May 9, 2024, Don’t Look Back, Acts 1:1-11 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ May 9, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

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At his last supper with the Twelve, Jesus told them something that probably didn’t make any sense to them at the time. “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” And again, he said, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Today we come to the moment he was talking about.

In the 40 days after his Resurrection, Jesus was an active presence among the believers. He made himself known to Mary Magdalene and the other faithful women who had come to his grave to serve him, even if only in his death. He made himself known to his friends, gathered fearfully in the upper room behind locked doors, and again on the seashore when they had followed Peter back out to the fishing boats. He made himself known to a couple of grieving disciples, making their weary way back from Jerusalem to their home in Emmaus. He made himself known, at some unrecorded time and place, to a gathering of some 500 disciples. He spoke about the kingdom; he opened up the Scriptures to them; he explained why everything had to happen as it did. But most of all, he made himself known to reassure them that he was there, himself, alive and real, solid flesh and bone – no ghost or apparition, not a figment of anyone’s fertile imagination.

And that was, and is, of the utmost importance because just as the essence of Easter is the stark emptiness of the tomb, so the essence of the Ascension is the solid humanity of the Christ who returns to the Father. Benedict XVI wrote that this is the miracle of the Ascension: “That in Christ human nature, the humanity in which we all share, has entered into the inner life of God in a new and hitherto unheard-of way. It means that man has found an everlasting place in God.”

And of course there was even more to come, as Jesus told his disciples: “If I go, I will send the Helper to you.” He re-affirmed that promise on the mountain. He told them to go to Jerusalem and wait, saying, “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Because our humanity was taken up to God, in this moment we call the Ascension, the divine presence of Christ, which fills all in all, comes and makes a home in our very midst. And so truly we have the fulfillment of the promise that he made on the mountain, “Lo I am with you always – at all times, we can say, and in all places – even to the end of the age.” But in speaking of the Holy Spirit we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

But one thing that struck me powerfully, powerfully and I guess bothersome-ly, as I was meditating on the readings for this day, is the question that the disciples had for Jesus. They stood on the Mount of Olives with him, near the place where he had poured out his heart to the Father on the night he was arrested. Many of them had accompanied him in his ministry for three years, had followed him from village to village. They had heard him teach. They had seen him heal the sick and raise the dead and cast out demons. Some of them had seen his lifeless body with their own eyes, And now, in these forty days after his resurrection, they had seen and heard him, touched him, talked with him, eaten with him. But in the last moment before he returned to the Father, as he raised his hand to bless them, this is what they wanted to know, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

In that climactic moment in human history, when humanity was poised to be taken up into everlasting communion with the God of the Universe, the hope that burned bright in the hearts of those disciples was this: now, at long last, are you finally going to sweep the occupying forces of Rome out of our nation like the Egyptians were swept away by the waters of the Red Sea? Now, are you finally going to bring us back to the Golden Age of King David? Now, O Messiah, is it finally time to make Israel great again?

Their question gets under my skin, not because I’m scandalized by their ignorance, or contemptuous of their lack of vision, but because it is just so familiar and relatable. The age-old image of the Messiah was the mighty warrior of God who would come galloping in on a white charger, and cut the enemy to ribbons, and restore everything, to make it all the way it used to be. But when the Messiah came, he was so entirely not what they expected that even here on the mountain, even now, at the very end of his earthly ministry, his own followers were still caught looking backward.

The Ascension, this moment on the mountain, is a reminder to us – and I think in particular to us as the Church – to let go, once and for all, of our old expectations and agendas that have to do with things that are passing away: things like nations and institutions and man-made powers and authorities, and to wait on God’s agenda, that deals with the things he has established, the things that will not pass away: things like our fellow human beings, like truth and justice, beauty and compassion, and his love, which has no beginning and no end. We have been appointed, Jesus told his disciples on the night before he died, we have been appointed to bear fruit that will last. We have been called to labor for God’s harvest. Now is the time to look ahead, not back; to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” Now is the time to “Set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

And just to be clear, that doesn’t mean retreating into the wilderness and washing our hands of this whole earthly mess, a la Pontius Pilate, and just letting the whole system crash and burn, as appealing as that is most days. But it does mean living as citizens of the new kingdom, inaugurated by Christ himself, that is breaking forth and spreading out like the mustard plant in the parable, so that all can come and find rest in its branches.

Sean Fitzpatrick writes that “The whole purpose of the miracle of the Ascension is that it points out the way for all flesh. It was a physical miracle involving a physical body that illustrated a relationship that is supernatural and eternal: “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The Ascension of Jesus Christ is not simply a glorious finale of the story of human salvation, but a glorious beginning. In His departure from earth, Our Lord came to man as never before. By the mystery of the Ascension, Jesus gave his Church a miraculous sign that He is not far, and that the human body that houses the human spirit is something that belongs with God.”