For Ascension Sunday, May 29th, 2022: “The day he was lifted up to heaven! The reflections of a witness on that ‘last day’…”
(Please read Matthew 28: 16-20; Daniel 3: 1-30; Acts 1: 1-11)
“Our Master was gone! But we wouldn’t forget him. How could we? After all we had spent 3 fantastic years in the company of a beautiful soul – a wonderful teacher, a friend; a King who wore his royal robes lightly and loved his ‘subjects’ – not like the tin-pot gods who insist you worship them at the point of a dagger – and threaten you with fire if you don’t!
No, he’s a priest with whom you could share your shameful secrets and yet still feel valued and clean; the Prophet who spoke God’s words; the man who smiled God’s smile and did the things that only God could do…
We would never forget the good times. Our wounds would heal in time. The tears would dry up in time. Then we would collect his best sayings, make a book of them - and erect a memorial stone. We would gather on special days and hope there might be some reason to carry on - and that we would remember what he looked like and still be able to hear his voice. These are the things we do for the great and good aren’t they? The things we do for kings and the ones we miss when they are gone – to the grave…
And so words do not, nor can they ever, truly describe what it was like for us in those first forty days when we discovered; not that he was – but that he is…He could have simply disappeared in a puff of smoke. Instead he presented himself to us. He appeared to us…
You’ll excuse me, I’m sure, if I give voice to our doubts or admit that we worried that what we were seeing was some phantom or figment of our imaginations. We are people like you, given to fear and doubt and surprise. Even in our unbridled joy we struggled to believe the evidence before our eyes. Joy beyond words…
But, over forty days, he gave us each what we needed – convincing proof that he was alive. Alive!! The same Master; but more glorious than before – if such a thing were possible. He had come back to us – just as he said he would. Things that made no real sense to us back then - now we could begin to see them. We shouldn’t have doubted his word but we did. We shouldn’t have needed convincing proofs but we did!
And so, on that first day of the week he came to Mary and the women in the garden – and turned their tears of loss to ones of joy, then to Peter and John and then to us – out of nowhere – through locked doors, to breathe on us, to bless us and give us his peace. I touched his wrists and side; he was dead and now – here he is - he is alive - and he breathed on us (the Holy Spirit) and we knew…
When he was needed the master came to his companions walking on the road. They didn’t know him at first but he gradually opened their hearts and minds to the scriptures – he opened their eyes and they recognised him in the breaking of bread;
He (the Risen Lord) took breakfast on the beach with our desolate Peter and restored a friend to his rightful mind; he appeared to Thomas a week later and dispelled his doubts…
And we remembered his words… Don’t worry about the future, what you are to say and do – where to find the strength…
You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy…just as the woman forgets the anguish of childbirth when the fruit of her labour comes in to the world; and no one will take away your joy…’
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also…
As the days of spring went by- and all too quickly - we heard him say, ‘Let me go!’ We didn’t want to. But we gathered on the mount where we had been many times before.
I have to say, it didn’t make the pain of goodbye any easier to bear as we watched, this time in stunned belief, as the King rose on the cloud to heaven, arms as ever stretched out in perpetual blessing, gradually going from our sight but not gone – never gone.
We needed no convincing that we would see him again. I needed no convincing that God is…
I went with my fellows - we descended, we tumbled, down the hillside to the temple where we met and gave thanks to the ascended one in the strains of a psalm:
We need no convincing, now - that He is…
He is - Seated at the right hand of the Father, enthroned in power
He is - Interceding, still giving succour, sympathizing, sending his Spirit, still saving souls to the uttermost – witnessing to his power and love - through us. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.
That he will return on the clouds just as he went – in the company of angels - with a shout and the sound of trumpets! We needed no convincing.
We would need no invitation to call out -
Hear, oh earth! The Lord, the Lord alone, is God. Now, and forever”
So, you could pray, just as we eleven prayed:
“Risen and ascended LORD, we would have lingered on Transfiguration Mountain, clung to you for dear-life in the Easter garden, been saddened by your Emmaus departure, and begged the Ascension skies never to close. But you have taught us deeper truth: you are not absent, even in fire and flood, even in what looks like departure…
We give thanks that mountain-top helps lie waiting down in the valleys; that you are just as close to us in busy thoroughfares as you are in the quiet parks and gardens; that you are invited to every meal that we sit down to. Heaven has come down to earth as one day earth will be as heaven…
Mark F-R (29/05/22)