Tag Archives: Ascension

Humanity’s future: Human, not bestial (Ascension, 5/9/2024)

Leave a reply

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 5th Avenue & 42nd 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!

Postscript to May 21 Anno Domini 2020

Leave a reply

Flannery O’Connor: “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

It is too easy for the darkness to be overwhelming. The good news is that that doesn’t stop us praying (Psalm 59; 88). And, equally important, without going all Pangloss/Pollyanna, we can make choices re where we direct our attention. Retrospectively, the May 21 post was also an exercise in directing the attention too much to the darkness. Not that the darkness isn’t real and profoundly destructive. But it is disproportionate with our world’s bright beginning and brighter future, as witnessed in the Feast of the Ascension. Our rector, Miranda Hassett, posted this hymn yesterday; it’s worth reposting.

And have the bright immensities received our risen Lord,
where light-years frame the Pleiades and point Orion’s sword?
Do flaming suns his footsteps trace through corridors sublime,
the Lord of interstellar space and Conqueror of time?

The heaven that hides him from our sight knows neither near nor far;
an altar candle sheds its light as surely as a star:
and where his loving people meet to share the gift divine,
there stands he with unhurrying feet; there heavenly splendors shine.

Re the Daily Office Readings May 21 Anno Domini 2020

Leave a reply
Okefenokee Swamp Park. From Carol Highsmith’s America.

The Readings: Daniel 7:9-14; Hebrews 2:5-18; Matthew 28:16-20

Celebrating Jesus’ ascension (one of our principle feasts) is hard liturgically, since most of the action happens off our stage: something like celebrating a wedding if all we were to see were the couple leaving for the church. Daniel’s dream may be the closest we get to an on-scene camera. Of the many things we might observe, here are two.

First, bottom line, our world’s future is human, not bestial. Many (most?) days that’s hard to believe in our race-to-the-bottom history. But there it is: Daniel sees something like a winged lion, then something like a bear, then something like a leopard, then something we only encounter in nightmares or the sci-fi/horror genre, but it is “one like a human being” who receives unending sovereignty.

Second, taking the chapter as a whole, we readers are often puzzled: is this “one like a human being” intended to represent an individual or a people? From the perspective of the New Testament that’s an illuminating puzzle: Jesus has so identified with his brothers and sisters (the second reading!) that his vindication and theirs are one.

The third reading. Before we succumb to the temptation to cue up “Land of Hope and Glory”, what is Jesus telling the eleven (us) to do? “Make disciples… baptizing… and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” “And teaching them” with us so good at obeying everything Jesus commands? Our discipling, evidence of a human future that is not bestial but humane?

Jesus, elsewhere (Matt. 19:26): “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” We can learn to obey while teaching others. But if only the “others” are being asked to change, that’s proselytism, not evangelism.