Feast Of The Ascension Of The Lord

Fr. Peter Robinson

Preached: May 12, 2024

Sometimes, God challenges even our most cherished beliefs! When he does, it involves a certain process.

Now, we have all seen video images of a huge, abandoned building that is first, carefully planted with explosive charges for weeks in advance, and then, when all is clear (with a crowd is watching from a safe distance) someone hits the red button, and …

You see, as we look out on the world around us (through our eyes), anthropologists tell us that we each have a worldview, like wearing a pair of glasses (per Dr. Charles Kraft). There is a process in forming that worldview (and un-forming that worldview). It’s a process not unlike making coffee — with multiple filters.

When we observe all that we can see around us, via our inputs, we filter out data, 1^st, according to what we believe. Our 2^nd filter is then what we experience. Our 3^rd filter is that which we then analyze of the data. This determines our view of reality, our worldview.

So, consider (for a moment) how our Lord’s Ascension, in front of his disciples, must have blown apart their existing worldview. How do you make sense of someone rising up into the sky, and then disappearing in a cloud? You can imagine their view of reality, up to that point, crumbling like that abandoned building that has just be dynamited.

You see, we know what the disciples had earlier believed: look at verse 6, in our First Reading from the Book of Acts, chapter 1. The disciples meet with Jesus, and they ask him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Though these very disciples have spent three years in person with Jesus, and though they have just recently witnessed his resurrection, they still expect Jesus (as a son of King David’s royal line) to “restore,” to bring back, the territorial nation-state of ancient Israel — and to crush the hated Romans occupying their beloved homeland, at the same time.

Next, we know what the disciples experience (and will soon experience). “They were looking intently up into the sky as [Jesus] was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven’ ” (vv. 10-11).

Following that experience of Jesus’ ascension, two holy angels then appear! This leads them into new data, new facts. The earthly Jesus they knew has just gone up into heaven (his Ascension). Within a few days, the Holy Spirit will come down (Pentecost). They will then go out (into the missions). And Jesus will some day come back (his Parousia).

What they have believed (as faithful Jews) is being radically changed by their experience of the risen Christ.

And now Peter analyzes the new data (on behalf of all the disciples): he turns to the Bible to do so, to the Book of Psalms. There he quotes, “‘May another take his place of leadership.” That is, Judas’ empty place must be filled with another disciple, in order they may once again be the Twelve. Matthias is then chosen, and the (now) twelve Apostles launch out to the borders of the known world (the Roman Empire) and beyond. As best we know, all of them (save for the Apostle John) will die a martyr’s death.

So, on this Ascension Day, brothers and sisters, in your worldview what does God need to dis-mantle, in order to re-construct? What, of that which you have already believed + experienced + analyzed, does the Lord need to reconfigure with his truth? Maybe you have a wrong view of God? Perhaps you have been making God into your image? Or into the image of society around us, with its values? Or maybe you have relegated God to the periphery of your life? Or maybe you have made some thing else, or some one else, into your god?

What does the ascended Christ need to do in and with your worldview on this Ascension Day?