Christ Church

“These things have I spoken unto you”

There is something quite wonderful and special about this Sunday juxtaposed between the going up of the Son to the Father in the Ascension of Christ and the coming down of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Ascension marks the fortieth day of Easter and signals the culmination of the Resurrection, its fuller meaning, if you will. Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter and marks the birthday of the Christian Church.

The special joy of Easter and Eastertide reaches a kind of crescendo in the Ascension. All of the scripture passages, old and new, are full of a sense of joy and wonder. Why? Because the Ascension marks what the Fathers astutely call, “the exaltation of our humanity.” Through Christ’s death and resurrection we have a place, a home with God. It is signalled profoundly and beautifully in the Son’s homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world and our humanity. All the themes of Eastertide find their fullest meaning in the Ascension of Christ.

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“He was received up into heaven”

“We ascend in the ascension of our hearts,” Augustine memorably says, capturing in a phrase the doctrinal meaning of Christ’s Ascension. The fortieth day of Easter marks the Ascension of Christ, itself the culmination of the Resurrection. It opens us out to its deeper meaning and truth.

There is a wonderful sense of joy which belongs to Easter and Eastertide that reaches a kind of crescendo in the Ascension. All of the scripture passages, old and new, are full of a sense of joy and wonder. Why? Because the Ascension marks what the Fathers astutely call, “the exaltation of our humanity.” Through Christ’s death and resurrection we have a place, a home with God. It is signalled profoundly and beautifully in the Son’s homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world and our humanity. All the themes of Eastertide find their fullest meaning in the Ascension of Christ.

“I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says, “that where I am there ye may be also.” The Ascension celebrates the return of the Son to the Father in which return our humanity realizes its end in God, on the one hand, and has its participation in the life of the Trinity through prayer now, on the other hand. The Ascension reveals the true movement of our liturgy. It is the liturgy of the sursum corda, the liturgy of the lifting up of our humanity to God and into God. “Lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the Lord.”

The Ascension is the necessary counter to the spirit of accommodationism so dominant in our church and culture, the idea that the Christian Gospel must accommodate itself to the fads and fancies of each and every passing age. To engage our world in all of its confusions is not the same thing as catering to every passing fad and fancy. The Ascension signals the real meaning of the engagement between God and Man. We ascend in the ascension of our hearts in prayer and praise, in Word and Sacrament. We are gathered into the divine life. It is the very opposite of supposing that the divine life is collapsed into our world and day.

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“I will that all men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands”

Praying everywhere and all the time. That is the radical meaning of prayer. It signifies, as Richard Hooker puts it, “all the service that we ever do unto God.” In short, it is about the Godward direction of our lives. What that means is the challenge. But at the very least it suggests something about the power and nature of prayer. It suggests that prayer belongs to our thinking and our loving and our doing; in other words, our very being.

This opens us out to a broader view of prayer, though one which is deeply embedded in our liturgical tradition of prayer, in liturgical prayer itself. Nothing signals the Godward direction of our lives better than the liturgy, itself a labour, a human work but one which has been infused with the grace of God. Paul’s Letter to Timothy alludes to an aspect of this, namely, the physical gesture of holy hands uplifted in prayer. It suggests the orans position, a visible way of signifying our openness to divine grace and to the ways in which God’s grace shapes our lives through prayer.

The Gospel from Luke reminds us that the heart of all prayer is the Lord’s Prayer. That prayer gathers us into the intimacy of the Son’s love for the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the prayer which Jesus teaches us to pray – when you pray, not if. Apart from the literal words there is the deeper meaning of that prayer. The story which he tells that accompanies the teaching about the Lord’s Prayer is about persevering in prayer.

What is that about? Simply this, that God wants us to want what he wants for us and through prayer we are engaged in learning to ask what it is that we should be seeking. Knowing and desiring are both part of the dynamic of prayer. The Gospel makes it clear that persevering in “asking, seeking, knocking” results in “receiving, finding,” and in the “opening” to the will of God. Something is required of us. It is our wanting God’s will to “be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Rogationtide is all about prayer and prayer is all about asking. It means, however, the willingness to learn what to ask for and in what way. It is nothing less than the reality of our lives as lived for God and with God and in God; and all because of the Resurrection. We are gathered into the very motions of the love that is the Trinity.

“I will that all men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands”

Fr. David Curry
Rogation Monday, 2015

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