“ASCENSION 2023”
Saint Mark 16: 14-20
Feast of The Ascension: 18 May Anno Domini 2023
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
The Ascension. Either it happened or it didn’t. One can confidently believe that for all of you gathered here to celebrate the event, that you do truly believe it happened. Good. There eye-witnesses as both Luke in his Acts of the Apostles, and Mark, in his Gospel testify to. All the Apostles saw it. It became common knowledge amongst all the disciples and all converts to the “Way.”
So, if you believe your Bible there should be no problem in the “historicity” of the occasion.
But believing in the historical verity of the event will, with an extra $2.50 get you a cup of coffee at the convenience store and nothing else. Satan believes in the Ascension—so do all his demons.
The Law initially is what it always is: “repent and believe!” Contrition, guilty, and sorrow over all of your sins, trespasses, imperfections, lovelessness, and meanness, must produce repentance. Faith in the forgiveness won for you and distributed to you in The Word must then galvanize and energize your trust in Christ and your reliance and joy in His gifts.
Belief! Thus, Jesus “upbraids,” i.e., criticizes, condemns, chastises, and lays down the Law to the “eleven” as He sat with them to eat food.
Felicitous as always, this insoluble connection between Table Fellowship (eating and drinking) and Doctrinal catechesis (teaching and preaching). The Apostles had not believed the Magdalene and the other women who first brought the Good News to them that their Master was risen from the dead. They eschewed and denied THE WORD because they wanted visual and demonstrable proof! And while you too in your sinful state would always chose empirical proof over someone’s word—or the pastor’s word in the homily—the Law for you this evening is a bit more specific.
You believe, though you don’t always act like it, you believe that The Lord did rise up off of the Mount of Olives and went farther and farther up into the sky, visually in the sight of the Apostles, vertically according to the laws of physics (God’s own laws) until He was covered and surrounded by a cloud(s). Then Jesus was no longer seen by the eyes.
Okay, where was He? Aye, there’s the “rub.”
Did Christ go away? No. “Lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” [Mt. 28.20]. “For where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there Am I in the midst of them” [Mt. 18.20].
Do you not believe, teach, and confess that Christ is present—ACTUALLY, TRULY, REALLY, BODILY, present in The Sacrament? Yes, you do. So He did not go anywhere away from you when He ascended. He went up on high to show (yes, symbolize) that God, The Holy Trinity is transcendent and omnipotent and omnipresent; that The Right Hand of Majesty where Jesus sits at The Father’s…right hand…is separate and distinct, though not absent, from God’s created realm—the physical and seeable earth right now.
It was Jesus’ way of moving out of the “line of vision,” the constant eye-ball sightings of His disciples. They were no longer to be looking over their shoulders expecting Him to “pop into their groupings.” He would no longer approach them on their walks to Emmaus quite like He did on Easter.
Yes, there would be exceptions. He appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus. He stood with both Peter and Paul when they were imprisoned. He talked with John in those apocalyptic passages in Revelation. But the New Testament is no longer contingent upon seeing, touching, hearing, and interacting with The Lord the way He permitted it during His 30 years of local, temporal, and visual ministry. Now His IS MEANS IS, true Bodily Presence would be “seen” with the eyes of faith—by, and IN The Word.
This is demonstrated so beautifully in large and multi-level churches and cathedrals where the communing parishioner steps from the level of the nave, up several steps into the chancel, and then up again to the level of the kneelers at the perimeter of the Holy Sanctuary to kneel and receive Jesus—Jesus Who is seated on His throne, His Holy Altar and the right hand of God. It is also why the high gothic ceilings in medieval and post medieval Western Churches are so properly evocative of both His transcendent enthronement but also of His altar-top, Chalice and Paten, immanence.
The Word is Jesus. Jesus is The Word. In His Words He is present, and HE IS! Christ has ascended into the + Font that He might be poured upon you and in you. Christ has ascended on the pulpit that He might be placed into your ears, and thus your hearts, minds, and souls.
Yes, therefore the Apostle writes to the Ephesian Christians and to you north-east Kansas Christians “He that descended (born of The Blessed Virgin Mary, born lowly; God filling her womb, God taking unto Himself flesh and blood)…He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things” [Ep. 4.10).
To be sure The Son of God, The God/Man Christ Jesus fills all things with Divine omnipresence. But more Graciously, He fills you. He bids you to ascend on high to this rail and eat and drink His Body and Blood. The same Body and Blood that like yours, is truly real and substantial and fleshly.
You believe. You are baptized. You are saved. Join The Ascended One in heaven on earth. Devils are cast out and you speak with new tongues. Amen Lord Jesus, Amen.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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