Ascension I

The Sunday after Ascension
June 1, 2025
          
Ascension Tide is one of the shortest of Church’s liturgical seasons, lasting only ten days. On the fortieth day after Easter, Christ ascended to the Father. Ten days later, He sends the Holy Spirit into the Apostolic Church on the feast of the Pentecost, or Whitsunday. So we have but a few days to examine the significance and meaning of the Ascension for us.
         
The Ascension of Jesus Christ restores human nature to God the Father. Then, ten days later, Christ will send the Holy Spirit into the newly formed Church in order to incorporate believers into the life of the Holy Trinity. In the simplest of terms, Christ, the Son of God, fully Glorified as the Son of Man, returns to the Father to establish a permanent home for the Saved or God’s Elect. Every aspect of Human Nature in need of repair and restoration has been Redeemed in Christ and now sits at the Father’s Right Hand. Human life is now returned to the Father’s presence in the heaven that Christians will call home. Christ our Saviour now intercedes for us and prays for our salvation. Christ prays the Father that we might freely will to go where He has gone.
         
But back to the Ascension itself. On Ascension Day, we tried to hint at the sovereignty of Christ that is manifested gloriously in His return to the Father. Christ returns to Heaven as its Lord, having subdued the earth, reclaimed it for God, and redeemed His fellow men. Christ had secured His lordship over the souls of His Apostles, His Mother, and the holy women. Now it was up to his followers to persuade the world to submit to His lordship. His Ascension seals the fate of the universe. Christ, who humbled Himself to redeem mankind and creation, would now assert His rule from Heaven until His coming again, to judge both the quick and the dead. The extent to which His followers could convert the nations would depend upon His continued rule of their hearts and souls. Without the rule of Christ in human hearts, His most Holy Incarnation would be left without witness and success. As Paul Claudel writes,

Jesus Christ, the Man-God, highest expression of creation, rises from the depths of matter where the Word was born by uniting with woman’s obedience, toward that throne which was predestined for Him at the right hand of the Father. From this place He continues to exercise his magnetic power on all creatures; all feel deep within them that summons, that injunction, to ascend. (I Believe…159)
 
To be sure, all creatures have always felt the magnetic power of Christ, the Logos, the Word, and the Wisdom of God that defines and perfects all creatures in an imperfect world. No apple tree, no farm animal, and even no man escapes the rational power of God in Jesus Christ to bring each respective creature to its appointed end, in imitation of perfection. The apple tree, following laws written upon it by God, grows to produce fruit and then to drop seeds as it imitates God’s power to reproduce and perpetuate the life that it owns. Farm animals, in addition to providing all manner of nutriment to men, reproduce themselves to continue a cycle of provision to the creation that imitates God’s good will for the earth. Even men, as inclined to wickedness as they may be, at a bare minimum reproduce themselves, no doubt subconsciously deriving some satisfaction in the reproduction of the species. All creation follows the Lordship of Christ by laws written on their natures or with some hint of a higher good found in the desire to make themselves in their children.

But beyond this, for man, there is much more to be discovered in the magnetic power of Christ. For men who are searchers, seekers, and explorers, in Christ the magnetic power is offered from God to them for the deeper satisfaction of their restless souls, which long for union with the divine. St. Peter says this morning that the end of all things is at hand. (1 St. Peter, iv. 7) Something has been accomplished and finished in the life of Christ which promises to carry men away from their earthly limitations, their sin, their death, the ongoing assaults of the Devil, into a lasting peace with God forever. For St. Peter and all faithful followers of Christ, man’s alienation from God has been overcome, his sin has been conquered, his death has taken on new meaning, and Satan has been put in his place. For St. Peter and all faithful followers of Christ, repair, redemption, and salvation have now become a real possibility through God’s Grace. The rule and governance of Christ, the Logos of the universe, now has special meaning for man. Now the human life of Christ is offered to all men as the way home to Heaven and the instrument of deliverance. For those who follow Christ, there is a summons and call to ascend with Christ in heart and mind, and with Him to continually dwell. Thus, above and beyond the contours of human existence in time and space, man is now invited to live above and beyond himself, through Christ, in the presence of God the Father.   

But, as St. Peter continues this morning, Ascension for Christians means more than gazing up into the Heavens. Ascension Tide is a call to be born again, that we might live out a life of obedience to Christ. St. Peter insists that if we would follow Christ home to Heaven, we must be sober and watching unto prayer. (idem) And if the magnetic power of the Ascended Christ is understood as God’s charity made flesh for us, then His love must define our lives in the Church, the new body of Christ. We must have fervent charity amongst ourselves, for charity covereth a multitude of sins. (ibid, 8) The gift of charity is fully expressed in Christ’s death on the Cross, where His love has conquered all sin and made death into the seedbed of new life. The gift of charity is God’s love for us men and for our salvation. This gift is given to be shared with one another. What we speak and what we do are to reveal that the Ascended Christ rules and governs our hearts and souls. Christians are called to reveal the Ascended Christ in thoughts, words, and works. In Ascension Tide, Bishop Westcott reminds us, we are encouraged to work beneath the surface of things to that which makes all things, all of us, capable of consecration. [For] Christ is not only present with us as Ascended: He is active for us. (Sermons…) Beneath the surface of life in the body, we Christians are called to find that love that begins to return our hearts and souls to God.

As our Lord Jesus Christ has ascended back to God the Father to prepare a place for us, we must in heart and mind thither ascend, and with [Him] continually dwell. We must set our hearts on things above and not things of the earth. (Col. iii. 2) Again, with Paul Claudel, we must confess that too long in this low place, we have been the slaves of gravity and the law of matter. Too long have we been at the mercy of chance and vanity. The time has come for us to take our flight, body, and soul, toward our Higher Cause. (I Believe, 160.) In Christ, we must ascend back to the Father. Christ now reigns gloriously in the greatness of His power and majesty and desires us to have our conversation with Him in Heaven, to love His appearing, and to be dissolved into His love. (Jenks, 352) We must ask Him to begin to reign and rule as King Supreme from the thrones of our hearts. We must begin to feel the powerful attraction of Christ’s Grace and Holy Spirit, to draw up our minds and desires from the poor perishing enjoyments here below, to those most glorious and everlasting attainments above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. (Idem, Jenks) 

Of course, the Holy Ghost cannot be of much use to us until we have ascended with Christ back to the Father. We must first ascend if a suitable place in our hearts and souls is to be made ready for the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. If we would ascend with Christ to Heaven, we will have placed ourselves in subjection to Him. Christ who was once an earthly lord to the Apostles is now believed and known to be the Lord not only of life and death, but the Lord of Heaven and Hell. Christians believe that Christ is the Judge Eternal, throned in splendor. In time and space, we continue to fight the good fight of faith for eternal judgment.

Today, Christ promises us that from His Ascended Glory, He will send the Comforter to us, the Spirit of Truth. (St. John, xv. 26) The Spirit will testify or give witness to Christ’s salvific purposes for us. The Spirit will establish the truth of the Ascended Christ’s magnetic power in our hearts and souls. And if we would be ruled and governed by the Ascended Christ, we cannot remain faithful without the Holy Ghost. Christ prophesies that the world and men who forget, disregard, or reject the magnetic power of Christ, will persecute us.

They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.

If the Ascended Christ rules our hearts and souls, we should expect nothing less than suffering. Christ warns us that the pattern of suffering, sacrifice, and death is normative for those who would follow Him, imitate Him, and be saved.
        
The Ascended Christ pleads our cause at God’s right hand in Heaven. To be acclimated to this eternal resting place, we must allow Christ’s character to rule and govern our lives. Bishop Whichcote said long ago, heaven is first a temper, and then a place. A temper is a disposition. May our tempers, then, secure us as Christ’s servants, living above ourselves and ruled by Heaven’s ways. For when the Holy Ghost comes to us, we pray that He finds our hearts and minds intending to live in conformity to God’s will, ever longing to reveal to others that the Ascended Christ so rules our hearts and wants to rule theirs also.

Amen.
©wjsmartin


        

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