THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD B

[cappie]

The Ascension is a turning point: we turn to await the coming of the Spirit in the realisation that our Lord could no longer be confined by space and time: the resurrection could not be just going back to how things were. The exaltation of Jesus had to lead somewhere new, the presence of the promised Spirit with us.

At this point it first becomes clear where the story of which we are now part is headed. It is not to be a museum record, a nostalgia cult.  Jesus  now he gives a clear signal that the resurrection is not to prompt a sigh of relief and a relaxation into old ways. Nor it is it to herald or support a faith which is devoted to holding to or preserving the past. Being raised from the dead requires his leaving his disciples to wait for the coming of the Spirit. For the first disciples, it was a time to wait, and a time to pray. It reminds us, who are later disciples of Jesus, of the role of prayer and waiting in our lives.

Our society has little patience with those who decide to wait and pray. Ours is an action-oriented culture, action-oriented to a fault, so that many of us pass much of our time struggling with stress and weariness.

Our culture is no friend to prayer, our prayer acknowledges our dependence on God, and our culture is, at heart, uncomfortable with an acknowledgment of dependence.  Our culture is independence-oriented,  so that many live and die in considerable isolation from one another.

In the face of all this, Ascension Day is not just a goodbye to Jesus as he makes his way home; it is an invitation to activities such as waiting and prayer.

On this day, our attention might well focus on the triumphant Christ as he, in ways past our understanding, ascends through all the heavens. Our attention might rivet on how he ascends in his humanity, and that therefore we who are human, we who are his body, ascend together with him. But today I would like us to consider instead those waiting, praying disciples gathered in Jerusalem, anticipating power from on high. What they do is countercultural by our standards. They wait. They pray.

But there is still more about them that makes our dominant culture uncomfortable.  They wait, they pray, not simply out of obedience. They wait, they pray, because they desire. They desire that promised power from on high and all that it makes possible.  Their desire is good and holy.

Ours is a culture that accepts desire only to trivialize it.  Our TV commercials sing hymns to hamburgers, they celebrate the glories of dish detergent.  Our politicians–many of them–incite our fears and jealousies, rather than help us desire greater justice.  Poets and artists, writers and film-makers are often not widely known among us unless they bend our desires in directions violent or sentimental in the manner of much popular culture.  Yes, we accept desire only to debase it, to turn its focus from what is finally desirable and authentically glorious toward the trivial and the tragic, things that have no future.

Because we have trivialized passion, we have weakened our own ability to recognize a desire for that which is the greatest of all, namely God.

The days and seasons of the church calendar represent attitudes that remain important to us all the year round.  This is especially true now, Christ returns home to the Father, and the gathered disciples wait and pray and desire.  Their desire is for God, for the complete coming of the kingdom, for the power from on high that will make their lives bright torches.

Can we make their particular brand of waiting and prayer and especially desire hallmarks of our lives?  I believe this is possible.