Ascension Sunday
I have always struggled a bit with images of the Ascension. All the artwork poses a challenge. I’m not talking about artistic quality, which I don’t critique, but something else. Let me try to show you what I mean (see images). Some depictions of the Ascension are very majestic; others are quite simple; some of them look very pious; others are quite stylized; some artists view the event from above Jesus’ head; others just show his feet; there are some very ethereal images of the event; and some vergeon being abstract. But no matter how you portray it or what perspective you take, you are left with the same basic fact: there’s a body floating in the air. Depending on what your state of mind is, that could be awe-inspiring, surreal, unbelievable, or even comic, but there is no escaping that fact: in the Ascension, a physical body goes up into the sky.
We might want to think that this is just metaphorical. After all, we all know heaven is not up in the clouds somewhere. But the crucial point here, and what makes all Ascension art so distinctive and challenging, is that the New Testament won’t let us view this as a purely symbolic event. Both the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts insist that when Jesus enters into that ineffable state of union with his Father that we call “heaven,” he does so with a body. It’s a transformed and glorified body that can walk through closed doors and disappear at will, but it’s still a body that can eat and drink, a body that still bears the scars of crucifixion. The Bible just won’t let us spiritualize this event. Jesus is not a spirit or a ghost: he is embodied, which is to say, he is human. It is a fully human being that enters into heaven and is united with God.
In fact, if I were to give a brief definition of “Christ,” I would say that Christ is the union of the divine and the human, the marriage of spirit and matter, perfect wholeness. Jesus the Christ embodies that union, that wholeness. And in doing so, he gives us an icon, an image, of what we are called to be.
This is often lost in some popular views of religion, which in this country are frequently tainted with puritanism: God only loves “spiritual” things; the body is dirty or bad or irrelevant; and the goal of faith is to escape this material world and become purely spiritual beings not weighed down by earthly bodies. But the Ascensions tells us — no, it shows us — that is not true. The goal of our existence is not to stop being human, but to become fully human, like Jesus: embodied creatures infused with the Spirit and the love of the living God. You’ll notice that when we say the Creed, we don’t profess belief in the immortality of the soul: we proclaim the resurrection of the body.
The ramifications of this are many and profound, but let me just focus on one: life in this material world is sacred. Physical existence does not prevent us from experiencing God: physical existence is rather the means by which we will experience God. So I want to invite you to do an experiment. One day this week, try to see everything you do as holy: taking a shower, making lunch, typing on your computer, putting on a mask when you go to the store, doing someone a favor, everything. Try remembering that God’s love flows through all of it. And that’s true even when we suffer or fail: in every cough and fever, in every harsh word spoken in anger, in every selfish act, I invite you to see God’s love seeking to heal and forgive and renew. You don’t have to do it perfectly, but for just one day, see the world like Christ.
Jesus ascended into heaven in bodily form so that we could see heaven in bodily form. Our calling is not to escape from the physical world to get to God, but to find God in the physical world and live God-infused lives, like Jesus. In fact, there is no better way to follow Jesus the Christ, who even now has a human body as he reigns in heaven.
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