Homily, Ascension Sunday 2024
Can you imagine being there when Jesus ascended? Can you see the look of Surprise and Shock on the apostles’ faces as Jesus ascended into heaven? It was then, and is now, a surprising event. A shocking event.
The Apostles expected the Messiah to come as a mighty King. Surprise! He came as a vulnerable child. The Apostles expected the Messiah would win wars for them. Surprise! He preached peace. The Apostles expected the Messiah to save God’s people Israel. Surprise! He saved the whole world.
And throughout his ministry, Jesus continued to shock and surprise them. He told them to love their enemies. He told them that anger is the equivalent of murder, and lust the equivalent of adultery. He told them that they lose what they keep, and they gain what they give away. He told them the far-flung God was as close as the widow without justice and the stranger without a roof.
And He told stories – lots of stories. Shocking stories. Stories that hung like axes in the air
- about a son of shame who returns to fanfare, while a son of duty stays without a party,
- about a worker who bears the heat of the day, while an afternoon stroller is the one paid first ,
- about a priest who passes by the other side, while an outcast wraps a stranger’s wounds,
- about a poor man who dines with Abraham, while a rich man cannot find a finger of water,
- about a good man whose prayer is swallowed in air, while a sinner has the ear of God.
Is any of that really a surprise? Jesus was, and is, as the poet John Shea says, the Master of Shock. Jesus challenged their world view two thousand years ago, and he challenges our world view today.
He called them and He calls us out of the comfortable boxes we put life, and God, into … and challenges us to see the world in a different way, a grander way. And in doing so, he calls us to question the very way we see the world and what we believe is real.
It is all too easy for us to fall into the trap of believing that the whole world is like the city we live in. Of thinking that the whole world is like the street we live on. Or the parish we attend. Scientists tell us that even the slice of creation that we can see ….. the stars and planets, the trees and animals, indeed all matter and energy that we experience is only 5% of the matter and energy that exists. The rest is invisible and unknown. Doesn’t even interact with our 5%. Yet, with our limited knowledge, insight and perspective, we think we can define what is real in the world we experience. And then blindly hold tight to those definitions.
And with that limited insight and perspective, we even try to define God and hold fast to those definitions. We put God into a box, so that we can be more comfortable with God. Get a handle on God. We really do create God in our own image. Just like the Disciples did.
Yet despite our feeble attempts to understand, God is ultimately so very much more than we can imagine. So is it any wonder that when a mirror is held up to our limited perspectives of both the world and of God, we get shocked ?
The scriptures today remind us to question the lenses through which we see God. The boxes we try to put God into. The scriptures call us to be open to seeing a God who stretches us beyond the safety of the familiar. To see a God who constantly shocks us.
And here is the greatest shock of all – God, the creator of all that exists, wants to be in relationship with us. God wants to connect with us, to draw us closer. God loves us and wants only that we begin to love God too. God has called you and I to bear witness with our own lives to God’s message to transform this world. To let Love be our guiding principle. To care for others and share with others. To live out our mission of love, of caring, of revealing the true essence of God, to those who are most in the need of an experience of Gods love, mediated though our actions and revealed in our love for them.
The Ascension which we celebrate today is but a preparation for the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost – where God shocks us yet once again with how God manifests God’s presence to us. But, we need not wait until next week to be shocked. In a few moments, the God who ascended into the clouds 2000 years ago, the God who is present with each of us, each and every moment in our lives, through the Holy Spirit, that same God will become truly and really present in the Eucharist – transcendent in reality, but made visible to us in the species of bread and wine.
Shocking.
But not surprising.