Acts1, 1-11 / Ephesians 1, 17-23 / Mark 16, 15-20
The Ascension of The Lord
Jesus is ascended! So the question is: Where is he?
Where do we find Jesus? Where do
we personally find Jesus? And we might
seriously ask ourselves: are we disciples of a memory only? Or, are we disciples of a living person?
Where
do we find the living Jesus? That’s the
question Luke, the author of our first reading, is dealing with. Quite graphically Luke portrays Jesus being
lifted up and disappearing into a cloud.
The imagery wants to tell us Jesus is now with the Father. That’s what the imagery of being lifted up
into a cloud meant in Luke’s day. It
would be like our saying: “he is departed” or “he has passed on to his
reward.” So Jesus is now with the
Father. That’s one answer to our
question. Where’s Jesus? He’s with the Father.
But
Luke tells us something more. As the
disciples are looking up into the sky, two men all dressed in white appear to
them and ask: Why are you looking up
into the sky? Jesus is now with the Father
– but he is also with you. In the very
same scene in the gospel of Matthew Jesus says to the disciples: “Behold, I am with you always, every single
day – day in, day out.”
These
days we talk about “hybrids” – cars that run on gas and electricity. This feast of Ascension is trying to tell us
that Jesus is a kind of hybrid. Jesus is
with the Father – and he is with us. Jesus
kind of runs on the Father and he runs on us.
Just
like we are used to thinking of a car running on gas – so we are used to
thinking of Jesus being with the Father.
But we’re not as used to thinking of cars running on both gas and
electricity. And that’s a good way of understanding
the New Testament. All the Christian
scriptures are about telling us how Jesus is with God and with us now. And the clear emphasis is on how Jesus is
with us now? How do we find Jesus for
ourselves?
Again
the scriptures use all sorts of images to point to Jesus’ presence with us
now. One image that has stuck through
two thousand years of Christian reflection is “body – body of Christ”. St. Paul uses that image in our second
reading. The Church is the “Body of
Christ”. We are the “Body of Christ”. Where do we find Jesus for ourselves? We find Jesus in ourselves – in us and among
us. Somehow we are Jesus’ body.
Now
I don’t think we can ever fully grasp what it means for us to be the “Body of
Christ”. But I do know that in this
liturgy we believe we are fed the body and blood of Christ. And – as in everything we eat – we become
what we eat.
There are two people who have helped
me understand a little more clearly what it means for us to be the “Body of
Christ”. The first is a woman, St.
Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun and mystic.
Listen to her wise and beautiful words.
Christ
has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.
Yours
are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion must look out on the world.
Yours
are the feet with which He is to go about doing good.
Yours
are the hands with which He is to bless us now.
The
second person who helped me get a grasp on us as the Body of Christ is an
archbishop, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. Listen to his challenging words.
Christ
became a man of his people and a man of his time. He lived as a Jew; he worked as a laborer in
Nazareth. And since then he continues to
take on flesh in everyone.
If
many have distanced themselves from the church, it is precisely because the
church has estranged and distanced itself from humanity.
But
a church that can feel as its own all that is human – and wants to incarnate
the pain, the hope, the affliction of all who suffer and feel joy, such a
church will be Christ – Christ loved and awaited – Christ present.
And
that depends on us.
The question is: Where is Jesus? Where do we find Jesus? This feast we celebrate – the feast of Ascension – wants to answer: in an awesome and utterly life-defining way, we are the Jesus we’ve been looking for. We are the Jesus the world so desperately needs to meet.
Fr. Pat Earl, SJ
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