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.