Ascension

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20

VIDEO

I once heard a story—
which may or may not be true,
but which I sincerely hope is—
about a folk Mass celebrated in the early 1970s
for the Solemnity of the Ascension
where one of the songs was 
“Leaving on a Jet Plane.”
You know the one:
written by John Denver
and popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary,
with the chorus,
“I’m leavin’ on a jet plane.
Don’t know when I’ll be back again.
Oh babe, I hate to go.”

I sincerely hope this story is true,
because it evokes so well the heady years
immediately after the Second Vatican Council
when Catholics everywhere were trying
to figure out what it meant
to open up to the modern world,
to breathe new life into our liturgies,
to find a way to unite ourselves
to the joys and the hopes, 
the griefs and the anxieties 
of the people of today—
a time when it actually seemed 
like to might be a good idea
to sing a song in which 
someone is referred to as “babe”
at the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

But I also hope it is true
because it captures how Christians 
have struggled, down through the centuries,
to grasp the mystery that we celebrate on this day.
People have always searched 
for words and images from our world
that might express the event 
of Christ’s heavenly exaltation.
During the Middle Ages, 
the Ascension was often depicted 
as a bunch of people 
standing looking up at a cloud
from which dangled a pair of bare feet.
This, in its own way, is as comically goofy
as singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane,”
and seems likewise to fall far short 
of the deep mystery
that confronts us on this feast.
For the Ascension of Christ is perhaps
the most mysterious 
of the mysteries of our faith.

Part of the problem for us perhaps has to do 
with our modern picture of the universe.
When people thought of the earth
as the center of the cosmos
and heaven located somewhere 
up there, beyond the sky,
it might have seemed natural
to think of the Ascension
as an act of celestial relocation,
and maybe feet hanging from a cloud
seemed a lot more plausible.
But we no longer think of the earth
as the center of the universe,
and it is harder to imagine 
that heaven is located 
somewhere beyond the sky,
or even that it can be thought of 
in terms of location at all.
Which does make you wonder 
why singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane”
seemed like a way to speak to modern people.
The account of the Ascension from Acts
suggests that even in the first century
this was not really 
about Jesus being in the clouds;
the angels say at the end,
“Men of Galilee,
why are you standing there 
looking at the sky?”
In some ways, 
our modern picture of the universe
only makes clearer that the Ascension
is not a puzzle about Jesus’s celestial location
but a mystery that is far, far deeper.

What makes the Ascension
the most mysterious
of the mysteries of our faith
is that it speaks of humanity 
being taken up into the eternal life of God.
The mystery of the Ascension 
is that the resurrection of Jesus
culminates in the fullness of his humanity,
both body and soul,
being enfolded in the life
of Father, Son, and Spirit,
that life beyond time and space
that gives life to all creatures.

But the mystery is greater still,
for by the enfolding of the humanity of Jesus
in the eternal life of the triune God
our humanity too 
beholds that ageless beauty
that makes all things beautiful,
hears that silent music
that sounds in all creation,
tastes that heavenly food
upon which angels feast forever.
In the Incarnation, 
the eternal divinity of God the Son
is enfolded in our humanity; 
in the Ascension,
our humanity is enfolded in his divinity,
so that his destiny is our destiny.
We pray today in the Eucharistic preface:
“he ascended, not to distance himself 
from our lowly state,
but that we, his members,
might be confident of following
where he, our Head and Founder,
has gone before.”

Dante Algieri, at the end of his Divine Comedy,
beholds a vision of the Holy Trinity,
represented by three colored circles
that are mysteriously one,
and looking more deeply within the middle circle
his eyes are transfixed by what he calls 
“our human likeness.”
He sees the ascended humanity of Christ:
he sees matter within spirit,
time within eternity,
creation within the creator.
And with this, words now fail Dante:
the poetic prowess of which he was so proud,
a prowess exceeding even that of John Denver,
collapses before the mystery he beholds,
not because his human mind
fails to fathom the mechanics 
of the celestial trajectory
by which Christ arrived in this place,
but because his human heart is seized
by the immensity of the love
that took on human flesh to be with us,
that sought us in our lostness to save us,
that sorrowed, and suffered, and died
so that we might have life 
and have it abundantly
within the very heart of God.

The mystery we celebrate this day
is not how Jesus could fly off into a cloud—
with or without a jet plane—
but how God could love us so much
that we poor creatures of clay 
could have hope to one day shine,
enfolded in the glory of eternal life.
The mystery of this day
is simply the mystery of every day:
the mystery of the love that is God
shared in mercy with us sinners.
May God who is merciful
have mercy on us all.

Easter 5

Readings: Acts 6:1-7; 1 Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12

VIDEO

I’d like to think that the sacred order of deacons,
into which I was ordained sixteen years ago this month,
had its beginning in some sublime and glorious moment,
perhaps in a vision of the heavenly liturgy
and those who serve at it.
I’d like to think that,
but our reading today from the Acts of the Apostles,
traditionally seen as the story of the appointing
of the first seven deacons, 
suggests instead that the diaconate originated 
amid squabbles among early Christians 
about food and language:
a moment not sublime and glorious
but mundane and messy.

The situation is this:
the Apostles continued the Jewish practice
of a daily food distribution (like a soup kitchen)
to those in their community
who were consistently in dire need:
orphans, landless immigrants, and widows.
A dispute arose between those disciples 
who spoke the Hebrew dialect called Aramaic
and those who spoke Greek,
who had likely grown up 
outside of the land of Israel.
The Greek-speakers felt 
that the widows of their group 
were being overlooked 
because those in charge were Aramaic speakers.
Even though everyone involved was a Jew,
and, moreover, Jews who shared the belief
that Jesus was the Messiah,
they still found that differences 
of language and custom
threatened to divide them. 
So the Apostles appointed seven Greek-speakers
to help with the daily distribution.
Tensions eased,
“the word of God continued to spread,
and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem 
increased greatly.”

Anyone who has worked in the Church knows
that this sort of thing is not unusual.
We may all be brothers and sisters in Christ,
but our fallen natures 
still tend to show themselves,
not least in our tendency to see 
those who do not speak our language
or share our customs
or hold our political views
or belong to our social circles
as outsiders whose concerns 
are not our concerns, 
those whom we can overlook.
We who are the Church—
which is all of us—
spend a lot of our time dealing
with the fallout 
of our fallen humanity.
The destiny of the Church 
may be sublime and glorious,
but what it takes 
for the word of God to spread
and the number of disciples to increase
is often mundane and messy.

The First Letter of Peter
seems to focus our attention
more on the sublime and the glorious,
speaking of the Christian community
as “a spiritual house” built of “living stones,”
with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone.
It speaks of how we have been called to be
“a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people of his own.”
The image of this spiritual house 
and this royal priesthood
is so sublime and glorious
that it is hard to believe that the path to it
could involve things as mundane and messy
as settling squabbles 
between Greek speakers 
and Aramaic speakers.
We might think 
that because this living temple is “spiritual”
it cannot involve concrete material concerns
like who gets fed and who goes hungry,
whose voice is heard and who is silenced,
who is empowered and who is disempowered. 
But repeatedly in the book of Acts
it is precisely the messy and mundane struggle
to resolve these sorts of issues
that defines what it means 
to follow the way of Jesus. 

When Jesus says that he 
is the way and the truth and the life 
that leads to the house of his Father,
we must remember 
that the way that is Jesus 
is the way of cross and resurrection.
Jesus is not a way around
the ordinary and extraordinary struggles 
of life together,
but he is the way through them.
He is the living stone rejected by the builders,
who endured the suffering of the Cross,
and if we are to be the living stones 
of which his spiritual house is built
we must become like him.
The way to the Father’s house 
is through the Cross,
and for us the Cross is often found 
not in great and dramatic suffering
but in life’s mundane messiness:
the struggle to love and live with 
those whom we can’t understand
due to language or culture 
or personality or life experience,
those whose needs 
are unfathomable to us,
those we find pushy or insensitive,
insecure or irritating, 
irrational or sometimes 
just plain weird.

If life in the Church has taught me nothing else,
it has taught me that I am the Cross 
that my fellow Christians bear.
In my unfathomable neediness,
my irritating insecurity,
my uniquely personal weirdness,
I am being borne by all of you.
And all of you are being borne by me.
And we cannot put each other down,
because while we are the Cross
we are also the living stones
from which God’s house must be built.
That is what it means to be God’s pilgrim people.
That is what it means to be the Body of Christ.
That is what it means to be the Temple of the Spirit.
It is to bear the Cross of each other 
in the mundane messiness of our common life,
as we walk the way that is Jesus Christ,
crucified and risen,
journeying together to our Father’s house.
Let us pray on this journey
that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.