Homily for Ascension Sunday 2010
May 16, 2010
Today is the Sunday of the Ascension. Ascension is a very short season in the church that goes from last Thursday, which was the day of the Ascension, to next Sunday, Pentecost Sunday. In fact, it’s so short that, if you skip just one Sunday, you’ve missed an entire church season! (So you’re one of those people who feel guilty for missing a Sunday, I guess this isn’t the one to miss.)
Anyway, the Ascension refers to the event where Jesus, after wandering around the earth for forty days and appearing to the disciples in his resurrected body, was taken up into heaven as they all watched.
It’s not really a big event in the church year, and that might be because there was a lot of disagreement since the earliest days of the church as to whether the Ascension even took place.
For example, the Gospel writers Matthew, Mark and John don’t mention it at all, or seem to think of it as part of the resurrection. It’s only Luke who has Jesus walk the earth for forty days after the resurrection (that’s where we get the forty-day tradition of Easter), after which he ascends into heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Interestingly, I learned a theory this past week that Luke added the Ascension event to put a stop to people’s claims that they were seeing the resurrected Jesus. When I explained this theory to my husband Andrew, he said it sounded like trying to stop Elvis sightings or encores – a sort of “Elvis has left the building” situation.
But seriously, it may well have served this purpose for the early Christians, some of whom were having sightings of Jesus that got downright strange and were using them for political gain over other Christian groups.
But more than that, having Jesus go up into heaven might have served a moral purpose, as well, by helping the disciples to stop clinging to their encounters and memories of Jesus and start doing the work that he wanted them to do.
I spent this past week looking at some of the art of the Ascension – a wonderful event as far as the art is concerned. In one of my favorites, by the 14th century Italian painter Giotto, Jesus looks like he just took a running leap and lifted himself off into space, while, to each side a train of angels radiates out almost like smoke from a rocket.
Others are more staid. Like an anonymous 15th century altar piece in which Jesus is just sort of effortlessly lifting off into the air. Or a 15th century piece by Andrea Mantegna, where Jesus stands on a small cloud-pedestal ringed all about by little red cherub heads.
Still others seem more outright ridiculous. My favorite in this category is by Hans Seuss von Kulmbach, in which all you can see are Jesus’ sort of scrawny feet at the very top of the frame while the disciples look on. (That’s the one I put on your covers.)
There’s even a whole genre of Ascension art in which imprints of Jesus’ footprints are on the rock that he ascends from – and, actually, if you go to the Shrine of the Ascension outside Jerusalem, there’s a rock with footprints in it that you can venerate.
Anyway, and in general, almost all paintings of the Ascension seem to fall into two categories – those that direct our gaze upward, at Jesus and where he’s going; and those that direct our gaze downward, at the disciples and where they (and by extension, we) are going.
And I think that sort of gets to the different ways the Ascension has been understood over the years. It’s either an event that points us upward toward deliverance from this world; or downward to continue Christ’s work here on earth.
In the English tradition, Ascension Day is the last day of Rogation Week – the week when the priest would bless the fields for the coming year. In some churches, this also involved gathering up a bunch of people from the parish (parish in England is a geographical designation for a large-ish area – like a town – rather than another name for a particular church); so they would gather up people from the parish to go around the boundaries of the parish and mark them with stones colored with white chalk.
The point of this practice was for the church to mark out its sphere of social obligation – anyone within those bounds who fell ill, needed financial help, or fell on hard times for whatever reason was entitled to help from the church. Those outside the boundaries had another church to help. But everyone should be provided for as needed.
Meaning that the Ascension was, above all, a day to be reminded of our moral obligation for the well being of others. So maybe the Ascension reminds us that our gaze shouldn’t be up in heaven, but on those footsteps in the rock - footsteps that we are called to follow, and footsteps that lead us on the path to compassion, charity, and justice.
