Today is the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ. Ascension Day takes place forty days after Easter Sunday - therefore always on a Thursday.
Jesus appears on earth at various time to his followers over a period of forty days. He eats with them, he confirms he is alive, that he is not a ghost. Yet he is different. He is not always recognized. He appears and disappears. His body is the beginning of a new kind of matter.
He tells his disciples it is for their good he is about to return to the Father, promising them to send the Holy Spirit when he ascends. In the Holy Spirit they will receive power and truth to grow the church to the ends of the earth.
This they did. It meant their brutal deaths, but all of us believers can trace a lineage of conversion back to the apostles. Twelve simple men who walked out of a room in Jerusalem and re-made the world.
Ascension marks the end of Eastertide. It is a strange feast. What do we make of Jesus going into the clouds? In some sense, his resurrection is more comprehensible. Why does he leave? Where does he go?
He does not go into space. He is not on another planet, at a distance to us, somewhere less real than the world. He has ventured into the heart of reality, into the ‘super-space’ of God. Thus his disappearance into the cloud does not bring sadness to his followers. It tells them their friend and lord has taken his resurrected body ‘into’ God.
This means that he, though a human being, is the cosmic ruler, the highest of all authorities. The resurrection is complete. From Heaven, he is now also everywhere. The one who bled like us, who taught us who God is - he rules and reigns now. He goes ahead of us to prepare a place for us. And he promises to return so we may be with him always.
I often write of the fallen things of this world. But we must not despair. In Christ, we have already won.
The crimes and pain of this world are light and momentary compared to the weight of glory which shall be revealed. The blaze of existence, the glory we all know to to be at the heart of life, will flame out:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil...
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell...
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs...
In our own sins and weakness, in all the pain and ugliness around us, we can rise, we can win out in the end - because he has risen, because he has won.
A little while, a little longer… all will be made right.
Amen...
Thank you Chris for the inspiring upstream article!
"A little while, a little longer..." but not for much longer according to this poem by English Poet and Philosopher, Brian Taylor:
GATES OF EDEN
It is now two millennia since
the Security Seraphims
were withdrawn
and the Gates of Eden reopened
to the General Public.
Free Admission
to all children
(before their parents succeeded
in banning them).
Free Passes
to those adults who agree
to leave their baggage outside
(as strongly recommended by JC)
and successfully passed
the Camel’s Eye of a Needle Security Check.
(C.E.N.S.C.)
This will detect even your bikini
and any other thoughts
left over from heavy addiction
to the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge.
It is surprising and chastening
how few (excepting children)
have availed themselves of this
Once-in-a-Lifetime opportunity.
Especially
as it is rapidly approaching
its Expiry Date.
Outside the gates,
are innumerable camper vans,
over-flowing removal lorries
and the charred remains
of dead animals (holy sacrifices).
Together with a jostling crowd
of fashionably robed
Bishops and priests,
some artificially bald;
some with original designer beards.
They are selling
genetically modified,
original cuttings
from the Tree of Knowledge,
together with heavily translated
instruction manuals;
each with its individual
Stamp of Infallibility.
These guarantee to give you
instant and privileged entry,
via a back door (with donation box)
to the Garden of Life
(as soon as you are safely dead).
Once the Expiry Date is reached
(determined by when Planet Earth
can no longer cope
with man’s inhumanity
to man and nature),
the killings by man
will be replaced with
the cullings of men;
controlled, systematic, cosmic.
Then the Gates of Eden
will be closed once more.
Seraphims will be reinstalled
with suicide bombs
(make your own),
missiles, and drones
instead of flaming swords.
The discarded cuttings
from the Tree of Knowledge
will grow into a concealing forest,
peopled by a race
of test-tube-originated primates.
And God will try again elsewhere.