Is the Ascension the Meanest Thing Ever?

Last updated on: May 26, 2017 at 2:36 pm by Anne Kennedy

Is the Ascension the Meanest Thing Ever? 2017-05-26T14:36:05-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I’m happy to announce that this is one of the most important days of the year, and no, not because it is national wine day, nor even because it’s the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, although, maybe that is more important, now that I really think about it. No, it’s because it’s Ascension Day–the Day to eat birds and fruit, because Jesus.

If you’re a Christian like me, or even a Christ Follower, you probably have mixed feelings about the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. On the one hand, of course, because you are naturally on board with Everything that Jesus does, you’re delighted that he betook himself into the sky, apparently to abandon you to ‘the Holy Spirit’ who, if he isn’t a ghost, must at least be the less exciting second cousin member of the Godhead, the one who is unaccountably still here when the more interesting ones have left the party. You turn around with your glass in your hand and discover him lurking there in the corner and realize, in your exhaustion, that you’re going to have to talk to him as well, even as all the other guests have sapped away your energy. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher went away, but there you are, trying to carry on a conversation with Mark Hamill, determined not to let the disappointment show in your face.

To get over the resentment of having Jesus leave so abruptly, many Christians assuage the sorrow by deciding that the Holy Spirit must be the main thing after all. They beat back the disappointment and longing by imagining that the Holy Spirit will give them all the things that Jesus Would have, if only you work hard to build those tents for him and Moses and Elijah after all. Stuff like cupcakes and bigger houses and happiness.

The main thing, though, is to be cheerful and never to doubt God, ever, whether he is on a throne or on a cloud or breathing over the face of the deep. No, just concentrate on the glories of the present.

I jest, of course. The christian life, if you’re doing it right, is seriously purgatorial precisely because of what Jesus did on this day–ascending up to heaven on a cloud while his disciples craned their next and asked themselves what on earth was going on. They had thought that all the trouble was over, only to discover that it was really only beginning, for them. Everything that Jesus endured was going to be their portion, only now they were going to do it cheerfully and with a vigor heretofore unknown to them. It took much of the New Testament to calm down and see that it really was going to be ok, and Jesus hadn’t just done the meanest thing ever.

No, indeed, by going to heaven, and sitting there on the right hand of the Father, Jesus wasn’t just trying to get away. It was part of the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. He had to go sit there because he had just completed the remarkable and perfect work of salvation, sitting down when no priest for hundreds and hundreds of years had ever had a chair to collapse in in the presence of God. The work of sacrificing and forgiving had never ever been done all the way. It had to be started over fresh every morning. The priest would toddle into the temple and be on his feet, back and forth, back and forth, only getting to sit down at night, in his own home, never in the peaceful presence of the Lord. Whereas Jesus, in his death and resurrection, finished it. There wasn’t any more salvific work to be done henceforth.

But there is still work to be done. And this, I think, is the hardest to get hold of for the ordinary person stuck down here below the cloud cover. We carry on, trying to take the strange news to a dying world that 1. It is dying (always a pleasant message to deliver) and 2. A man quite a long time ago conquered that death so that it doesn’t have to die if only it would like to abandon the self and rush headlong into the spiritual grasp of that man who isn’t here right now, but is in heaven, and he is the Savior, and I can see that you’ve lost interest already. While we’re all out trying to both deliver and avoid this message, Jesus himself, sitting so comfortably on his throne, isn’t leaning back watching our efforts and tsk tsking. He is actually leaning forward, toward the Father, claiming desperate souls one by one, speaking on behalf of each, tethering himself to the heart and mind of every true believer by that thin, invisible, unbreakable thread of faith by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t know how to imagine what I’m talking about, go read The Princess and the Goblin–even though it is very old and very strange.

The Ascension isn’t an abandonment. It’s just a very long and somewhat difficult engagement period. Each day feels more of a trial, but not the kind of trial that makes you want to give up. No, rather, each difficulty, each day of waiting, each desperate prayer brings evermore the clear vision of what is coming, of the descent back down, past the clouds, of Jesus himself. When all the other lights have gone out, and the world has gnashed its teeth to the full measure, then lift up your head, for the time of waiting will be over. You won’t have time or inclination anymore to reconfigure the tents of this life as you crane your neck. The light, the city, the peace, the rest will be the glory that is before your very eyes.

A blessed Feast of the Ascension to you all.

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