by CCW | 2 June 2019 15:00
“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.
This is the great counter to the fearfulness of our world and day, a fearfulness which senses an ending of the world in environmental terms and in political and social terms but neglects the profounder concept of ending spiritually and ethically which the Ascension and the Session provide. This spiritual sense of ending is dynamic in contrast to the paralysing forms of our worldly fears and our sense of hopelessness. “Sing ye praises with understanding,” the Psalmist bids us. Why? Because “God is the King of all the earth.” It is God’s world.
There is simply our waiting upon God in our active remembering of what Christ has told us especially what he tells us about the Holy Spirit. In the Ascension and the Session of Christ we actively await the gift of the Holy Spirit in whom and through whom we understand our life as lived with God as Trinity. We live in the motions of God’s eternal love, the mutual and indwelling love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To recall that love is the counter to all and every fearful sense of ending. It is about being gathered into the true end and meaning of our humanity. It is found in prayer and praise. It is found in the lifting up our hearts to be where Christ is in whom true joys are found.
In the liturgies of the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy, just before the Creed is proclaimed, the deacon says,“The doors, the doors, in Wisdom let us attend.” It is the idea of being initiated into the mysteries of the Faith that stand in contrast to the world; hence doors being shut and doors being opened, as it were. In other words, we are called to attend to a new life, a new way of looking at things that overcomes the opposition between the world and God through God’s reconciling love. The Ascension and the Session celebrate the truth of the world and our humanity as gathered to God, the beginning and the ending of all things. Our ending is about our perfection and good as found only in and with God.
Our liturgy, too, is really about the lifting up of our hearts. It is all sursum corda, all about our being with Christ in the radical truth of his being. “We should understand the sacrament, not carnally, but spiritually,” Cranmer argues “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.” The Ascension and the Session of Christ signal the gathering of our humanity and our world to God in Christ, to our being with Christ where Christ is “resident at the right hand of his Father.” Such powerful imagery teaches the true meaning of ending; it is found in Christ’s sacrifice which is nothing less than the gathering of all things back to God. The meaning of Christ’s sacrifice is found in Christ’s Ascension and Session. Our Ascension prayer is that “we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell.” That means our waiting upon the gift of the Holy Spirit. We wait in the knowledge that we will not be left comfortless.
This way of thinking about the ending of all things is simply our life of prayer and praise, of Word and Sacrament, “being like eagles in this life,” and “fly[ing] up into heaven in our hearts, where that Lamb is resident at the right hand of his Father.” Our end is to be with Christ. “I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus tells us, “that where I am you may be also.” The Ascension and the Session celebrate that dynamic sense of ending in which we find our joy, the joy of our hearts and minds.
Fr. David Curry
Sunday after Ascension 2019
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2019/06/02/sermon-for-the-sunday-after-ascension-day-4/
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