The Ascension of the Lord

“Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?” (Acts of the Apostles, 1: 10)

Jesus has left. His physical presence “ascended,” he has returned to the Father who sent him to help people see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears who God truly is.

The Feast of the Ascension reminds us of one very significant  reality:

That Jesus’ completion of his earthly work of teaching through his parables, casting out demons, “healing of the people,” and calling outcasts into full fellowship brought a new way of living into full existence – a way of living Jesus called the “reign of God” or the “kingdom of God.”

This “reign” or “kingdom” is not to be understood as a political or militaristic rule involving a tyrannical domination over others or a claim to power for manipulating anyone.

Instead, the “reign of God” that Jesus relentlessly preached and lived out involved one very singular dimension:

The rule of God over human hearts. Your heart. My heart.

In today’s reading from Acts, the angels ask the apostles: “why are you standing there looking at the sky?”

What the angels are saying is:

Jesus is not asking us to stand in awe or to waste time grieving his physical absence. Rather he is calling each of us to go on a mission – a mission loving what Jesus loved; a mission bringing the “good news” of a whole new way of being human to “all the nations.”

As one scripture scholar put it:

“In these times of deep religious crisis, it is not enough to believe in just any God; we need to know what kind of God is revealed in Jesus…. (I)t seems very important to me to reaffirm the authentic God of Jesus – not a ‘god’ we have created out of our own fears, ambitions, and illusions, but the very different God that Jesus experienced and communicated.”

In the teachings of the entire New Testament, if there is a God worth believing in, God has to be like Jesus.

I say this because Jesus’ way of being with the “least of these,” his way of teaching the centrality of love and kindness and mercy, his way of healing those who were dismissed as irrelevant by the rest of society, his way of day-after-day-after day showing heartfelt compassion – these are the characteristics of a God truly worth our faith and our trust.

For me, the true test of whether the God we believe in is worth our love and fidelity is this:

How does that God care for his people?

The God of Jesus demonstrated his kind of care for people by:

Searching out the one sheep that was lost; forgiving “70 times 7;” throwing a party for the son who was lost but now was found; getting down on his own knees and washing the feet of his disciples. And, of course, stretching out his arms on a cross, enduring the most ignominious and excruciating of deaths, and gifting his entire self out of love for all.

That’s how the God of Jesus cares.

But this God also must be one who can draw the best out of us, a God who can enrich us by stretching us and calling us to a deeper and more fulfilling experience of true happiness.

Jesus does just that when he says: “Be merciful as God is merciful to you.” Love as I love. Forgive as I forgive. And the reward will be a way of life resulting in a peace and a harmony that will satisfy our deepest longings as human beings.

This is how the “reign of God” will happen in our lives:

When we begin seeing through the eyes of those who suffer, who are sick, who are imprisoned, who are mentally ill, who are terribly damaged by their involvement in our wars, who have been violated physically and sexually, who are denied rights because of their skin color or their faith allegiance, who live in constant hunger.

It will happen when we begin to take their side. It will happen when we make their sufferings our own. It will happen when we shake off our indifference, renounce our self-serving ways of thinking, break down our walls of separation and build bridges of inclusion – not exclusion.

It will happen when we do as Jesus did.

The gospel writers tell us that at his death Jesus “cried out with a loud voice.”

I wonder if that cry was loud enough to be heard by all of those who have been crucified throughout history in one way or another. I wonder if that cry was loud enough to be heard by each of us even to this day as a scream of indignation against all that dehumanizes us.

I wonder – because the earliest Christians never forgot that cry. It profoundly impacted them to the very depths of their being.

What will enable us to do as Jesus did, of course, is the day-to-day power of faith and hope – gifts from the God of Jesus. We will need both faith and hope to “not just stand there looking at the sky,” but to work together for a more fully human world, a world in line with God’s will, a world in which the kind of God Jesus lived out, taught, modeled and died for will become real to all:

A life for everyone surrounded and nurtured by a culture of love and compassion and reconciliation.

Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.

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5/10/18