by CCW | 5 May 2016 21:00
The Ascension signifies the homecoming of the Son having finished his course having accomplished the will of him who sent him and returning to the Father. The whole life of the incarnate Christ is his going forth and returning to the Father in the power of the Spirit. In his going forth and return to the Father he returns all things to their source and end, to the divine life which he is with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Why the Ascension? Because the Ascension is the culmination of the Resurrection, the fullness of its meaning. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is not to the world; it is to the world in God. Everything is gathered into the primacy of the spiritual relationship of the Son to the Father in the Holy Spirit realized in the celebration of the Ascension. Ultimately, it signifies the meaning of prayer as well as the cosmic dimension of our liturgy of prayer. Our liturgy is all ascension.
“Lift up your hearts.” Prayer is the motion of the Ascension in us. “We ascend,” says Augustine, “in the ascension of our hearts.” We ascend in the lifting up of our hearts. We have someone and somewhere to lift them up to. The Ascension of Christ is directly related to Jesus Christ as the “High Priest” of our salvation whose perfect humanity is the vehicle for our redemption and whose perfect sacrifice is the forgiveness of sins. He, and he alone, is the mediator of the new and better covenant. “For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hand, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Heb.9.24).
Prayer enters into the presence of God because of the Ascension of Christ.
The Ascension signifies the redemption of the world and brings out the true joy of our human lives. This true joy is about our being in the presence of God in the fullness of his truth and life. For therein lies our perfection. The Ascension is, as the Fathers say, “the exaltation of our humanity” (Leo the Great, et alia). “He has raised our human nature” as one of our hymns puts it. And the joy is made all the greater because of our redemption and because of our repentance. It means “looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” and our lives, our end because he is our beginning.
The Ascension signals the perfection of the purpose of Christ’s mission. The Son has run his course; he has accomplished the will of him who sent him. “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father” (John 16.28). As Luke alone especially indicates, Christ’s Ascension is the occasion of great joy for the disciples. “They returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God” (Luke 24.52,53), their feelings following perfectly their understanding. It is the occasion of great joy because the disciples have got the point of his Eastertide lessons. Christ will “not leave us comfortless” because his going from us is not into the barrenness of death but into the fullness of life.
For us it means our “looking unto Jesus, the Author and the Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God” (Heb.12.2). The moral order of our lives depends not upon our self-righteous posturings but in our penitential prayer to the Father in the name of the Son and by the power of the Spirit. Christ in his Ascension would have us be where he is. Our liturgy is our participation in Christ ascended and glorified. In prayer and praise, in Word and Sacrament, “we ascend in the ascension of our hearts” through him who lifts up our hearts and the whole of Creation into the joy of heaven.
Fr. David Curry
Ascension Day
May 5th, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/05/05/sermon-for-ascension-day-3/
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