Sermon for the Sunday after Ascension Day
Sing ye praises with understanding
“The end of all things is at hand,” Peter tells us. What does he mean? The Ascension and the Session of Christ, his sitting at the right hand of the Father, are a kind of ending. But what kind of ending? Is it like Great Big Sea’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine”? Only I don’t think we feel quite so fine.
“It is finished.” Jesus’ penultimate word on the Cross is about an ending, an ending which carries over into the Resurrection and the Ascension. What is finished, ended, is all that belongs to the reconciliation between humanity and God. The overcoming of sin and death inaugurates the radical new life of the Resurrection. We only live when we live for God and for one another. The Ascension is the culmination of the Resurrection and belongs to its essential logic. The Ascension and the Session of Christ are two of the great creedal doctrines of the Christian Faith and yet are often overlooked and ignored. We forget their radical meaning and connection to Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection.
They are altogether about our life with God, our life as lived to and for God and one another. They are about our life as embraced in God’s will and purpose for our humanity; in short, they are about humanity’s end with God. End here signifies purpose. The Ascension is Christ’s homecoming to the Father having gone forth into the world and having returned to the Father, not empty but having accomplished God’s will for our humanity through his sacrifice. Christ’s sacrifice gathers us to God.
In the tradition of the Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross, “it is finished” is the penultimate word. What, then, is the ultimate word, the last of the last words? It is exactly what the Ascension and the Session signify. “Father, into thy hands, I commend my spirit,” Jesus says. The first and last words of Christ are the words of the Son to the Father, words of prayer that in turn shape our prayer. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” – what we do. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” What then do the Ascension and the Session mean? Quite literally, that “he’s got the whole world in his hands.” Everything is gathered back to God. “God,” as Thomas Aquinas notes in a kind of summary phrase, “is the beginning and ending of all things, especially of rational creatures.” In other words, the radical truth of the world and of human life is found in God. The Ascension and the Session celebrate the gathering of all things to God. They teach us that the world and our humanity are embraced in the knowing love of God. We live in that sense of ending, an ending that is about the purpose and truth of our lives. We live for God and in God.
