The violent still bring death and misery to small children. And, try as we might, we ourselves still fall back into our old sinful ways. So the first paradox of the Ascension is that Jesus’ Lordship is a hidden Lordship. The exalted Jesus may be Lord but we can experience this Lordship only by faith. Jesus’ Lordship is a hidden Lordship in which we must often experience Christ’s triumph as his apparent absence from our world and our lives. Just as John’s gospel says that Jesus was “glorified” when he was “lifted up” (Jn. 13:31-32, Jn. 17:1-5) on the cross of his crucifixion, so we often experience Jesus’ Lordship paradoxically in the midst of the world’s suffering. To experience Jesus’ Lordship is to take up his cross.

The second paradox connected with the Ascension is that, although Jesus is now absent from our midst—he has gone to be with the Father—nonetheless, in some sense, he is still present with us. Before he went to his Father, he promised to be with us. As the risen Jesus says in Matthew’s gospel: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

But how is Christ present? How could he be present? Has he not ascended “to the right hand of the Father?” We are immediately tempted to blurt out: “Through the Holy Spirit!” And it is the Feast Day of Pentecost—the giving of the Holy Spirit—that we will celebrate next week. But, for the moment, let us stay with the Ascension. The Ascension is about the Ascension of a body. And if Jesus is to be truly present with us, he must be present with us as he was on earth, as a body. The New Testament does talk about the Holy Spirit as the One who comes after Jesus, but it always talks about the Spirit as the One who makes the risen Christ present to us, and it inevitably does so in terms of his body.

Jesus’ body is not physically present to us, of course. We cannot see it or touch it. But the presence of Christ that the New Testament associates with his body after his ascension is what theologians call a “sacramental presence.” Jesus becomes present to us, first, in the bread and wine of the eucharist, the elements of which he said: “This is my body. This is my blood.” It is through participating in worship that we experience his presence as the Holy Spirit descends on the elements of Bread and Wine and, in the words of the eucharistic prayer, sanctifies them “to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him.”

Of course, Anglicans have never claimed to be able to explain how this happens—how bread and wine can become for us the presence of the risen Jesus. And there have been those who have held back from what they consider to be crass materialism. Surely the bread and wine are just symbols of Christ’s presence. Well, perhaps, they are. But the God of the Bible is not a Platonist. He is not afraid of matter. God created the world. He came among us as an embodied human being. That the risen Christ would also choose to be present to us in Bread and Wine is no more and no less unbelievable than that he would ascend into heaven in a risen body.

The second way in which the New Testament speaks of the risen and ascended Christ’s presence in terms of his body is in the form of his Church. As the epistle says this morning,“[God] has put all things under his feet and made him the head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22-23). As we partake of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine of the eucharist, we become for one another his presence among us. As the apostle Paul says in another scripture passage: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one bread” (1 Cor. 10: 16- 17). Or again, in the words of the eucharistic prayer: “Grant that all who share this bread and cup may become one body and one spirit, a living sacrifice in Christ, to the praise of your name.”

Once more, that Christ is present among us as the Church becomes his Body in this sacramental way is paradoxical. It is not immediately evident to me that bread and wine are his body and blood. Sometimes, it is even less evident to me that my fellow Christians are the presence of Christ to me. It is again, only by faith, and perhaps a vivid imagination that I can embrace this scandal.

Finally, there is a third way in which the Ascension of Christ is paradoxical for us. The “mystery of faith” is that “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Christ will come again. The angel tells the apostles this morning, after they see Jesus disappearing, apparently into outer space: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come again in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Since it is not Advent, I will not dwell on this notion of Jesus’ return. The paradox again is that we believe he will come, but we must wait in hope. We cannot hurry him. We cannot predict when he will come. There are those who forget this from time to time. Every once in awhile there are those who mark a particular day on the calendar as “the Day.” And they have been invariably disappointed. But this kind of speculation is forbidden us. How do we know he will come? We know because he has risen. We dare not say when.

These then are the paradoxes of the Ascension. The ascended Christ is Lord, but his Lordship is hidden. The ascended Christ is present, but his presence is sacramental. The ascended Christ will come again, but we await his coming in hope. In the meantime, we wait “between the times” of his time on earth and his return as Judge. It is tempting to live without these paradoxes—to say that Christ is Lord, “but only in our hearts,” or that he is not Lord at all because the world is going to hell. It is tempting to demand that Christ be present in my time and in my way to support my cause, or to give up on a world that Christ has abandoned. It is tempting to pick the day or the hour when we know that he will return, or to simply live our own lives as if he’s never coming back. All of these temptations are easier than living in the tension of having a Lord who often does not seem to be Lord, a Lord who is present in the Church—of all places, where people often ignore you or hurt your feelings or wear your patience thin, a Lord whose second coming often seems more like pie in the sky than a new heaven and a new earth.

But if we count the Ascended Jesus as our Lord, we must live with these tensions. To do so, we can look for the hints that he really is risen. Once in a while we can see his Lordship when something turns out right, or even sometimes more when it doesn’t. If we keep eating the bread and drinking the wine, we may finally learn to experience him in one another. And our hope that he will return can be nudged along when he comes to us in unexpected ways. Perhaps he was there in that sacker who loaded your groceries yesterday. Perhaps he was that friend who was there for you when no one else was. Perhaps you were the presence of Jesus for a stranger or friend when you weren’t even aware of it..

If we can find these hints, then we can still affirm the prayer of today’s collect:

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully grant 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.