Sermons
from St Faith's
Fr Gerwyn
Capon: Ascension Day 2006
‘Risen,
Ascended, Glorified’
The great cornerstone events in the life of Jesus have inspired
painters and various artists to create many wonderful images that help
us draw near to the mystery of our faith: the Incarnation, Mary with
the Infant Jesus, the scene around the Crib, the Cross, the Risen
Christ bearing his wounds to the first believers. Whether we are
looking at Giotto or Caravaggio, a fresco by Fra Angelico or
Michaelangelo, the Church’s iconography has been pretty camp at the
best of times but when we come to the Ascension, pictures suddenly
begin to lose the plot, I feel. Take for instance the frescoes, if that
is not too generous a term, around the little altar in one of the side
chapels at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, dedicated to the
Ascension of Our Lord - it is Blackpool gone to the Wash - lurid blue
swirls and puffy white clouds and an image of the soles of Jesus’ feet
disappearing into the highest heaven, rocketing like superman into
space. The artist has tried to inject some kind of 3-D perspective on
the figure of Jesus with the result that it looks as if Our Lord and
Saviour has been subjected before take off, to a quick bit of emergency
liposuction. Perhaps that’s the way of it, how else are we going to
have the confidence to hang around the celestial city in the company of
all those heavenly bodies without spending eternity in abject paranoia?
In Rome recently I managed to see, in the Vatican Museums, one of the
most thought- provoking depictions of the Ascension, completed by the
artist Raphael; Christ is taken up into heaven, heaved up by
accompanying angels, his right arm held tightly by God the Father at
the wrist. It is a scene almost of rescue - Jesus has accomplished his
mission and is now taken back into the safety of
heaven, rather like a man being hauled back
into a boat from the sea. You get the impression that Jesus is welcomed
back into the embrace of heaven, having been so coldly and dangerously
treated whilst he had existed in the realm of humankind. An interesting
perspective but not one, I fear, that I warm to. What we celebrate at
the Ascension is much more profound I think and does not involve Jesus
escaping from us back to safety where he can remain unmolested but
rather, it is we who are carried into the safety of heaven with him.
What we see in Raphael’s picture then, is a rescue, our rescue, our
very being taken up into the life of God. In Raphael’s picture, it is
possible to see the tension of the sinews and muscles of the arm
stretched out holding Jesus - God using all his strength as it were,
because it is not just Jesus who is being lifted up, it is the weight
of all humanity that is being brought up into his presence, and into
his love. God is welcoming humanity back into the society of the
eternal things, so we are again united with what God envisaged and
intended from the beginning. This is the deepest mystery of the
Ascension and the firmest hope we have - as God came down as the Word,
so the Word now takes us back into the life of the Father.
About this mystery, all that Leo the Great could say of the Ascension,
preaching to his students, was this: And so our Redeemer’s
visible presence has passed into the sacraments. Our faith is nobler
and stronger because sight has been replaced by a faith that is
accepted by believing hearts, enlightened through the spirit of God.
Many theologians have written of the Ascension that it is a crowning
moment for Jesus; he is lifted up, as St John records. This “taking up”
of Christ has significance for the church in that through it, the life
of faith is explained, sustained and completed.
Life is explained because through The Ascension we see that the life we
receive by faith, now has a destiny - to be with God. We are not just a
load of chemicals and protoplasm - we are now joined with God through
Christ and inseparable from his love - we are given meaning, ultimate
meaning. So life is explained. Through the Ascension, life is sustained
- Jesus has left his Spirit here - the spirit that is the engine of the
Christian life, the spirit that kindles in us the life of faith and
holiness of living. The spirit keeps us trusting and hopeful.
And if the Ascension explains life and sustains life, it also completes
life. Jesus says, as St John records, “when I shall be lifted up from
the earth, I shall draw all people to myself” - for in Jesus we find
all that we need, the complete life that brings all our broken pieces
into one, for it is through the risen life of Christ that all are made
alive.
So whatever your picture is of the Ascension, let it call us to risk
being lifted by Christ, to allow him to do this for us. We are more
important to God than we dare sometimes to think, for as that early
church Father Ireneus has said the glory of God is the living man, and
the life of man is the vision of God. We are made for the life of
heaven.
“Alleluia, alleluia
– Risen, Ascended, Glorified”
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