The Ascension of the Lord – C: May 20, 2007

Acts 1:1-11
Hebrews 9:24-28; 10:19-23
(Or, Ephesians 1:17-23)
Luke 24:46-53

Dear Jesus,

I have been struggling with what to write to you about this feast of your ascension. I don’t want you to misunderstand me. That sounds foolish even as I write it. Who knows and understands me better than you who have my heart? Still, sometimes, since I don’t often hear a response from you firsthand, I wonder if you are perturbed by my quest. I want to be with you on The Way. And my heart does burn within sometimes as I ponder your word. My trouble, though, has to do with interpretation. The more literal the farther from the truth you came to reveal that message seems to me.

My problem is not with the Ascension. I believe in your returning to the Father and inheriting the kingdom that results from your Paschal journey. It’s your being “taken up into heaven” that makes me wonder. It is one thing for the time of your disciples’ being able to see your physical-risen body to come to an end. Does it have to be up and away? What does that do to the immanence of your presence that you promised would last as long as time does? When you took on flesh, uniting human with divinity, wasn’t that, too, a forever thing? You spanned the chasm between God and human kind, or rather wedded the two and gave new meaning to our having been made in God’s image. Your dying and rising took away our sins and brought salvation to us who love and wait for you.

Am I wrong in believing that the intimacy you initiated remains? Isn’t that why the definitive sign of your presence in the community that is your body is the love that abounds? It is to be imitative love, love that imitates the love you poured out on us to the shedding of the last drop of your blood. Is that not why the assembly’s action that is the source and summit of all that is done in your name is their coming together to give thanks and renew your dying and rising and so to be sent to be your presence to those who live in your passion: the poor, the disenfranchised, those suffering from the ravages of war and disease? When the assembly has eaten the Bread and drunk from the Cup, why is not that Presence proclaimed and given primacy of honor, rather than to the Remnants that are transported to the tabernacle or placed in a Monstrance?

Sometimes, I fear that I go too far. You know that I believe in your abiding presence in the Eucharist. There can be comfort and challenge in praying in that Eucharistic Presence. But those devotions grew out of a time when your faithful ones did not have access to the Table and did not often share in the meal. They adored from afar and communed spiritually. I am more comforted and challenged by the Meal and the ongoing transformation that results, my own in the midst of those being transformed with me, our being transformed more and more into your Body. I am comforted by the Presence. I am challenged by your directive to do this in my memory. If we break the Bread and share the Cup, that is if we do Eucharist, we must be bread broken and cup poured out so that others recognize your abiding presence and are comforted by your love.

I wish your ascension weren’t so vertical. Does that make sense? I wish it weren’t so distancing. You came down from Heaven. You are taken up to heaven. And we can think that we abide down here far from you up there. Can’t your ascension be seen to be more horizontal, that is, seen to be catching us all up in the journey that is bringing the human family into the Kingdom that is dawning. It’s all present tense. The immanence remains as does, in perfect tension, the transcendence. And it is Mystery that resists being able to be concretized. The more we think we get it, the farther we are from the reality. The Mystery can’t be defined, limited, concretized any more than God can be.

I live in the desert now. Spring comes there, too. Cacti with spines and thorns burst into bloom and the flowers fill the air with sweet fragrance. I sat near one last night and breathed in the perfume while a mourning dove, perched on a roof nearby sang her dirge to anyone who would listen. By morning, the bloom had died and the dove had flown off in pursuit of a love. And I remembered.

Sincerely,

Didymus