7 Easter Cycle
A June 5, 2011
Acts 1:6-14 Ps.
68
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 John
17:1-11
Today is the Sunday
after Ascension Day and it is a time for us to ponder the meaning of the
Ascension. We who hold to the artistic,
the aesthetic, the literary meanings of sacred tradition and story can also be
hard core scientists at the same time?
Why, because we do not believe that what is meaningful is limited to
statements which can be verified by the scientific method. While believing in the scientific method we also
believe that the languages of faith give us meanings and truth not to compete
with science but to complement science in filling out the fullness of the human
capacity for many kinds of meaning. The
kinds of meanings we derive from the sublime experiences of art and music are
further complements in the fullness of human life with the capacity for
multiplicity of meanings. One could define
truth as that which is meaningful.
The fullness of human life but particularly lived through the continuous
experience of one person is such that each of us can say about our past life,
it is absolute.
We are not some smoky, cloudy spirit wafting around; we are the fullness
of experience funneled through body, soul and spirit to attain an absolute
past.
And the same can be said about Jesus Christ. Jesus is God attaining particular human
experience and becoming a person in a history with an absolute past. God in Jesus having an absolute past which
was attained through all of the occasions of the human experience of Jesus is
central to the meaning of Christianity.
It is central to how we take unescapable license to speak about God, who
is more than human, in merely human terms.
When we are using human terms to speak about what is more than human or
not human we use terms like, God, divine and heavenly.
Mozart as a human musician was quite a rare person; how does one come to
such musical excellence in so many ways at such an early age. How did it happen that he had an advanced
music ability from the very beginning.
Such rarity baffles us even as we speechlessly acknowledge the truth of
such rarity.
Jesus was the same sort of rare person and human speech created sacred
story to try artistically to account for this very rare person indeed.
I would like for us to center upon some meanings of the Ascended Jesus
and the post-Ascension Jesus today.
The Ascension event gives the Sacred Story event of Jesus a kind of
ending or significant transition. Jesus
as Word from the Beginning. Announced by
Gabriel to Mary. Mary Over-Shadowed by
the Creating Spirit. Jesus born in
Bethlehem. A genius in the Temple as a
loquacious boy. Jesus baptized. Jesus Tempted. Jesus healing. Jesus speaking in Wisdom stories. Jesus walking on water. Jesus confronting the powerful, the rich and
the religious. Jesus forgiving the
stigmatized sinners. Jesus being a
political figure in the religious political discussion of a messiah and son of
man. Jesus hailed as a king by country
pilgrims to Jerusalem. Jesus betrayed and denied by friends. Jesus tried by Pilate. Jesus died on the cross. Jesus re-appeared to many people. Jesus Ascended and left.
Why is it important to have the ascension in sacred story? It is a way to identify Jesus with the God of
the Psalmist who said that God rides in the heavens After
Jesus was gone and no longer seen, it was important to proclaim that Jesus had
attained an “other worldly” existence because even while he was with us he was
so rare in his words and deeds he was “other worldly.” But this “other worldly” rare person had a
specific, particular and absolute past in the life occasions of Jesus of
Nazareth. And it is important to know
that this concrete past of Jesus as a person who had human history is still
maintained. Jesus arose and Jesus
ascended and we confess the same for ourselves because we actually believe that
we happen as body, mind and soul beings who attain a particular and specific
and absolute history in our bodies. The
particular human being can never be said to not have happened. This is why the sacred story of Jesus is
enshrined using the ascension as a way of saying that the life of Jesus is so
much a fact of history, it can never be untrue.
And the same can be said for each of us.
The Ascension is the way of affirming the substantiality of actual and
particular occasions of human experience.
It is a confession of faith; it is saying, “The life of Jesus was
substantial and so is ours.”
There are people of faith who try to convert sacred story to science and
journalistic writing of historical events.
They miss the art of the story, even though I would not doubt their
faith in what they think they want to affirm.
We use sacred story to confess the uniqueness and rarity of Jesus. We don’t make Jesus unique or rare by trying
to assert that the virgin birth, resurrection and ascension are verifiable
occasions to hold according to the scientific method. Remember we never have to defend sacred story
in the wrong way by applying the wrong discursive practice to the sacred story language
of the Bible.
Today, we must also speak about the aftermath of the ascension because
what we believe about the ascended Jesus is that Jesus is still one who prays
and who intercedes. Jesus assumes all of
the suffering of the world as God’s own suffering in his ascended role of the
intercessor.
The seventeenth chapter of John is a very long prayer of Jesus
confessing his unity with God his Father but also the unity of the Father and
himself with the people of the world.
The life of prayer is the life of the ascended Jesus. The life of prayer is not the few times we
gather in church to say the corporate prayers.
The life of prayer is the expression of the total solidarity of God with
us and us with God.
The only way that we can say that God and us and everyone is winning in
this life is to confess this total solidarity with God and with All. If we are one with God and the all, then we
are winning by the very sustaining of everything by God.
We only begin to focus on losing and the sometime apparent ascendency of
evil when we forget that the free conditions of evil and those who practice
evil and are sustained by God, the great one.
The ascended Jesus is the Jesus who prays and invites us to pray as the expression
of God’s solidarity with us and all and our solidarity with God and all. The ascension of Jesus is a confession that the
life of Jesus was absolute in history and cannot be dissolved or vanished. But it also means that you and I have an absolute
past as well and it is significant to believe that our substantiality as people
with an absolute past remains forever.
It may seem
like a very subtle and clever philosophical point but the sacred event of the ascension
of Jesus means that the experience of Jesus in history was an absolute past and
retained as substantial forever. And we too
accept the substantiality of our lives as we ride on the coat tails of the Ascension
of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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