Today, Ascension Day, is regarded by the Church as one of the greatest festivals of the Church’s year. It’s one of the festivals of the Church that can be regarded as having true ecumenical status because it’s held in equally high regard by both the Western and Eastern Church. In the West, by both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, Ascension Day is a Day of Eucharistic Obligation, a day when all communicant Christians should receive Holy Communion. So there can’t be any doubt that, in the eyes of the Church, Ascension Day is a very important day.
And yet for all that, I think Ascension Day is often treated as something of a poor relation when it comes to festivals of the Church. That might be something to do with the way Ascension Day is portrayed in imagery. In the Anglican Shrine Church at Walsingham, for example, the Ascension is shown as a pair of nail-marked feet surrounded by clouds on the ceiling of the one of the church’s side chapels, and I’ve known many pilgrims to Walsingham burst into fits of giggles when they’ve seen that image for the first time. That obviously means it’s very difficult for them to take the Ascension seriously. But I think the main reason for the relative lack of importance that many people seem to place on Ascension Day is that it’s sandwiched between the greatest day of the Church’s year, Easter Day, and that other great festival of the Church, Pentecost, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.
Ascension Day I think seems to get lost in the middle somehow. It’s perhaps seen as the filling in the gap between Easter and Pentecost, perhaps as a link between these two great days that simply has the purpose of fulfilling the words Jesus spoke to his disciples shortly before his death;
“… now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, 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.”
But Ascension Day is much more than that, it’s much more important than that.
And really, we shouldn’t be in any doubt about the importance of Ascension Day because we’re reminded of it at every Mass and Eucharist. Every time we say or hear the Eucharistic Prayer we promise to remember and rejoice at Jesus’ Ascension. And what’s more, we say that Jesus’ Ascension is ‘glorious’. So what is so important and glorious about Ascension Day?
Well, first of all, if we say that Jesus’ Ascension is glorious, we must mean that it gives glory to Jesus and to God. One of the things I’ve spoken about in sermons before, is that to give glory, or to glorify God means to say something about God. And Ascension Day goes say a great deal about God and about Jesus.
In St Luke’s account of the Ascension, he says that a cloud took Jesus from sight. In the Scriptures, clouds are often a sign of God’s presence or God’s glory. We read that repeatedly in the Books of Exodus and Numbers. We see it again at Jesus’ Transfiguration when a cloud covered the disciples who were there and a voice from the cloud proclaimed Jesus as God’s Son and Chosen One. So the image of Jesus being taken away in a cloud is a clear sign that Jesus was taken into God’s presence. And that’s exactly what out Gospel reading tonight says:
‘So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.’
So the first thing the Ascension tells us is that God raised Jesus to heaven, and in turn, that tells us that what Jesus said about his relationship with the Father is true. So it also tells us that we can trust Jesus and his promises.
And our trust in Jesus and the Father is reinforced when we look at the Ascension in the light of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Jesus promised to send the Helper, the Comforter, the Advocate, the Spirit’s given many names according to translation. In fact, as we heard tonight, the promise of the Holy Spirit was amongst the very last words Jesus spoke to his disciples before he ascended:
‘And while eating with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
Pentecost tells us that promise was kept.
Jesus’ Ascension also tells us something about Jesus as our heavenly Advocate and High Priest. The men in white, whom we believe to have been angels, told the disciples that Jesus would return from heaven in the same way that they’d seen him taken into heaven. We usually think of that as meaning that Jesus, having ascended into heaven in a cloud, will return in a cloud. It may very well mean that, but it means something else too.
Jesus ascended as both Son of God and man. He’d been resurrected from the dead, but he was still human, that is the whole point of the Resurrection after all. And if he returns in the same way, he will return as both Son of God and man. So having been born both fully human and fully God at his Incarnation, Jesus is both fully man and fully God forever, and he is now seated at God’s right hand as both our heavenly Advocate and High Priest.
As it says in the Letter to the Hebrews,
‘… he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Hebrews then goes on to say,
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
As High Priest, seated at God’s right hand in heaven, the sacrifice Jesus offers to make propitiation, to placate God’s displeasure at our sins, is his own sacrifice made once, for all, on the Cross.
In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that Jesus will one day return from heaven. That’s something Jesus also promised, and his Ascension tells us that we can trust Jesus to keep his promises. But, as we also heard tonight, when that will be only the Father knows, so there’s no point in us speculating about when that might happen. But Jesus’ Ascension does tell us something that is of more immediate concern to us.
In his Resurrection, Jesus was raised from the dead as a man. That tells us that we can also be raised from the dead. At his Ascension, Jesus was raised to heaven as a man. That tells us that we can be raised to heaven too. Perhaps not in a cloud as Jesus was, but nevertheless, where Jesus has gone in his humanity, we can go in ours, from life to death, and from death to new and eternal life in heaven. That is also a promise we have from Jesus, whose promises we know are trustworthy.
The importance of Jesus’ Ascension, and of Ascension Day itself, may be lost to some extent in some strange and peculiar imagery. It may be undervalued because, coming as it does between the great festivals of Easter and Pentecost, Ascension Day is overshadowed to some extent by those great festivals of the Church and of our faith. But it shouldn’t be. Ascension Day is regarded by the Church throughout the world as one of the great festivals of the Christian year and great events in the story of our salvation. And, when we think about what Jesus’ Ascension tells us about God the Father, about Jesus His Son and our brother, and about the Holy Spirit too, it is every bit as glorious as we proclaim it to be at every Mass and Eucharist we celebrate.
Amen.
The Propers for Ascension Day can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 