Readings (with Daniel 7:1-14 read in place of Acts)

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

How’s that as an exercise in understatement? Not only risen, but, in Ephesians’ language “seated … at [God’s] right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.”

Like last year, we heard Daniel’s vision in place of Acts’ account of the ascension. I make the change for two reasons. First, having only Acts and Luke is something like having our participation in a wedding confined to watching the couple leaving for the church. Daniel’s vision pictures the ceremony itself: “one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him…”  

Daniel’s vision pulls the camera way back to encompass—representatively—human history, and to ask how it ends. It is a profoundly hopeful vision: history ends not with some version of “The one with the biggest teeth wins” but with authentically human life. And what today’s feast celebrates is that Daniel got it right. The Son of Man—Jesus’ preferred self-designation—has in fact been “given dominion and glory and kingship.” That’s good news that our neighbors—near and far—need to hear.

“Dominion and glory and kingship.” “Hey preacher, sure doesn’t look like it.” No it doesn’t, if dominion is measured by the compulsion of Daniel’s beasts. That’s one of the Church’s oldest temptations: let’s use the beasts’ tools, marry Church priorities with State power. No. Jesus’ dominion: creating space for free human choice, with the utterly reliable promise that even the smallest choice matters. “and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple– truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward” (Matt. 10:42).

And then there’s our reading from Ephesians: “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” If we’re paying attention, that text can be downright jarring. Imagine someone introducing a speaker like this: “She is the CEO of J P Morgan Chase—and the Manager of the McDonald’s at 5^th Avenue & 42^nd Street in Manhattan.” “Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion…head for the church.”

If you want evidence that Paul’s certifiable, there it is. Or maybe Paul has seen what we have trouble seeing. Think about the sort of thing we’ve been hearing in our readings from Acts this Easter season.

“But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

Later, the high priest: “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” To which Peter and the apostles: “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:27-31).

Stephen, while being stoned, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).

Daniel’s beasts, Paul’s “rule and authority and power and dominion:” these are not the agents for a human future. But Jesus’ Church: we’re the heralds, the witnesses, the evidence, of that human future, and who knows what we might contribute to it in the process.

This Feast of the Ascension. About Jesus, certainly. Being about Jesus, profoundly good news re human history’s goal. Being about Jesus, a reminder of the centrality of Jesus’ Church for that human history.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!