Sermon preached by The Revd Neil Fernyhough, 7th Sunday of Easter – Ascension Sunday (May 24, 2009)
Readings: Acts 1: 1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 1: 15-23; Luke 24: 44-53
When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I was obsessed with the book Watership Down, by Richard Adams. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a fantasy novel about rabbits who face challenges and near-annihilation as they seek to establish a new warren for themselves. I must have read the novel six or seven times; and the heart-rending epilogue perhaps twice as many as that. In fact, in preparing today’s sermon, I read the ending again, and – sure enough – the tears started flowing. Let’s face it, what sensitive pre-teen who raised and showed rabbits wouldn’t be fascinated by a story of anthropomorphic talking rabbits, and the mythopoeic world they inhabit?
Watership Down is not a difficult book for young people to understand. But I was baffled by the title of one chapter. It was in Latin, and it would be another ten years or so before I tried my hand at learning the language. The title was “Dea ex machina.” It would be some time before I found out that this was the feminine version of deus ex machina. This phrase, meaning “god from a machine,” refers to a literary device in which a person, thing, or event suddenly appears out of nowhere to help a character out of a seemingly impossible situation.
The thought came unbidden to my mind as I contemplated my Ascension Sunday sermon and the imagery from the Acts of the Apostles – the reading appointed for Ascension Day this past Thursday – where Jesus was, and I quote, “lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” The apostles stand around looking up, and suddenly two men in white robes appear, saying, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you…will come in the same way as you saw him go.”
What we have in the Ascension narratives in Luke and Acts – a two-part account written by the same author – is not so much a deus ex machina as a deus in a machina, god into a machine. Jesus’ final appearance in Matthew is on the unidentified mountain in Galilee to which he had summoned the disciples, where he commissions them to spread the Gospel and baptise. In John, Jesus appears on the beach by the Sea of Galilee, where he fixes the disciples breakfast, and then takes Peter aside to commission him with the famous words, “feed my sheep.” And, as we all know from our Good Friday and Easter readings this year, in Mark, Jesus doesn’t appear at all after his crucifixion. That gospel ends abruptly with the discovery by the women of the empty tomb.
But in Luke and Acts there is no ambiguity about what happened to Jesus after the resurrection – but ambiguity is precisely what we’re left with. For devout, thinking Christians, the idea of Jesus rising up into the sky on a cloudlike cosmic elevator strains credulity. If nothing else, it suggests a physical transportation to a physical place – but where? Given the problematic nature of the Ascension claim, it is little wonder that books like The Jesus Scroll and The da Vinci Code; or movies like The Last Temptation of Christ, have gained such currency. These peddle the theory that Jesus lived happily ever after, perhaps in a little cottage on the Riviera with Mary Magdalene.
The fact is, we’ll never know what happened to Jesus after his resurrection. And, I would say that the fact that the disciples experienced the presence of the living Lord for a time should be enough to satisfy. Because what is really important about the Ascension is not the literal details, but that it acts as a terminus for Easter. It is a festival which occurs forty days after that event – and we should all know by now to perk up our ears when we hear “forty days” – reminding us, as it should, of the forty years in the wilderness for the Israelites, the forty days Moses spent on Mount Sinai, the forty days Jesus spent in the desert wilderness receiving his commission from the Father, and the forty days of Lent. In this case, the fortieth day sends a clear message that another time of preparation and discernment has come to fruition. Jesus’ earthly ministry has been bequeathed to those who would follow him. And in seven short days we will commemorate that with the Feast of Pentecost – the bestowal of the Holy Spirit enabling us to be Christ’s agents.
Our readings this Sunday – this in-between Sunday – reflect the strange stasis of the already and the not yet. The first reading, from Acts, follows directly upon Jesus’ Ascension, giving an account of the first order of business for the apostles – which is to find a replacement for the now-dead traitor Judas. Once again twelve, they are prepared for Pentecost, literally the “fiftieth” day after Passover, and for the final commissioning by the Holy Spirit.
The second reading is from First John. It wraps up the discourse on love and faithfulness we have heard from that book throughout Easter. The final message is that eternal life is in the Son, and whoever believes this, believes in God. It is uncompromising and stark – and the reader is accused of turning God into a liar if he or she does not believe in this testimony. If nothing else, this passage drives home with a hammer what this season has been all about – that the Resurrection is central to Christian identity and Christian hope. And, coming as it does just before Pentecost, that is a point well worth mulling over.
The final communication is from Jesus himself, from the so-called “high-priestly prayer” found in the Gospel of John. The prayer reiterates over and over, in a somewhat convoluted style, the mutual identity of the Father, the Son, and the disciples of Jesus – us, in other words. There is a progression outward into time. And it reminds me of the analogy told by Herbie O’Driscoll, that to live as a Christian is to live at the outer edge of an ever-expanding concentric circle – a circle with a common centre. As we reach back our hand touches the hand of someone who brought us into the faith, whose hand in turn reaches back, until the hand that is finally touched has the imprint of nails.
This is what it means to live in a post-resurrection time. It means to live, paradoxically, in a resurrection time. It means preparing for the commissioning that is at once always imminent, yet which has already happened. It means living as a community prepared at any time to see Jesus return in the same way he went – however that was – knowing that, in fact, he has never left us. It means dwelling in these mysteries, happy and unafraid, allowing them to fire our love and propel us to action, as though the ministry of Jesus never ended. Because it hasn’t. Amen.
© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2009.
