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The Seventh Sunday Of Easter
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A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
✛
He that hath the Son hath life.
I was born in 1960 – I was a space-age baby. Uri Gagārin entered the history books as the first man in space just after my first birthday. He is often quoted as saying that, as he orbited the earth, he looked for God but could not find him. There is, of course, no record of him ever saying that. What Gagārin did say after his re-entry landed him in a field 174 miles off course, terrifying a farmer and his daughter, is well recorded, “When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, ‘Don’t be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!’”
When Jesus appeared to his disciples less than two whole days after his death they had exactly the same reaction; they had been taught to fear death but nobody had prepared them for the experience of resurrection.
The resurrected body of Jesus was, of course, not a resuscitated corpse otherwise he would have to have died again. The body of Jesus was glorified – changed and no longer of the mortal stuff of this world. Because of that, the Ascension of Jesus is often mistakenly seen as a convenient way of disposing of the resurrected body of Jesus that doesn’t really belong in our time or in our spatial awareness. The story of the ascension is portrayed using imagery of what was understood then about human existence and a cosmology from a very different era – where heaven was ‘up’ and you could fall off the edge of the world. But just as Uri Gagārin was unable to discover heaven in space so the Ascension cannot be understood in terms of the physical constraints of human existence.
On Ascension Day, last Thursday, the Dean of Melbourne pointed to our great reredos and reminded us that there are, in fact, two ascensions of Christ; his ascent to the cross and his ascension to the Father. John Macquarrie, the great theologian, said this: “The ascension is not a separate event, indeed we shall see that in an important sense it is one and the same as the humiliation of Christ; or rather, these two are opposite sides of the same event.” (Principles of Christian Theology).
The whole New Testament is written looking through the lens of the Resurrection of Christ, which is the hope in which we live – the hope of our glory – which is life in all its fullness because God loves us so much. In his epistle, John writes that we know this because we have already experienced the glory of Jesus Christ: “In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” (1 John 4:9) and “this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life.” (1 John 5:11-12a)
The resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples so that they can understand that they do not need his physical presence in the same way any more – paradoxically, he prepares them for his departure precisely because he will never leave them. This is a great mystery, my friends: God enters into our time and space – empties himself into Creation in Jesus Christ and promises us that life after death will not be the same as our life on earth. Yet, Jesus – the only person to have experienced a resurrection body – has that body taken beyond the confines of time and space.
The Ascension is not about the absence of Jesus from the created order, far from it, the Ascension is about his presence not only in the created order but also in every dimension of our created Universe and even beyond what we can even perceive as the Universe.
That is why the Paschal or Easter Candle is still burning today. There was an old custom that all churches extinguished the Paschal Candle after the Gospel on Ascension Day – now it is left alight until the Day of Pentecost, which is the culmination of the Easter season. Extinguishing the candle belongs to an old understanding of the cosmos but does not celebrate the truth that the Ascension is about Christ’s presence everywhere and not his absence.
In the Gospel, Jesus, in his intimate prayer for his disciples to the Father says this, “And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” (John 17:13) The disciples are to experience joy not desolation; Christ will continue to be present through his Spirit that will guide them into all truth: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth…And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” (John 17:17-19)
This sanctification – the process by which we become holy – demands that we experience the truth of God through a living relationship with Jesus Christ. That is why the disciples were careful how they chose a successor to Judas. What were the qualifications in order to be nominated for that ministry? Wisdom? Wealth? Experience of speaking in public?” It was this: simply to have known Jesus from the beginning of his ministry until his ascension. Knowing the real Jesus meant experiencing the resurrection of Jesus; experiencing the resurrection of Jesus meant understanding the mystery of his life-giving death and his glorification. Knowing the real Jesus meant being sanctified in the truth and, more wonderfully yet, living in union with Jesus Christ and his glory: “all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them” – we begin to experience the glory of Jesus on this earth through this process of sanctification which will culminate in all things being made new.
And how significant that on our great Reredos, under the figure of the Ascended and glorified Christ and his cross is a chalice and the words ‘Do this in remembrance of me’. Our participation in the Eucharistic offering unites us to Jesus, to one another and we glimpse his glory.
In John’s Gospel time and cosmology, as we know it, has no place. On the day that Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene he tells her not to cling to him but to tell his disciples that he is ascending to his Father and to their Father, to his God and to their God, and as the Gospel then relates, “When it was evening on that same day… Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side…Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Here we see the mystery of the glory of Jesus Christ and its affect on the Church, which became his Body. The Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost all happen, in John’s Gospel on the same day and note that at the heart of this are the wounds of love – forever fresh and, through which, hope will constantly be poured through the universe until the day when we are all caught up in God and sanctified, not in truth any more, but in pure love.
