“He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right
hand of God the Father Almighty.”
We’ve just heard read the second of the two
Exhortations in the Prayer Book, a sure sign to regular church-goers that we
are nearing one of the major feasts in the calendar - next Sunday being
Pentecost. Yet, in actual fact we are
just in between two major feasts; Thursday past was Ascension Day and next
Sunday, Pentecost, both of which, along with Christmas and Easter, are
traditional “days of obligation” when all faithful Christians did their utmost
to ensure that they were able to avail themselves of the Sacrament of the
Altar.
The two particular feasts between which we find
ourselves are placed in the calendar according to the exact chronology as
presented in the Bible: Jesus ascended 40 days after His Resurrection; Thursday
past being exactly 40 days from Easter, and 10 days later the Holy Spirit
descended upon the disciples in Jerusalem on Pentecost, a term meaning the fiftieth
day shared by both Christians and Jews, the Feast of Weeks beginning 50
days after Passover for the latter, and the descent of the Holy Spirit being 50
days after the Resurrection.
The feast of the Ascension tends, quite naturally in
our very busy society, to get the short end of the stick, falling as it always
does on a Thursday, outside of the radar screen of most working people who
understandably find it difficult to make time during their hectic work week for
such an interruption. Indeed, other
denominations who follow the same calendar, such as the local Roman Catholic
Diocese, have transferred the feast to today.
They do the same for other major feasts if they fall on a weekday, such
as the Epiphany, transferring it to the closest Sunday so as to accommodate the
greatest number of worshippers. Being
firmly stuck in the mud, we maintain the old ways; however, we do usually save
our message for the Sunday next.
Ascensiontide - such a very short season in the
Church year; and yet we are confronted with the import of it every day in the
year, as we recite the Apostles’ Creed morning and evening - “He ascended into
heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.” Along with the Virgin Birth and the
Resurrection, a uniquely Christian fact, and along with the Virgin Birth and
the Resurrection, one that is under attack, not only from without the Church,
but from within.
Therefore what better time for us to ask some
fundamentally important questions. This
is personally very topical, just having returned from England, the cradle of
Anglicanism, but now one of the most secularized countries in the world. How do we, how do our English brothers and
sisters view the fundamentally unique Christian beliefs of the Incarnation, the
Resurrection and the Ascension?
In perusing source material, I came across a sermon
by Fr. David Curry, one of the remaining stalwarts in the Diocese of Nova
Scotia in the Anglican Church of Canada.
On a sermon for this Sunday several years ago, he comments, “There is
the religion of Jesus in the heart, the religion of sentiment and feeling. There is, too, the religion of Jesus the
moral policeman, the religion of outward conformity to the shifting demands of
social and political correctness.
Neither of them is the religion of the risen and ascended Christ who “sitteth
on the right hand of God the Father Almighty”, which is what the Creeds say
out of the Scriptures. And without the
risen and ascended Christ of the Scriptures creedally understood, they are
altogether empty and destructive, the religion of empty hearts and whitened
sepulchres.
“It is what happens when we try to reduce God to
where we are rather than to be lifted up to where he is. Our lives are to be found in the comings and
goings of God, not God in our comings and goings. There is all the difference in the world
between these two perspectives: the one would make God subject to us; the other
would place us with God in the revelation of his truth and love.”
You may have heard similar sentiments expressed from
this small pulpit before: true Christianity is not about recreating God in our
image, rather it is in acknowledging that we are created in His image and our
behaviour should reflect that; western Christianity has fallen into the habit
of bringing God down to our level rather than raising us, fallen creatures, to
Him - and so forth.
Whether we think on those past reflections or on Fr.
Curry’s erudite musings on the same topic, we must surely decide which side of
the argument, which perspective rings most truly. It can be difficult indeed when one is
confronted with one of the post-Christian spin doctors, very often still
occupying a pew or even a sanctuary prayer desk in the Church. They have learned very well from the liberal
humanists in terms of how to present a position aimed at shutting off
discussion, even making those who would hold to an orthodox belief to feel
hopelessly unenlightened. Don’t let them
fool you! They, in fact, are the ones
who have been fooled, possibly unknowingly - having perhaps subconsciously
bought into the post-Enlightenment need for empirical proof for absolutely
everything. “We can’t prove by chemistry
or physics that Jesus was born of a Virgin, that He rose from the dead, that He
ascended bodily in the sight of the Apostles, indeed such things are clearly
impossible (by our current understanding of how things work in the universe),
therefore such things are not to be believed.”
With such a limited application of our rational capabilities, it is not
difficult to see how so many have perhaps unwittingly ended up “reducing God to
where we are rather than our being lifted up to where He is.”
This is the true battleground on which orthodox
Christianity has been waging a battle for a few centuries now; and it appears
that the battle will continue for the foreseeable future. We must hold fast, rallying behind the Saints
who have gone before, committed wholly to the defence of the faith, both in
their own time, and for posterity.
A warning: the battle is not one where we make
progress in the defence of the faith by using forceful means; rather, the most
effective weapon is the fruits of the Spirit as evidence of the indwelling of
the Spirit of the Risen and Ascended Christ in us. As a former marginal believer, a scientist
who needed empirical proof to believe anything, I can attest to the
effectiveness of the quiet, patient example of true believers. They did not convince me of how science can
quite firmly limit our capacity for expansive rational thought - that came to
me in a flash. But their very different
lives were certainly a powerful catalyst for making me willing to open that
door just a crack and look beyond x and y, beyond physical
dimensional boundaries.
Next Sunday we come to another of the events
recorded in Scripture that fall into the category of: beyond that which can be
explained by empirical scientific study - the descent of the Holy Spirit on the
day of Pentecost. Yet another of those
events where faith is required in order for us to believe, and only in first
believing, then to understand.
With the words of the exhortation ringing freshly in
our ears, and against the tendency to believe centrally important aspects of
Christianity only marginally, we might do well to ponder particularly the
reference to the reception of the blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of
our Saviour Jesus Christ. The
exhortation paraphrases St. Paul in Chapter 11 of his first letter to the
Church in Corinth where it says, “Which (the Sacrament) being so divine and
comfortable a thing to them that will presume to receive it worthily, and so
dangerous to them that will presume to receive it unworthily.” Now, as we state at every celebration of the
Holy Eucharist, “we are not worthy,” one might ask how that can be reconciled
to St. Paul’s warning and that of the exhortation.
The sentiment in the Prayer of Humble Access is spot
on: none of us is ever truly worthy to receive so great and wonderful a
gift. Yet, insofar as we do believe,
insofar as we avoid the tendency to bring God down to our level and attempt to
imbue Him with the same faulty personality characteristics that beset us,
insofar as we desire always to be lifted up to where He is, insofar as we, like
the centurion pray fervently, “Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come
under my roof, but speak the word only,” then we become less unworthy.
“He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right
hand of God the Father Almighty.” So I
believe.
THE ANNUNCIATION OTTAWA 2007 +CR