The Ascension of the Lord

The historical bodily presence of Jesus has ended.

Those disciples who walked and talked and dined with him; those faithful ones who followed him, watched him heal the sick, cure the lepers and made the blind see and the deaf hear; those people who left family and jobs and other commitments to listen to this son of a carpenter teach them to do such radical things as forgive 70 x 7, love even their enemies, feed the hungry, be servants of all – those very same ones stand bereft in today’s first reading and look up to the sky as Jesus ascends into the heavens. 

Now what do they do? 

They’re grieving, overwhelmed with loss and overcome with a profound sense of abandonment. 

All of us have experienced such a feeling to one extent or another. All of us have lost jobs or homes or important possessions or personal relationships that were extremely dear to us. 

And many of these losses have brought us to tears, maybe even to deep anger. Some may have triggered behaviors on our part that we now wish we could take back. 

That’s the situation these people, followers of this great prophet named Jesus  were in on the day that we now celebrate as the feast of Ascension. 

But notice that the angels in the story, the messengers from God, don’t let them stay stuck in their turmoil. Instead, they jar the disciples back to reality not with a command, but with a question: 

“Why are you standing there looking at the sky?”

In other words:  

“This is no time to mope, no time to feel sorry for yourselves. There’s a message of Good News to be preached. There’s a continued presence of Jesus to be lived out by each of you.” 

Remember the gospel message of last Sunday:

“I will not leave you orphaned.”

The angels remind them – and each of us – that Jesus made a series of promises before physically departing:

I will be with you through the Spirit who will be available to you always, and especially whenever two or three are gathered in my name. 

I will be there with you in the reading and praying of Sacred Scripture.

I will be with you in the Eucharist by entering physically into your body. 

I will be there with you in the feeding of the hungry, the housing of the homeless, the visiting and care of the sick and the imprisoned. 

I will be with you, and in you, and for you, and among you in all these ways – and so many others. 

Jesus told his disciples again and again this same singular message: 

You are not alone. 

That terrible feeling of abandonment, Jesus assured them, would be fully addressed. 

And it was. 

That earliest community of people did as the angels told them – and caught fire in the process, a fire lit by the Spirit, as we celebrate on the feast of Pentecost. 

And that fire, that came to engulf them, raged so brightly and so strongly that within less than two hundred years most of the then known western world became aware of a group called “Christians.” 

Even more astounding, in an era in which few “books” were published, and fewer read, there were so many manuscripts written about Jesus and what he meant to people, that it took the Church the better part of 500 years to decide which of these published materials were to be included in what came to be called the New Testament – which we now possess and regard as “inspired.” 

When you consider that there was no “social media” in those days, no TV or radio, Facebook or Twitter, or even a printing press, it is truly remarkable how exciting and freeing the Good News of Jesus Christ was to so many people – and how hungry they were to hear it. 

For more than two thousand years, despite sometimes very flawed and even shocking emissaries, this same message is presented to you and me to this very day:

We are loved, not abandoned. 

We are cherished, not forgotten. 

We are treasured, not dismissed. 

Remembering all this, then, perhaps you and I can better understand what those angels were saying to the first disciples way back then – and to you and me now – when they asked that startling question: 

“Why are you standing there looking at the sky?”

After all, we are the messengers Jesus is counting on to continue to tell the story -the story of love that is the life of Jesus – the story of a love that, in the words of one poet, “recognizes no boundaries … that jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” 

Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.