[img]http://www.catholica.com.au/sunday/images/Y-not_an_640x166.gif[/img] 


Seventh Sunday of Easter C

The Ascension of the Lord

May 12, 2013

Reading I: Acts 1:1-11
Responsorial Psalm: 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9
Reading II: Ephesians 1:17-23 or 
Hebrews 9:24-28; 10:19-23
Gospel: Luke 24:46-53

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051213-ascension.cfm


Gospel

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer
and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins,
would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things. 
And behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you;
but stay in the city
until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Then he led them out as far as Bethany,
raised his hands, and blessed them.
As he blessed them he parted from them
and was taken up to heaven.
They did him homage
and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy,
and they were continually in the temple praising God.


Random thoughts about ascension and going away and space and having life to the full.

I am wary of putting random thoughts on Catholica. Most writers are very disciplined, not wanting to waste a moment of a reader's time with rambling vaguely round a topic. So be warned: if you find this too rambling, leave it be. I have been pulled this way and that by the many searches going on among us for deeper meanings of many things. My mind is a bit foggy with it all. But in what follows perhaps some threads may appeal.

Today I just want to tell my story - no, sorry, not "my" story, but the Jesus story my way. I think I may be allowed to do this since the different gospels seem to have done just that, not to mention Paul (if we may dare to mention Paul!). We have many contributions in this Forum that tell our different personal insights and convictions. This might be another.

I love the understatement in Luke's account of the last time any of them (except Paul, of course) saw Jesus.

 As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy...

It reads a bit like a non-event, like someone "got on the train and it pulled out of the station. They stood around for a while and then went back home, feeling pretty happy..." Nothing much to say, really.

"taken up to heaven": I must say I've been surprised that some say they always thought this meant going off through the sky to a place of wonder called heaven - even to the extent of being shocked when the Hubble telescope showed that the universe is virtually endless and heaven would be billions of light years away. From my earliest memories I have never thought heaven was some where up there.  But then, I was not taught by nuns, never drilled in catechism, never subject to intense religious training: at home we just got it from mum, with Sunday school for a few years about age 9-10 with the priest who used to pick me up on the way, at least once on his motorbike, me riding pillion! Mum made us learn the catechism by heart, but there was little explanation, so our minds were free to make of it what we could - which saved us from the worst of childhood indoctrination. 

So Jesus was taken up to heaven and is with God and God is with us and Jesus is everywhere and all is well with the world. 

I hope we can keep in mind what Sue wrote last week: the human guru goes away to allow the inner guru to take over. As the life of Jesus is like a staging of the journey each one takes, so his going away is the moment when he leaves the disciples to be responsible in themselves to continue their own journey, each one in his own way, as best they can. What do I make of it all?

***********************************

I believe that Jesus, the anointed one, overcame death - that 'death could not hold him'. I see this to mean that the veil, the very very thin veil that is our embodiment, was shredded in his 'rising' so that Jesus the man passed through into the fullness of life, unrestricted by physical functions and the limitations of matter. And he was only the first - 'destined to lead many brothers' and sisters across the same divide. 

Actually I like to believe this because it suits my longing to be unrestricted, to be endless. I hate endings. Going away: going off to primary school riding on an old pony behind a big brother. Getting the train back to boarding school after holidays over and over and over until the pain in the guts becomes a fixture.

Death gives me the creeps. The idea that it may not be a final end is - well, for many people this seems too good to believe. But I want to believe it. The scholars tell us that for Jesus Resurrection and Ascension were not separate events 40 days apart. Separating them is just another of those symbolic fabrications. In the moment of overcoming death Jesus entered the fullness of life "with the father", as he used to say. He didn't often refer to 'God', but he loved to talk about 'his father'. Jesus returned to his father: a more simple way of saying it than Mark's 'seated at the right hand of God'. 

There has ever been a tendency to make Ascension into a celebration of triumphant victory, taking the psalm of today's responsorial out of context. When originally sung in the temple, Israel's god is envisaged as occupying a throne among the nations. Applied to the Ascension it takes a fair bit of adjustment to avoid having it say that Jesus is enthroned as lord and king and dominating ruler. That common understanding has justified all manner of attempts to force his rule on others, while blinding his would-be followers to his teaching of another way. 

For king of all the earth is God; 

sing hymns of praise. 

God reigns over the nations, 

God sits upon his holy throne. 

R. God mounts his throne to shouts of joy: a blare of trumpets for the Lord. 

Mostly the triumphant accent comes from misreading that term 'glory' that we find again in the reading from Ephesians. It's unfortunate. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the 'glory of god' consists in god being god, and when Jesus is endowed with glory he, the human, is filled with 'god' - or just 'made one with the divine' might be a simpler way of saying it.

Jesus went through a tortured death in giving witness to the truth and came to fullness of life. If each of us would stand by our truth like that, especially when there's pressure on to compromise, to fudge or to lie, then we too will have fullness of life eventually. 

*************************

Fullness of life. A nice phrase. Does it mean anything?

Philosophers have always debated the question: What is reality? Nowadays the scientists have plunged in too. The solid world we see and touch is - what? An illusion? Maybe. There is no doubt that this solid body that weighs some 80 kg (more or less!) is something like 95% emptiness. Mere space. A teaspoonful of 'matter' is held in some web of electro-magnetic forces to give the appearance of solid muscular strength. But life? What is LIFE? That's the question.

One says that LIFE = god. Others say god is better called The Mystery, not in the technical sense of a conundrum, a formula of words defining some article of faith that doesn't make sense to the human mind, yet must be believed anyway, but in the sense of the reality that pervades all creation. When I use this term 'The Mystery' I want to go beyond those ideas about 'god' that have become rough and nobbly over time. I like the idea that 'The Mystery' expresses more than the term 'LIFE'. There is a problem with LIFE in that science has not yet come close to capturing life, let alone defining it.

Our life, the one we experience, seems like the will-o'-the-wisp that used to intrigue night-time travellers when they saw lights, flames of fire in fact, dancing across the marshes or the swamps. Now we know it was marsh gas, methane, which caught alight spontaneously, burning for an instant, then vanishing without a trace. Very hard to catch, a will-o'-the-wisp. Life is like that. 

Thought is our highest experience of life. Thought that flits from here to all around the globe in no time. IN NO TIME. Well, I suppose they could measure the time it takes to have a thought, but then what about many thoughts at once: can they measure the distance between them? Different parts of the brain being activated: of course! Sure, that's the substrate. But the thought? It flits and floats and flies away and comes back instantly. 

I think 'spirit' might be thought. That's why I like the idea of The Spirit. I always fancy that the writer of Genesis liked it too when he wrote in the opening verse: "and the spirit of god fluttered over the surface of the waters."

I appreciate the value of physics and all the sciences. What a wonderful convenient world they have created for us. More strength to their arm. More funding for their works. But I'm afraid if it comes to a choice, the incurable romantic in me is always going to go for the poetic, the mystical, the ethereal, the pure thought that refuses to be caught in the web of science. I just believe that in the beginning  was the Word - and expression of a thought. And before the beginning there was Thought. And when god chose to raise some animal form made from the matter of the universe to a new level, he breathed into us a breath of life that made us like god, in god's image, a thought of god's thought.

******************************

Today, I think, we celebrate the climax of this human saga, or should I say this divine experiment played out across eons of evolution? In the fullness of time Jesus the anointed one passes through the veil to lead humankind to the next level, one in which a family relationship with The Mystery will be experienced, like when children of good and loving parents, happily acknowledging that life came from them, return to their family home on Mothers Day in joy and gratitude. 

'And the Word was made flesh'. An anointing of the spirit made Jesus to be, quite uniquely, image of god in human being. Breaking the bind of death he broke through to reach life's fullness, and would take all his sisters and brothers along with him. This is why he commissioned his few disciples to go out and proclaim a metanoia, a revolution in thinking and in values, because we are no longer slaves imprisoned in this earthly existence bounded by death, condemned to foul our cage by sin at every turn. 

Jesus the anointed one sent disciples to announce forgiveness of sin. Sin is to be for-given. Hurt is to be healed. We are free to be free. It's hard to find a way of saying it that strikes the right chord, combining many elements in a new harmony. Every least human being is called to live with the father now and for ever. 

How do you know? Why go on with these old tales when it's no more than poetry and dreams? Well, fact is I find a warmth that nourishes, a certain enthusiasm arising out of these ideas. As I said in the beginning of these notes, it suits me. It suits me to have a brother who was anointed, who led the way, who stood for what he represented even to the point of being killed for what he stood for, and who has outlived the deadly end, and lives on in the unimaginable future that awaits us all.

************************************************************************************************************************************






















A


Today I just want to tell my story - no, sorry, not "my" story, but the Jesus story my way. I think I may be allowed to do this since the different gospels seem to have done just that, not to mention Paul (if we may dare to mention Paul at all!). In the past weeks we have had many contributions in this Forum that tell of our different personal insights and convictions. This might be another.

I believe that Jesus, the anointed one, overcame death - that 'death could not hold him'. I see this to mean that the veil, the very thin veil that is our embodiment, was shredded in his 'rising' so that Jesus the man passed through into the fullness of life, unrestricted by physical functions and the limitations of matter. Actually I like to believe this because it suits my longing to be unrestricted, even endless. I hate endings. Ever since I first was sent off to primary school, riding on an old pony behind a  big brother, I have hated going away. Catching the train  to go back to boarding school at the end of holidays over and over for five years made the sick feeling a permanent fixture.

Death gives me the creeps. The idea that it may not be a final end is - well, for many people this seems too good to be believed. But I want to believe it. The scholars tell us that for Jesus Resurrection and Ascension were nor separate events 40 days apart. That's just another of those symbolic fabrications. In overcoming death Jesus entered the fullness of life "with the father", as he used to say. He didn't often refer to 'God', but he loved to talk about 'his father'. (I've just taken out the cap F and brought it back to a small f for father: just seems right. My dad would not have expected to be capitalised whenever we wrote about him.) Jesus returned to his father: a bit more simple way of saying it than Mark's 'seated at the right hand of God'. 

He went through a tortured death [in witness to the truth] to fullness of life. Life without the familiar restraints of being dependent on physical energy and the more or less satisfactory functioning systems - i.e., food and good health. 

Philosophers have always debated the question: What is reality. Nowadays the scientists have plunged in too. The solid world we see and touch is - what? An illusion? Maybe. There is no doubt that this solid body that weighs some 80 kg (more or less!) is something like 95% emptiness. Mere space. A teaspoonful of 'matter' is held in some web of electro-magnetic forces to give the appearance of solid muscular strength. (LOL). But life? What is LIFE? That's the question.

One says that LIFE = god. Others say god is better called The Mystery, not in the technical sense of a conundrum, the formula of words defining some article of faith that doesn't make sense to the human mind but must be believed anyway, but in the sense of the reality that pervades all creation - and that goes beyond those ideas about 'god' that have accumulated a lot of baggage over centuries. I like the idea that 'The Mystery' expresses more than the term 'LIFE' might. There is a problem in that science has not yet come close to capturing life, let alone defining it.

Our life, the one we experience, seems like the will-o'-the-wisp that used to intrigue night-time travellers when they saw lights, flames of fire in fact, dancing across the marshes or the swamps. Now we know it was marsh gas, methane, which caught alight spontaneously, burning for an instant, then vanishing without a trace. Very hard to catch, a will-o'-the-wisp. Life is like that. 

Thought is our highest experience of life. Thought that flits from here to all around the globe in no time. IN NO TIME. Well, I suppose they could measure the time it takes to have a thought, but then what about many thoughts at once: can they measure the distance between them? Different parts of the brain being activated: of course! Sure, that's the substrate. But the thought? It flits and floats and flies away and comes back instantly. 

I think 'spirit' might be thought. That's why I like the idea of The Spirit. I always fancy that the writer of Genesis thought this too when he wrote in the opening verse: "and the spirit of god fluttered over the surface of the waters."

I appreciate the value of physics and all the sciences. What a wonderful convenient world they have created for us. More strength to their arm. More funding for their works. But I'm afraid if it comes to a choice, the incurable romantic in me is always going to go for the poetic, the mystical, the ethereal, the pure thought that refuses to be caught in the web of science. I just believe that in the beginning  was the Word - and expression of a thought, and before the beginning there was Thought. And when god chose to raise some animal form made from the matter of the universe to a new level, he breathed into us a breath of life that made us like god, in god's image, a thought of god's thought'

'And the Word was made flesh'. An anointing of the spirit made this one to be quite uniquely the image of god in human being. Breaking the bind of death he broke through to life's fullness, and would take all his sisters and brothers along with him. That is why he commissioned his few disciples to go out and proclaim a metanoia, a revolution in thinking and in values because we are no longer slaves imprisoned in this earthly existence bounded by death, condemned to foul our cage by sin at every turn. 

Jesus the anointed one sent his disciples to announce forgiveness of sin

 


*************************************************************************************************************************************


We are advised not to think of this as a separate event that happened on the 40th day after resurrection day. It is better to see it as a dimension of the mystery of rising, of overcoming the bind of death. For Jesus death was not an end, a wall of blankness, a being zapped into nothingness. 

Jesus lives in a new dimension of being; it is somehow separate - he was taken "up into heaven" and "a cloud took him from their sight " (Acts 1:9). Whatever else you make of this, it does seem to insist on one thing, that Jesus entered a form of existence distinct from the here and now.

It would be a shame to spend our time wondering what this other existence might "be like", or to spend too much labour on de-mystifying the scenarios of "heaven up there" where Jesus "took his seat at the right hand of God" (Mk 16:19). Sufficient perhaps that we treat these images for what they are, and move on to reflect on the practical teaching in the narrative.

My attention was caught by the concise summary:  "that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all nations". It seems to echo the introductory summary at the beginning of Mark's gospel (Mk 1: 15): "repent and believe the good news". 

We never get far from metanoia,  even if we still lack an appropriate word to express this key to the whole gospel, the very essence of the good news. 

metanoia for the forgiveness of sins: there's the charter. That's the final word, the job he left for them to do. Tell people about change, radical change, with a view to breaking the bind of sin. Let's clear the mind of lingering memories of fear-drenched threatening sermons, but at the same time we should not reject the notion of "sin" altogether. Some of us have said that we found freedom from the bind of sin when we learned to walk away from certain laws and rules, and this is liberation and it is good.

I know someone who blames god for making humankind so weak and so liable to stumble. We are such an unstable mix of needs and drives, emotions of longing and revulsion, of love and hate, and all supposed to be governed by a mind that learns only by experience in the end. How could here be any justice in damning to outer darkness anyone who fails?

The bind of sin might best be seen in the remorse of the one who has done great wrong. It takes hold on the deepest self. To be forgiven by the wounded one affords some small comfort; to forgive oneself is never on the table. Sin holds the heart in a grip of death. Here is the despair of the young one abused when but a child and ever after convinced that they are full of sin. Taking death by the hand the necessary escape.

The cinema loves the image of the padlock snapped off with those long-handled bolt cutters, the rescuers crowding through the door to find the victim maybe still alive... Snap! In former times the prisoner was bound in chains, and freedom came with a blow of a large sledge hammer smashing a link of the chain allowing the rest to fall away... 

Christians stand for the breaking of the bind of sin! Strange that christians have too often made up sins and tabulated ways of sinning - missing the point completely - whether those first apostles who were quick to condemn those who joined their group and still behaved as before, or those dogmatic purists who insisted on everyone professing faith in the terms of the latest creed, or the puritans of the reformation who would win heaven by rejecting half of life, or today's pharisees who watch for perfect performance of liturgical formulas. We have always been masters in creating sin.

We ought to be expert in breaking the bind of sin, in healing the wounded one and inducing health and wholeness. That is the mission Jesus left his disciples with. And it always starts with metanoia - a radical change in  the way we think and in the way we go about our business of daily living.

****************

I love the understatement in Luke's account of the last time any of them (except Paul, of course) saw Jesus.

 As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy...

It reads a bit like a non-event, like someone "got on the train and it pulled out of the station. They stood around for a while and then went back home, feeling pretty happy..." Nothing much to say, really.

I don't want to get involved in any discussion as to the meaning of "taken up to heaven", but I will say that from my earliest memories I have never thought heaven was some where up there. It appears that some, even today, have trouble reconciling their idea of heaven with the scientific view of the universe. But then, I was not taught by nuns, never drilled in catechism, never subject to intense religious training: at home we just got it from mum, with Sunday school for a few years about age 9-10 with the priest who used to pick me up on the way, at least once on his motorbike, me riding pillion! Mum made us learn the catechism by heart, but there was little explanation of it, so our minds were free to make of it what we could - which saved us from the worst of childhood indoctrination. 

So Jesus was taken up to heaven and is with God and God is with us and Jesus is everywhere and all is well with the world (which were my mother's last words!). 

I hope we can keep in mind what Sue wrote last week: the human guru goes away to allow the inner guru to take over. As the life of Jesus is like a staging of the journey each one takes, so his going away is the moment when he leaves the disciples to be responsible in themselves to continue their own journey, each one in his own way, as best they can.

******************

The other element that strikes me as important is the summary Luke gives in the commissioning of the disciples "that repentance for the forgiveness of sins be preached in his name". It is an echo of Marks opening statement, that Jesus called all to "metanoia and believe the good news". We never get far away from metanoia. It is fundamental. Strange that we have not a word for it, but resort to 'repentance' which means something like feel sorry for the wrong, the sins, you have done. Like 'contrition' - feel screwed up inside. 

"forgiveness of sins": I have some memory of a debate some decades ago about this expression, and it was agreed, I thought, that it should read: forgiveness of sin - in the singular universal, so that the accent can not fall on those things we used to list for recital in weekly confession. Sin! The plague. The blight of our existence, the falling short of our ideals, the perversion of our striving, the corruption that, like rust, corrodes the very fabric of society, the deceit, the lies, the blindness, the cover-ups that happen everywhere all the time, the turning of the blind eye to ignore what needs to be owned, confessed and corrected. 

By and large in our culture we do not forgive.  We prosecute, we punish, we penalise, and we use a brand that says criminal for life. We build prisons and more prisons and we give charge of those prisoners to contract companies who make their profits out of efficiently keeping the prisoners contained. Rehabilitation, healing the fellow human being: has it ever been the priority of any civic community?

If sin is forgiven, what then? Once we leave the legal field we are in the business of healing. I'm sure Jesus had no intention of declaring a general amnesty:all sins forgiven, all penalties lifted, all offence forgotten. He was surely talking about that metanoia which leads to healing, to rehabilitation, to restoring the inner self of the wounded sinner. That total, profound and radical change of thinking that grasps with hope the prospect of humankind, of me and you, getting through our shame and guilt to walk again in joy.

The guru leads us to the light in which we see that deadly sin can be overcome and life restored to full and better functioning. The risen sinner does not drag his feet still shackled with memories of his fall: he walks with faith and hope, he loves with his whole heart now healed of that double twist of self serving manipulation. Perhaps only the healed sinner can be truly pure of heart, for only the healed sinner has gone through metanoia to the core.


************

With Luke giving us two accounts of the departure of Jesus when his time had come, and considering that we have had quite a lot of discussions about the story-telling that has gone into our sacred scriptures, I'm inclined this time to leave that aside without comment, and to focus my attention on the wonderful prayer found in the second reading.

Brothers and sisters:

May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,

give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation

resulting in knowledge of him.

May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,

that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,

what are the riches of glory

in his inheritance among the holy ones,

and what is the surpassing greatness of his power

for us who believe,

in accord with the exercise of his great might:

which he worked in Christ,

raising him from the dead

and seating him at his right hand in the heavens,

far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion,

and every name that is named

not only in this age but also in the one to come.

And he put all things beneath his feet

and gave him as head over all things to the church,

which is his body,

the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.

It's one of those wonderful pieces of writing about the Mystery we call 'god' that fairly takes your breath away. As I begin again to read it thoughtfully I remind myself to be on guard against my tendency to be carried away by expressions of grandeur and the hyperbole that is found even here. I see that word 'glory' occurs in the first line and again further down, and I remind myself it is not so much human fame and good repute as the manifestation of the divine in the human Jesus - whatever that might mean to me.

"A spirit of wisdom and enlightenment resulting in knowledge of him"  This is the prayer: that the Father give each of us the gift of knowing Jesus, that the eyes of our hearts may be given the light to see what is the hope that belongs to his call. 

There was a long discussion some days ago about apparitions and the kind of experience of god, of the Mystery, that different people tell of, and whether we can put our trust in knowledge that is given directly somehow, and that by definition is not subject to scientific investigation. Whoever wrote this letter to the people at Ephesus seems to have had this kind of experience himself.


***********************************************************************************************************************************