Ascension is Enthronment

The feast of the Ascension comes 40 days after Easter Day. This is given to us by Luke, who says that after 40 days, the resurrected Jesus departed from his disciples and ascended into heaven. This year we celebrate it on May 29. It is one of the seven principal feasts of the Episcopal Church, but alas, and not only with Episcopalians, it has come to be largely ignored. So let me lay out a few markers of its meaning and importance.

Although the charming iconography of the Ascension shows the heads of the apostles looking up into the sky, and above their heads, at the very top of the frame, one sees the bare feet of Jesus—as if one were looking at a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral at about T plus 2 seconds—the meaning is not that Jesus took a trip from earth to some distant locale in outer space. This is something we know, with our modern understanding of the universe given by physics and mathematics and the other tools of science. But it is something also known by the ancients, who did not have our understanding of the universe. What happens in the Ascension is beyond our ability to picture. It is that Jesus “ascended” from the created world to the uncreated “place” where God is.

It is credited to the Jews to have first grasped the idea of radical creation. This idea is that God, who has created all things, cannot be one of the things he has created. It is that God, as creator, is not one of the creatures in the world. Here is the point of the animus towards idols: idols are false gods, false because they are things in the universe. To emphasize this point, Herbert McCabe translates the beginning of the Ten Commandments as “Hear, O Israel, there are no gods!” He calls the Ten Commandments “the great atheist manifesto.” 

Equipped from the beginning with this Jewish claim of radical creation, Christians knew something simply incomprehensible was going on when Jesus “ascended” to his Father “in heaven.” Jesus was leaving the created world. This is the meaning of the Ascension.

It is important for two reasons. First, as we articulate in the 39 Articles, he ascends with his body intact; he does not shed his body and leave it on earth and ascend “spiritually” to the Father. This too is unimaginable! The point is that human nature now resides in heaven, in the very being of God. Jesus took our nature with him. This is at least part of the meaning of his saying, “I go to prepare a place for you.” There is a “place” for us to live forever with Jesus, with our own body and soul, in and with God. 

Second, and in my judgment even more important for us to understand: in his Ascension Jesus assumed his political authority over the entire universe. We call him King of kings and Lord of lords because “he sitteth at the right hand of the Father.” This credal and biblical phrase “at the right hand” does not mean the Father has hands! It refers to the authority that the Father has given Jesus. To be at the right hand of someone is to exercise that person’s authority. At the end of Matthew—also on the verge of his Ascension—Jesus says “all authority in heaven and earth” has been given to him. 

This is important news at any time, but especially in times of political turbulence. Every king, president, prime minister, judge, justice, governor, legislator, parliamentarian, mayor, you name it: they have important roles to play for our various societies and we need them. But every one of them is also under Jesus’ authority—whether they know it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not. And for each of them the ultimate question will be, when Jesus is revealed in his glory, do they lay down their authority at his feet, or engage in rebellion?

It is easy to recognize the importance of the Ascension when we think of victims of injustice, of the chaos of war, of the perversion of public service to private gain, of the undermining of the delicate structures that allow us to live together. Easy—yet seldom noticed. I think the Ascension is one of the most important teachings of Christian faith. 

You may not be able to get to church on Thursday, May 29, but let us all be sure to offer our morning and evening prayers on that day, with particular thanks that Jesus has gone ahead of us to the “place” where he has been enthroned over the universe.

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

Cross Ways

Google, anticipating a slowdown on the Interstate ahead, suggested I take an exit. It put me on a narrow road that went, slowly, past trees and farm houses. Such roads are surprisingly different from the main highways that are, true to their name, “high” ways that speed above and beyond the low and narrow. I’m going slow enough to take in this shady section of life that was hidden away from the high way. Then the road took a bend and there appeared before me an overpass, and going at its own speed, a freight train. All I could see were three or four cars of the train at any one time; trees blocked the view of any more than this little segment. So I could not tell how long the train was; I could only see it, a bit of it, lifted above my road and passing from my left to my right.

— 

I have written before about reality having layers to it. An adult, you return to the bedroom that was yours as a child. You find some old mimeograph papers; they are the high school newspaper. You hold and read them and for this moment you are much younger, you are the high school boy who didn’t fit in and wrote some rather obnoxious things. You are the boy and you also are the critical adult looking back at the boy and somehow you are both at the same time.

Or take the layers not in time but in space. You are walking on the White Rock Trail north of the lake and you come to that swampy section. You’re in the midst of the urbanopolis yet you can see nothing but trees and some grass and a stream and mud and the winding trail. You can hear cars—the city’s sounds are all around—but you only have eyes for this patch of wet nature. Then the trail turns a corner, and overhead is a sleek concrete pillar that supports a train track that runs above you. The elevated track crosses your trail from one side to the other then disappears from sight. It is too smooth, too light and ultra-modern to be track for a freight train; this is for the “light” rail. You have probably been on that rail sometime. But there is no path from the ground to the track; the walking trail and the highline train cross but never meet.

— 

Our lives are full of intersections where we cross others’ paths but never meet them. A busy sidewalk; a store full of customers you don’t know; people in their cars; trains that cross over us; airplanes that cross in their own space. And there are those temporal intersections. The boy does not know the adult who, fifteen years later, looks back on what he was writing, yet the adult is present to the boy. These layers are, I think, not accidental. They are baked into reality from the moment of creation. 

What Adam does with that piece of fruit is an event present to all the billions of people who come after him.

What the Old Testament says is not prior to what the New Testament says, but present in the New. Abraham is very much present to the disciples who hear that their teacher is going to be sacrificed.

All of us on our various Caminos that cross one another without our comprehension: we are nonetheless constituted by the whole picture of all these relations.

It is as theologians like Robert Jenson often say: Your individuality is not in yourself but in the multitudinous ways that cross over (under, through, before, after) your path. 

Each of us is made of relations: and the secret at the heart of all relations is the cross.

— 

    Out & About: This Sunday, May 18, I will be preaching at St. Barnabas Church in Denton, Tex., at the Eucharist at 10 a.m.

    Later at 5 p.m. on May 18, there will be a seminar on what I think is a deceptively simple children’s book,The Dolls’ House by Rumer Godden. The dolls have their own life, but it hangs on the actions of the children who play with, or neglect, them. We meet from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Dallas; anyone who reads the book is welcome to the discussion. 


Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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