Sermon for Ascension Day 21 May 2020: Daniel 7, 9-14; Acts 1, 1-11; Luke 24 44-end.

Leonard Doolan – ST PAUL’S ATHENS!

 

The UK television series ‘Little Britain’ is not everyone’s cup of tea. You may not even know it. In a series of comedy sketches, ranging from the tasteless through to bad taste (!), there is one recurring sketch with Andy and Lou. Andy is in a wheelchair, Lou is his carer. Whenever Lou goes off to speak to someone Andy is up and running about, or playing football or something energetic, but by the time Lou returns Andy is always back in his wheelchair. In one episode Lou turns away to chat to someone for a few moments – when he looks back to the wheelchair Andy is nowhere to be seen. The camera than pans upwards to discover Andy sitting on a branch way up in a tree. ‘How did you get up there?’ Lou asks naively. ‘I fell’ replies Andy. Watching it you will either find it hilariously funny, or hate it, but you will be left with one question in your mind. How can you fall upwards?

On a rather deeper level this question can be reoriented towards questions that challenge everything we assume as normal and invariable. Science has helped us in our fixed thinking about this. From the perspective of humanity everything on earth must move downwards – gravity dictates this, and gravity equally dictates our spiritual view. All the cosmos also has to be dragged downwards by the gravity created by the human perspective. All comes down to our level, nothing can be raised to God’s level. Man makes God in human image.

Immediately you will see the dilemma here. Philippians 2 rightly reminds us that God gave up everything of himself and entered into human life – kenosis – we call it, self emptying. This kenotic action of God results in a Jesus who lived, preached, performed miracles, suffered, and died on a cross.

St. John tells us that this is the Divine Word, the Logos, that has come among us and has become flesh. This divine action has been shared with us already in a vision of Daniel (Daniel 7), ‘As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven’. It’s a well known passage in Daniel – well known enough for Jesus himself to quote it, much to the shock of the religious authorities.

It ended – all this human playing field – with a death, a crucifixion. As the human race reflected on this we were drawn to think of what this man did for us by dying in such a way. He took away our sin, some say; he paid a price to pay for our purchase, some say; he was sacrificed to appease the anger that God had against us some say; and so the ideas go on in an endless hypothesis with no real conclusion that is finite, because what we all know is that this man’s death on the cross is a mystery, a mystery that touches each and every one of us deeply as we journey, little step by little step, into that mystery. He was on our level, you see, so we can think of what he has done but on our own human terms. We have all fallen – thanks to that Adam and Eve stuff – and of course, we have all fallen ‘downwards.’

No one falls upwards and ends up in the branch of a tree. This jars with us – it’s not how things are or can be. Everything falls downwards, to a base human level. This is how it is – gravity affects the physical realities, and seemingly it pulls down the spiritual realities as well.

 

Yet, this is not our Christian reality. Despite death, the most human of certainties, God raised his Son Jesus Christ, and in doing so he called him home – home to be with the Father who sent him. It is to this same home that we are all invited. We call it heaven, but we could equally say that it is home.  Despite our failings and failures, our limits and constraints, our sinful complacency and indifference, we are called to ‘fall upwards’. The resurrection of Jesus returns us to where we began – home. His rising from the grave creates for us the garden where we first experienced life, that garden we call paradise. In death, resurrection and ascension, Christ places us once again in that garden of delight, and despite everything that indicates the contrary, we each ascend to be with God our Father, sharing his home. As the pioneer and perfector of our faith, Christ goes before us. He makes life sacred, he makes us sacred, he makes our journey towards God a sacred journey, for everything in heaven and on earth as touched by Christ, is loved and redeemed. Our home is made ready by Christ being born in Mary’s womb. Our home is made ready by Christ in the tomb. Our home is made ready by Christ ascending to the Father. All this is claimed by Christ; all this is our home in Christ.

Christ’s ascension into heaven illustrates that there is more than one gravity in the divine and human experience, for although we may have our feet firmly fixed on the ground, our hearts are summoned to gravitate towards heaven, where Christ has gone before. We so readily accept the principle of gravity, are we so quick to accept the gravitational pull that holds heaven and earth together in Christ, the new creation.

 

It may be no bad thing, from time to time, when we reflect on the human condition, just to rethink our situation, and imagine what it is for us to ‘fall upwards’.