by CCW | 13 May 2018 15:00
“The end of all things is at hand,” Peter tells us. It sounds rather ominous and threatening yet the central message of this day is all about our joy and delight in God and in the redemption of all things to God, the one who is without end. Such is the radical meaning of the Ascension of Christ and his Session, his “sitt[ing] at the right hand of God the Father Almighty” as the Apostles’ Creed puts it. That idea of having an end with God is part of the Ascension theme of Christ’s homecoming and thus our home. In our secular culture in Canada today is Mother’s Day. In Britain and in other parts of the commonwealth, Mother’s Day was on Mothering Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Lent when we were reminded that “Jerusalem which is above is free which is the mother of us all.” In a way, the theme of home and especially the role of mothers is gathered into the radical meaning of Christ’s homecoming.
What do the Ascension and the Session really mean? They proclaim Christ as Pantocrator, as the ruler of all things. Several years ago, travelling in England and visiting a number of Cathedrals and Churches, I was struck with how many of them had icons. Icons are a particular feature of the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy and embody a kind of sacramental sensibility. They draw us into the mystery of God’s engagement with our humanity and our world. They suggest something which belongs to the Ascension of Christ, a way of seeing ourselves and our world in God.
It is that orientation and understanding that is so critical and necessary for our church and world, for our souls and our lives. Some of you will have noticed that we have an icon here at Christ Church in the crossing just in front of the organ pipes. It is an icon of Christ Pantocrator, Christ the Ruler of All, already pointed to in the theme of this morning’s gradual psalm, “for God is the King of all the Earth.” The Icon presents an image of Christ holding an open book. The words are written in Russian in the Cyrillic alphabet. The open book symbolizes the idea of Christ Pantocrator as Teacher. Other icons depict Christ as holding a closed book, symbolizing Christ Pantocrator as Judge, albeit the merciful judge of all creation.
The Ascension and the Session of Christ are what we celebrate on this day. They affirm in the fullest way possible the idea that who we are is found entirely in God through the redemptive work of Christ. We are gathered to God in Christ and live in that understanding. That requires our constant learning about what that means. Hence the significance of Christ Pantocrator as Teacher. Our lives are gathered into the life of Christ and thus into the rule of his life in us. Our vocation is to be the learners of Christ. Disciples, after all, means learners.
The book in the Icon is opened to a passage from Matthew that forms part of the Comfortable Words in our liturgy. “Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,” but continues with the words, “take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.” How will we learn from Christ? Through his word in the power of the Spirit, the Comforter, who “shall teach [us] all things, and bring all things to our remembrance whatsoever [Christ has] said unto [us].” All truth is gathered into the truth of Christ. The opposition between God and world, between God and man has been overcome most fully in Christ’s Ascension. Our challenge is to learn to live in that realization.
The Epistle reading from 1st Peter underscores the essential ethical aspect of this doctrinal understanding. We live in the ending, meaning the purpose for the existence of all things, including our humanity. Thus we are exhorted to “charity” or love, to “hospitality,” to the sharing of gifts that are given by God, to ministering to one another “as good stewards of the manifold grace of God,” to speaking as “the oracles of God,” to serving or ministering in accord with the ability which is God-given and to what end? Simply that “God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever.” Such is the meaning of the Ascension and of Christ as Pantocrator, the one in whom our humanity finds its end, its life and its meaning.
“In my ending is my beginning,” T.S. Eliot famously observes. We meet here at Christ Church where the building itself is an icon, too, itself an image or symbol of Christ and our life in Christ. Look up and what do you see but the Alpha and Omega beams which hold up the roof of the Church? Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The beams are at once functional and symbolic. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of our lives.. We are embraced in the image of Christ as the Alpha and the Omega. His going from us is the condition of his being with us through the promised descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Among the poems of the 17th century poet/preacher John Donne is sequence of sonnets entitled La Corona, meaning crown,which ends with a sonnet called Ascension. It is the last of seven sonnets in that cycle of poems. Each poem is connected to each other through an intriguing literary device. The last line of each sonnet forms the first line of the succeeding sonnet. Thus the last line of the sonnet, Ascension, is the first line of the first sonnet in the series. That sonnet is the only one without a title apart from La Corona, the title of the entire series. Thus endings and beginnings. These are all ways in which we are drawn more fully into the mystery of Christ Pantocrator and learn to live from him. It means taking his yoke upon ourselves, taking up our cross, as it were, and letting Christ rule in us.
“Salute the last and everlasting day,” the Ascension sonnet begins, highlighting that sensibility of endings that do not end because we are gathered into the eternity of God. This is the joy, our “joy at the uprising of this sun, and son,” playing on the words sun and son. Christ returns to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to human redemption. His Ascension is the fuller meaning of his word on the Cross, “it is finished,” ended in the sense of completed and accomplished. It is a finishing, an ending and yet a beginning; a continuing. For where Christ is there will we be also.
“Nor doth he by ascending, show alone, / But first he, and he first enters the way.” Christ is the way, the truth and the life. “I go,” Jesus says, “to prepare a place for you, that where I am there you may be also.” Such is the fuller meaning of the redemption of our humanity. “O strong ram, which hast battered heaven for me,” Donne puts it, suggesting the idea of taking heaven by storm, on the one hand, before offering a contrasting image, “Mild lamb, which with thy blood, hast marked the path,” recalling the sacrifice and passion of Christ, on the other hand. The last line which is equally the first line of the first poem in the sequence signals the nature of our participation in the homecoming of the Son. “Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.” It is our privilege not our right to offer prayers and praises and we rightly seek that God accept them.
Our “crown of prayer and praise” is “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” as the Prayer of Consecration eloquently puts it, but that depends entirely upon Christ’s only and all-sufficient sacrifice on the Cross for us. Here in the poem our “crown of prayer and praise” responds to Christ’s crown of thorns and glory. Such images remind us of the way in which we participate in the divine life sacramentally and in prayer and praise. We have our end indeed in him who is our ending and our beginning.
Fr. David Curry
Sunday after The Ascension, 2018
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