Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?
The question seems to capture a critical commonplace about religion: gazing into the heavens instead of paying attention to the things of the world, religion as utter nonsense and of no earthly value. In a way, it is partly true, at least in the sense that religion, in this case the Christian religion, is not to be measured by the world. Though the World Council of Churches famously (or infamously) once opined that the world sets the agenda for the churches, this is at best highly questionable. To be sure, the Church in the form of the churches finds itself in the world but it is not of the world. World improvement is not exactly the role and purpose of the churches, however much the churches have contributed to the stability and order of human communities in the world at times.
The paradox is great. The Church in being true to God contributes to the world but cannot be defined by the world and the world’s agendas. The paradox is poignantly manifest in The Feast of the Ascension of Christ. It marks the culmination or fulfillment of the doctrine of the Resurrection. The overcoming of sin and death is about our being restored to fellowship with God signaled in the homecoming of the Son to the Father in the Spirit. In the going forth and now the return of the Son to the Father, we have the highest expression of human dignity and truth. We have a home with God now in the world because of Christ’s being “at the right hand of the Father.” His going from us into heaven establishes the real truth and meaning of our lives spiritually and sacramentally.
The Ascension is cosmic in scope and signals the redemption of the world and our humanity by the gathering of both to God. We live in that understanding and that orientation. Our liturgy is really the liturgy of the Ascension. “Lift up your hearts!” In prayer and praise we participate in the return of all things to God from whom all good things to come. The whole point is about the world and our humanity in God, not God in the world and in us. It is a question of emphasis and direction.
Christ, the Athanasian Creed [1] states with considerable emphasis, is God and Man and is one Christ, not two. “One, however, not by conversion of Godhead into flesh,/ but by taking of Manhood into God.” The Ascension marks the fullest possible expression of the taking of our humanity into God. Christ has taken upon himself the reality of our humanity, soul and body, into his divine person. The claim is that the real body and soul of Christ, humanly speaking is with God “at the right hand of the Father.” The sacrament of the altar is about our participating in that reality sacramentally.
“We should understand the sacrament,” says Cranmer,“not carnally, but spiritually, being like eagles in this life, we should fly up into heaven in our hearts, where that Lamb is resident at the right hand of his Father which taketh away the sins of the world … by whose passion we are filled at his table … being made the guests of Christ, having Him dwell in us through the grace of his true nature … assured and certified that we are fed spiritually unto eternal life by Christ’s flesh crucified and by his blood shed.” It is a powerful passage which signals the Ascension doctrine. We live in the return of all things to God because we have a home with God in Christ. “I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says, using the very language of locality, of place. This is more though not less than something empirical just as the sacrament is more though not less than the visible and physical signs of bread and wine.
This sacramental understanding as rooted in the Ascension extends to our lives in the world. Our lives in the world are to be lives of prayer in which there is the constant gathering of all things to God. It is this perspective which counters and correctives so many of the self-righteous impulses and concerns of our world and day that divide and destroy us. The Ascension grants us the privilege of seeing the world in God. It is not about a flight from the world, a gazing up into heaven at the expense of keeping our feet on the ground. It is about seeing everything in God through Christ’s redemptive work; his death and resurrection have their culmination in the Ascension.
“We ascend in the ascension of our hearts,” as Augustine beautifully puts it. Such is the meaning of our liturgy and the meaning of our lives, the meaning of our lives in the world. The Ascension signals the overcoming of the opposition between world and God by the gathering of all things back to God in whom alone they have their truth and meaning. It happens through the humanity of Christ being “at the right hand of the Father.” Just so can we ascend ”in heart and mind, and with him continually dwell,” abiding in the love of God.
Why stand ye gazing up into heaven?
Fr. David Curry
The Feast of the Ascension
May 10th, 2018