[Remember, you may follow Evening Prayer each day from Church of the Holy Cross at 6pm.
Go to https://www.facebook.com/holycrossdowntown and look for the day's EP. On Sundays, Bishop Jake Owensby offers Morning Prayer at 10am at https://www.facebook.com/epiwla/ and Holy Cross offers MP Sundays at 11am. Each of these services may be viewed as they premier or after the initial service time.]
ASCENSION SUNDAY - A -
20 LUKE 24, 44-53
Contained within the Calendar
of the Church Year are Principal Feasts, Holy Days, Major Feasts and Fast Days.
Ascension Day is a Principal Feast of the Church. Principal Feasts take
precedence of any other day or observance (BCP, p.15).
The Ascension of Jesus took
place forty days after Easter and falls on a Thursday. Because of it’s
importance it can be transferred to the Sunday following. The Propers for the
Day as well as the following Sunday speak of this significant event in the life
of Jesus and the Church. What makes it important to us today?
Christ’ ascension into heaven
marks the completion of his earthly ministry and his glorification. At his
Incarnation Christ brought his divine nature to our human nature. At his
Ascension, he has taken our human nature into heaven.
Jesus is our first Advocate
that now sits at the right hand of God and intercedes on our behalf. At the
Ascension, he instructed his disciples to wait for the second Advocate, the
Holy Spirit, who would empower them to carry on His mission of bringing God to
man and man to God.
Jesus’ commissioning of the
Apostles and the promise of the coming Holy Spirit are the last words of Jesus
on earth. The Apostles are to be witnesses of his glorification as well as his
earthly life and resurrection as they proclaim the gospel. They are united to
the ascended Jesus by the promised Spirit.
In his last earthly words to his followers, as
recorded by St. Luke, Jesus opened the eyes of their hearts to understand the
scriptures concerning him and God’s plan for the salvation of the world as he
had previously done for the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus on the evening
of his resurrection.
Luke/Acts contain accounts of
the ascension but they also record the fact that the disciples were still in
the dark about the true purpose of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. Despite all
they had witnessed to this point, they ask an earthly question; “will you at
this time restore dominion to Israel
What they want to hear Jesus
say is “now is the time for Him to really get down to business, the kind of
business they had expected Messiah to conduct all along?” That is, to restore
the fortunes of Israel
They do not understand what
God’s plan of reconciliation means or of the role of Christ in their bringing
it to fulfillment. They were not expecting him to depart in such a dramatic
fashion. They still have questions. Their faith is incomplete. They have not yet
been baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Then, according to Luke,
Jesus led them out as far as Bethany
Two angels appear, as they
did to the women at the tomb, and move them along to take up the task they have
been commissioned to do, to be witnesses of Jesus’ life, death, and
resurrection, to preach the gospel and to make disciples of all nations.
After having seen Jesus
ascend into heaven, the disciples make their way back to the Holy City
The disciples had been filled
with fear by his death on the cross, and their faith in the resurrection had
been hesitant, but now they gained such great strength from seeing the truth,
that when the Lord went up to heaven, far from feeling sadness they experienced
a great joy.
Why was the Ascension so
important to the disciples and the early church and why does it remain
important to us today?
At the Ascension Jesus
commissioned his disciples to be Apostles, eyewitnesses of his “true person”
(St. Leo The Great) that he “was truly born of the Virgin, truly suffered and
died, and was now recognized as risen.”
At the Ascension, Jesus gave
his disciples the promise of the coming Spirit that would lead them into all
truth, strengthen them and encourage them to carry on his mission of
reconciliation. The Holy Spirit would complete their faith and empower them to
be the witnesses of all things concerning the Christ and God’s plan of
salvation.
The Ascension of Jesus is
just as important to us today as it was the early Church. The disciples would
be baptized with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. That is what they were waiting
for. We who have been baptized into Jesus’ death and raised to new life in him
through the waters of holy baptism have been sealed with the same Holy Spirit
and empowered to continue the mission.
Moreover, the Ascension of
Jesus has exalted our human nature into heaven. “For in the vast company of the
blessed, human nature was exalted, passing beyond the realm of the angels to
receive an elevation that would have no limit until it was admitted into the
eternal Father’s dwelling, to share the glorious throne of Him whose nature it
had been united in the person of the Son.”(St. Leo the Great)
At His Ascension, Jesus
promised to be with us always, even to the end of the ages. “Just as Jesus
ascended without leaving us, so too we are already with him in heaven, although
his promises have not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.” (St. Augustine) Faith,
Hope and Love unite us to Him.
Early icons of Jesus’
ascension are depicted in such a way that one cannot tell whether he is going
into heaven or coming again to earth. The large stain glass window over the
altar at Christ Church, St. Joseph is an example of this. This captures the
profound truth that we are already living under His reign while awaiting his
return.
Jesus came down from heaven,
and it is He alone who has ascended into heaven, who now sits at the right hand
of the Father and intercedes for us. Until He comes again and exalts us to that
place where He Himself has gone, we, as Church are to remain rooted in
scripture and active in mission for the sake of the gospel and to the glory of
His name. AMEN+
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