"He ascended into Heaven..."

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on May 4, 2008

“On the third day, he rose again, in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God.” These are three fairly fantastic statements that we proclaim every time we recite the Nicene Creed. The creeds are curious things whether one says the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed or the fantastically long Athanasian Creed found in the back of your BCP. They were meant to develop a shorthand version of the basic claims of Christianity. They were not, nor do they function as, great evangelism tools. Few people, if any, would hear the creeds and feel drawn to this faith. Indeed at the moment there are lots of people who refrain from reciting the creed because it seems hypocritical to stand up and say “I” or “We believe…” when one cannot in good conscience agree with the statements.

Dr. David Cunningham, who was one of my professors in seminary, wrote a most helpful book on the Apostles Creed, breaking it down into the twelve different statements and then illustrating them with literature, either a novel, a play or a short story. The book is called Reading is Believing. He claims that the creeds have three purposes; first, they are a summary of the narratives of the Christian faith; second, they are a resource for study and conversation among those who already know the stories well and finally, as a goal that encourages Christians as they try to live into the stories.” What Dr. Cunningham says is that the creeds make sense only if you are willing to dive into them.

The very first thing that we need to understand when we recite a creed is to understand the use of the word believe. Every time we say it in a creed we say we “believe in” something. We are not using the word as one might saying “I believe it’s raining” which means “I’m not sure but I think so.” Nor do we use it to mean I’ve pretty well made up my mind to do something, as in “I believe I’ll save room for dessert.” No, the use of the word believe in the creeds is about trust and relationship. There’s a great difference between telling someone that you believe them, and telling someone that you believe in them. The former says, “I think you are telling the truth.” The latter, which is the way we say “We believe in God” is that you put your trust in God. It speaks of relationship. You would never tell someone that you didn’t care about that you believe in them. Because when you believe in someone, you give something of yourself, it is language of commitment. So what we are saying when we proclaim “We believe in Jesus Christ, the only son of God.” We are proclaiming that we are putting our trust, our faith, our hearts in Jesus Christ, and not in any other prince of this world. Believing in someone or something is not a momentary thing.

Another important point is that the statement about Jesus is not an exclusive statement. It is not saying that Buddhism is not also a path to knowing the Divine nor does it say that about Judaism or Islam. It is our statement that this is the path that we have chosen.

So what does it mean when we continue on and proclaim that Jesus “ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of God.” From the get-go, that’s one that we can’t take literally because God doesn’t have hands so there is no right one to be seat by. But consider if you will, the phrase that we use fairly commonly, to be someone’s right-hand man is to be the one trusted to carry out a plan or a vision. That’s a very good way to think about Jesus, indeed it is the phrase that is found in Clarence Jordan’s New Testament translation The Cotton Patch Gospels. “Jesus is God’s right-hand man.”

This whole Ascension thing is a difficult one for me. Dr. Cunningham points out pragmatically that it’s a plot device to acknowledge the fact that Jesus was no longer walking around among the believers, now here in our midst today. The story only appears in Luke and Acts which were originally all one book. The other writers didn’t touch it but it’s a very important question. So, where is Jesus now? The answer is that he is somewhere other than here…he is no longer immediately, physically present to us. As much as I’d love to be able to go to him and ask “Seriously, what do you think about gay bishops?” but we don’t have that option. His physical presence is not available to us. The most important thing that we can draw from the claim of the Ascension is that it’s up to us now to carry on without being able to run to him for advice and direction.

Luke makes another very important point about the whole purpose of the Incarnation – the Divine coming to dwell on earth as one of us. In Jesus’ resurrected state, he still bears the marks of crucifixion – he continues to carry the wounds inflicted on him, on us, by us. Now it seems to me that the power to resurrect someone is mighty enough to do so in that perfected form that Paul calls the resurrection body – so there must be a specific purpose in the presence of those wounds. They do not just prove to the disciples that it was really him. Those wounds say that all that happens to us, particularly the violent, damaging assaults on our bodies, minds and spirits, continue to be borne by one who loves us. And then on top of those wounds are taken to heaven. Our broken places are acceptable to God.

Dr. Cunningham puts it this way, “God’s willingness to “become flesh and dwell among us” is therefore not a temporary condition,now merelya short-term moment of unpleasantness that God must endure in order to set things right. On the contrary, by permanently taking on not only our intellectual and spiritual characteristics but also our fleshly existence, God redeems it and draws it up into the Trinitarian communion of the divine life.”

One of my favorites hymns is There’s a wideness in God’s mercy but I have never, until writing this sermon, really understood the second verse. “There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven; there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgment given. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed, there is joy for all the members in the sorrows of the Head.” That is because “he ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”

Despite the departure of Jesus, however you might understand it, Christ continues to be present in a variety of ways. We will celebrate the first way next week, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Secondly, as the church, we profess ourselves to be the Body of Christ and lastly and most elegantly in the Eucharist where we find the sacramental presence of Christ in the nourishment we receive in the bread and wine. We could only know these things in his physical absence. His not being here is our invitation to carry our wounds and the wounds of humanity so that they will continue to be redeemed It is our invitation to become him and to reveal the Kingdom that is hiding in our midst.