GLORIOUS ASCENSION

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON MAY 28, 2006

Psalm 47:5 "God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of the Ram's Horn."

This psalm reminds us that last Thursday was Ascension Day. Now we are in that 9 day period between Ascension and Pentecost. Next Sunday the Season of Easter concludes with the Celebration of Pentecost, one of the great festivals of the year.

Today’s first reading from Acts 1 records a significant incident that happened in the nine days between Ascension and Pentecost. Whenever I hear the reading it always makes me laugh. It reminds me of the joke about a reader who was reading this passage and said ”And all his bowels gushed out”, and turning over one page said: ”and the lot fell on Mathias”!

The book of Acts begins with the Ascension. After that it records that the apostles, following Jesus' instructions, returned to Jerusalem and the upper room, and stayed there praying with Mary for the promised gift of the Spirit that Jesus had spoken of. It was during this time that they elected St. Mathias to replace Judas Iscariot. All this is reasonable - but what are we to make of the Ascension?

We talk about the mysteries of the faith, and often the Ascension seems to be one of the real mysteries. Can we really believe that Jesus just elevated into the sky and disappeared into heaven? Some people would consign that to the realm of fairy tales - along with all the miracles and walking on water, etc. Indeed, 30 years ago Neil Armstrong proved when humans go up into the sky they don't end up in heaven - they just end up on another planet.

That of course is the point. If Jesus is the Son of God, the divine Man, the Word made flesh - then his departure from this life won't be like ours. He is not going to die, he is not going to physically go up to another planet. No grave or funeral service for the Son of God. Neither could he just walk on the Sea of Galilee and then suddenly disappear.

No, the Ascension may be a mystery - but it is logical. Our Lord had to leave this life and this world in a different way to us. And he had to do in his body, in his glorious resurrected body - otherwise Easter would have meant nothing at all. The apostles had endured his passion and death. Then their lives were turned up side down by his glorious resurrection. They knew he was more than human, and that glorious body had to leave this world in its own special way, not in our way.

But it is what the Ascension means that is the amazing and important thing. Jesus promised the apostles that they would have new life through Him. As the epistle says: "God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life."

My dear friends this promise wasn't just for the apostles - it is our promise too.

So Jesus' resurrected body is how we receive this promise of eternal life. Jesus' resurrected body is our hope and our promise. As the apostles encountered the risen Lord in his resurrected body - as strange and as awesome that must have been - it was only logical that they would see that same body ascend, because it was the promise of glory before their very eyes. That is why the church proclaims in its liturgies that the Ascension is our hope. Not that our bodies will ascend in the same manner as Jesus' body, but that in His Ascension, Our Lord Jesus Christ takes our humanity with him to heaven. That is why there had to be a physical Ascension as well as a physical Resurrection. We had to see that everything about our human life is taken to heaven with Jesus. He is not in some distant nebulous existence, but is there as our brother, our high priest and the one who intercedes for us, knowing us as much as we know ourselves.

From now on therefore, heaven is our homeland. Don't we experience that when we come for worship? Or in those moments of silent prayer? We certainly experience a touch of heaven when we receive communion, a feeling that heaven has come near to us.

And of course it is only because Jesus is now in heaven that he can come to us in Holy Communion. Otherwise it would just be bread and wine. If his body had remained on earth like the rest of us, not only would he not come to us in a sacramental way - but we would not be people of faith. For if he had not been taken from our sight we could not lives of faith.

In these days between Ascension and Pentecost we do well to follow the example of Mary and the 12 apostles and wait in prayer for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit just wasn't given once. After all the apostles experienced and came to understand, they still needed a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit to enable them to fulfill their calling. And that experience is what we receive whenever we come together in worship and the sacraments.

The first chapter of Acts shows what this was. The apostles weren't just to be followers of Jesus - to impart to others what he had taught them. The appointment of Mathias has a very significant meaning. It was essential that they continue with 12 apostles, for the number 12 was a deliberate choice by Jesus to symbolize the 12 tribes of Israel.

Thus the first thing the apostles did in this time between Ascension and Pentecost was to restore the apostolic number by the appointment of Mathias. Jesus wanted us to understand that the apostolic band is the foundation of the church. The Church is the new Israel of God. A people of a new covenant. A new nation which looks back to the Lord's death and resurrection as it origin and foundation, just as the old Israel looks back to the deliverance from Egypt, to the Passover.

We proclaim this at every Mass when in the words of St. Paul we say: "Christ our Passover is sacrifice for us; therefore let us keep the feast." We are the new Israel and our Passover is what we are celebrating in this Easter Season. But the apostles would not only form a nation created by Jesus' death. Through the Eucharist all of us enter into the mystery of his death and resurrection - and also of his Ascension. These are no longer events back in time beyond us - they become something within us, to strengthen us, to feed our faith, and to nourish us spiritually.

The Ascension was necessary not only that we might live by faith, but that we might understand that we are the body of Christ on earth.

No wonder that St. Luke records at the end of his gospel, that after the Ascension the apostles "worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy."

So I would like to conclude by quoting, as I did on Easter day, the words of Professor Stephen Cox from UCSD in his recent book, as he comments particularly on the Ascension:

"The signs of Jesus' unique significance are welcomed with joy, and Jesus' true disciples share, by the transformation of their perspective, in both transfiguration and ascension."