Daniel 7:9-14
Acts 1:1-11
Luke 24:44-end
We are still in the Easter season, and it is forty days since we celebrated the Resurrection together on Easter Sunday.
We have been remembering in this period that Jesus had been appearing to the disciples in his Resurrection body, now He ascends to the Father in heaven.
Belief in the Ascension invites us more deeply into the mystery of God, but before considering what the Ascension is let us remind ourselves of two basic, but fundamental, rules for twenty-first century readers thinking about ancient Jewish texts.
Firstly, the language of ‘going up’ into heaven does not suggest a two, or three, layer cosmology made up of Hell, the Earth and Heaven. Just as we use the language of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, while in fact knowing that the earth revolves around the sun, so ancient Jews could speak of an ascent into heaven, without thinking that God was a few thousand metres above their heads.
Secondly, we do not need to think that Jesus had decided to enter a NASA training programme, or that he was a precursor to Dr Who, arriving at some other point in time or space within the universe. This is not what St. Luke meant, and we should not suppose it was. So what are the essential points about the Ascension that should inform our belief?
Firstly, there are parallels in the Old Testament.
One that probably contributed to Luke’s account, is from today’s first lesson from Daniel chapter seven in which a human being was ‘given dominion and glory and kingship’ to rule over the nations, and perhaps also suggests a figure of a universal man.
Appropriately enough on the day of a General Election, this image of kingship, of Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father, might invite us to ponder the qualities that we hope our earthly governments will embody.
It might ask us to question what the ultimate purpose of politics is. Or to put in another way how might we, as a Western society, use our freedom justly?
I want to offer one paradigm that was suggested by Pope John Paul II. It is that our freedom must be informed by a sense of ethical responsibility, an idea that that may often run counter to a culture that says to be free is to released from all constraint, so as to live according to private judgement alone.
European tradition has often recognised the need to limit such freedom but has frequently done so by adopting the measure of utility or pleasure, which we can call the pleasurable good and has as its goal the advantage to be gained by an action.
The Holy Father wrote, ‘only when the action bringing the advantage is just and the means used are just, can the subject’s goal said to be just’. This is the just good.
Perhaps that is too big an idea for the realities of campaigning and governing, and yet the Ascension of Christ, because of its associations with kingship, calls us to think deeply about our political structures and systems, as well as the practice of politics.
So the Ascension is full of political significance as the kingdom of God is restored to the new Israel, the Church, through the Messiah being enthroned as the world’s lord: a lord of mercy and justice. It was a Roman practice to declare an emperor divine after their death, and this was often attested to by reports of their ascension towards heaven, or similar stories.
Augustus hailed a passing comet as the soul of his adopted father, Julius Caesar.
The new emperor was to be hailed as a ‘son of god’ on the basis of his predecessor’s divinity.
It would have been obvious to those at the time that the Christians’ claim that Jesus was not only resurrected but had also ascended was counter- imperial.
As we heard this evening St Luke uses this as the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, a book that records the subversive gospel being proclaimed in a hostile world.
So now let us briefly consider three personal consequences of the Ascension.
Firstly, Jesus is with us wherever we are.
It may sound obvious but I think it is worth remembering that on earth Jesus was physically limited by space and time.
We read in the gospels of many people who had contact with Jesus, but this was, of course, in a particular part of the world at a particular point in history.
Jesus had to go away in order to be closer to us.
When we proclaim that ‘he ascended into heaven’ we are not suggesting he is far away, but rather the opposite, that he is with us here and now. Secondly, St. Luke’s account in Acts closely links the ascension with the giving of the Holy Spirit, which we will celebrate in ten days time on the Feast of Pentecost.
Although Jesus was gone from the disciples’ sight, they were not out of his sight and nothing could separate them.
Indeed He was even closer to them than before, as He dwelt within them, as He dwells within us.
Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not the same, and the Ascension allowed the His promise to be fulfilled that He would be with them, and with us, through his Spirit.
If we were to ask the question: ‘where is Jesus now?’, we might say that He is where is always is, in first century Palestine.
Yet he sits at the right hand of the Father, he dwells within us, he is present in the sacrament of the holy Eucharist, and he is the body of the Church.
If Jesus is the Word of God: the revelation, then holy scripture is the witness to that revelation and the Spirit informs and inspires each new generation.
Thirdly, and finally, Jesus has prepared a place for us in heaven. This is what he told the disciples, adding that He would come again for them and take them to Himself.
That in the combination of free will and divine grace we might have the curtain to heaven torn in two, the barriers to God, including sin, removed and enter into the timeless presence of the God.
Of course it is difficult to speak of something that is timeless and exists outside of our universe, yet we should try.
The Church has tried to do this over the centuries and therefore the language of the liturgy expresses something of the hope of heaven: the Eucharist is the foretaste of the heavenly banquet.
Because here and now heaven is unknown it is a matter of belief rather than experience, although very occasionally we might experience a closeness to God through prayer that hints at what heavenly contentment might be like.
Consequently, for a Christian to die is not to enter the unknown but to go Jesus and be eternally in His presence.
That we might go to heaven is the hope that the ascension holds before us, and the destiny of those who follow Christ.