by CCW | 12 May 2024 10:00
Not quite a scriptural text per se but a scriptural digest of many passages in their interrelation. In a way, it is all about understanding the interplay of images. The text is creedal – from the Nicene Creed. The Creeds are themselves a distillation of the images of scripture that provide a critical interpretive principle for thinking the scriptures. This is especially important in relation to the doctrine of the Ascension. It is not about a flight from the world but the redemption of the world; in short, finding the meaning and purpose of our lives in God and the world in God.
There is the religion of Jesus in the heart, the religion of sentiment and feeling which remains very much with us in a host of contradictory forms, largely in terms of the dominance of the therapeutic culture. There is, too, the religion of Jesus the moral policeman, the religion of outward conformity to the shifting demands of social and political correctness, also very much with us in terms of the ideologies and concerns about social justice and identitarian politics. While there is something true in each of these, neither of them is the religion of the risen and ascended Christ who “sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty,” as the Apostles’ Creed puts it. But without the risen and ascended Christ, the religions of sentiment and moralism are altogether empty and destructive, the religions of empty hearts and whitened sepulchres. For that is really all about us and not about God and us with God.
This is what happens when we try to reduce God to where we are rather than to be lifted up to where he is, to speak in the language of the images of scripture. Our lives are to be found in the comings and goings of God, not God in our comings and goings. There is all the difference in the world between these two perspectives: the one would make God subject to us; the other would place us with God in the revelation of his truth and love. These images about the comings and goings of God are the spiritual and eternal motions of God himself, on the one hand, and our circling around and into that mystery of eternal life, on the other hand. In other words, the metaphors point us to an understanding of God and to our relationship with God.
Our beginnings and our endings find their place and meaning in the comings and goings of God. On the Sunday after the Ascension, we celebrate the Ascension and the Session of Jesus Christ who “sits on the right hand of the Father.” There is in this image of “sitting” a kind of ending, a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment. All that pertains to salvation has been accomplished. “It is finished.” “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.” These are the last two words of Christ from the Cross from the Gospels of John and Luke respectively. Their meaning and truth are now made visible in the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. In the Session, the risen and ascended Christ enters into the Father’s glory and so into the eternal rest of God. “The end of all things is at hand,” says St. Peter. The ending of all things is indeed celebrated in the Ascension and the Session of Christ. From there we await a new beginning, the descent of the Holy Spirit to keep us in the love and knowledge of what has been accomplished by Christ Jesus for us and which remains to be realised in us in the continuing pilgrimage of our lives.
The Son enters into his rest having accomplished “the will of him who sent him.” He returns to glory and enters into glory. What does it signify for us? Simply the heart and meaning of our lives in prayer and praise; our lives in faith, hope and charity in our constant attention to the ever-circling motions of God. For God, in a marvellous way of speaking, is “like a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”
Christ ascends and enters into the rest of God in the fullness of our humanity which he has assumed, restored, and redeemed. The marks of the crucifixion are now the prints of love. Nothing of the past is lost or ignored. All is gathered into glory. Our humanity has a place, an end with God. The new beginning that we celebrate at Pentecost belongs to the accomplishment of the Son’s salvation for us.
The promised gift of the Holy Spirit would keep us in the knowledge and the love of God, come what may in the circumstances and accidents of our lives. It is what has been communicated to us through the comings and goings of the Father’s Son and Word. We have at once an orientation and a destination. We have at once a direction and a place. In prayer and praise, in Word and Sacrament, in sacrifice and service, we participate in the comings and goings of God for us and enter into the promise of his rest in glory. For his going to the Father is equally the nurturing and mothering love of God for us.
In our secular culture, this is Mother’s Day. We celebrate and give thanks for our mothers who have brought us to birth and given us life but in so doing also point us to the eternal life of God. In other words, a mother’s love has its deeper truth of meaning in God’s love. “Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that gave thee suck,” a woman in a crowd cries out to Jesus. “Blessed rather are they that hear the word of God and keep it,” he replies. It is not a rebuke or a disparagement of motherhood but points us to the mystery of God to which it belongs.
Our lives are lived to God and with God. The Ascension and the Session of Christ would remind creedally and scripturally that Christ “sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” It is the ‘place’ without which he cannot be in our hearts and thus cannot be the ordering principle of our lives morally, socially, and politically. Only if we honour Christ in his Ascension and Session can we possibly know him, love him, and serve him in our hearts and in our lives.
The Session – Christ’s sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty – recalls the sabbath rest of God after his six-day wonder in the work of creation. In both the sabbath and the session, what is meant is the enjoyment, the taking delight, in what has been accomplished: in the one, taking delight in creation itself, for “behold, it was very good”; and in the other, taking delight in the restoration of the whole creation through the redemption of our humanity in the risen and ascended Christ. The idea of the Ascension and Session is captured in the icon of Christos Pantokrator; Christ as the Ruler of All.
In creation, God takes delight in what he has made. In redemption, there is the further revelation of God’s delight in the mutual love of the Son for the Father in the Holy Spirit into which love everything else finds its perfection and end. In the exaltation of the Son, there is the exaltation of our humanity. We have a direction and purpose. It is to God. We have a home. It is with God. In the comings and goings of God, we find our purpose and our place – for our hearts and for all that our hearts contain.
We have only to live it, in prayer and praise. In the lifting up of our hearts through him who has lifted up all things to the Father, we find our peace, our purpose, and our place. “At all times and in all places” we offer our prayers and praises to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. We live for God, with God, and in God. Such is the grace of Christ’s Ascension. His grace is unto glory where Christ “sits on the right hand of the Father.”
Fr. David Curry
Sunday after the Ascension 2024
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2024/05/12/sermon-for-sunday-after-ascension-day-6/
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