Christ Church Cathedral
7th Sunday of Easter (Proper 344)
May 4, 2008
ACTS 1:10 Why are you men from Galilee standing there looking at the sky?
In the Prayer Book Calendar this was called the Sunday after the Ascension while today much to the relief of preachers, it is disguised as the 7th Sunday of Easter. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note what the Christian communities formed after Jesus' resurrection were doing with his body. The churches in Rome and Antioch were silent on the subject, preferring to concentrate upon the experience of his continued presence with them while, understandably perhaps, the church in Jerusalem seems to have felt it necessary to respond to the pressure for a theological writ of habeas corpus.
From our distance it is clear that several different perspectives can be found which have contributed to the story told in Acts. The writer of Acts, Luke and or his associates was aware of previous events which emerge from experiences of the people of God which give perspective and understanding to their own witness. The death of Stephen and the faith he embodied is brought into dramatic focus by the words he uttered in his dying agony - they are almost identical to those of Jesus on the cross. Similarly the story of Elijah in 2 Kings 2 in which the prophet is snatched up in the whirlwind offers a parallel in which the cloak of Elijah is taken by Elisha in his new role of bearer of the prophetic word is replaced by the promise of the Holy Spirit who will lead them to the very ends of the earth. In both instances the continuity between heaven and earth is affirmed because everyone “knew” that there was a correspondence between the events of this world and that which is above - so much so that events which unfolded here revealed the true nature of being itself. Shakespeare, a millennia and a half later could still speak in this language when He has a servant report (in Macbeth) the “unnatural” events that have been evoke in sympathy with this terrible deed - the night in which Duncan is murdered is an unruly one, with lamentings heard “i” the air; strange screams of death, and it remains dark even though the day should have started. So, the movement of Jesus body is a direct indication of the presence of the deeper source of life, a kind of mapping of the very nature of existence - it shows where we are going.
However, it is crucial to remember that this movement or correspondence should not be taken literally - a condition which escaped the pious lay societies in Italy in the 19th century which were largely responsible for a series of dogmas culminating in the proclamation of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven and the bowdlerized art which has accompanied it.
The disenchanted world in which we live requires another way of approaching the words which present the Ascension. It is a challenge that has been taken up by poets, artists, sculptors and musicians and its quest is documented in the unfolding of art as it developed in the 20th century. It involves a restructuring of time and place in ways which reveal the present understanding of both. At a simple level the poet/bishop Howard Chandler RobbinsAnd have the bright immensities
Received our risen Lord
Where light-years frame the Pleiades
And point Orion´s swordDo flaming sons his footsteps trace
Through corridors sublime
The Lord of interstellar space
And Conqueror of time?But there is much more at stake than the scientific revision of space. There is what Charles Taylor calls a fundamental epistemic predicament. Whereas before the languages of theology and metaphysics confidently mapped out the domain of the deeper, the invisible, - now the thought is that these domains can only be made indirectly accessible through the language of symbols. The symbol in this sense reveals something which can’t be made accessible in any other way; unlike the allegory whose images refer into a domain in which could also describe directly, in literal language. So with Gerald Manley Hopkins
We guess; we clothe Thee, unseen King
With attributes we deem are meet;
Each in his own imagining
Sets up a shadow in thy seat;So we can think of the contemporary artist as embarked on a journey which is remarkably parallel to that which accompanies our religious quest today. (I don’t mean to imply or claim these persons as unknowing believers.) This is the vocation to discover or finding a symbol but acknowledging at the same time that by its nature what is revealed is also partly concealed. Moreover it always remains symbolic that it is never open to the same scrutiny as the ordinary referents in the everyday world. Thus the love of God revealed in the Christ remains in its totality a mystery. The Jesus in Salvador Dali’s Last Supper is finally untouchable in the way that he is not in the painting of DaVinci. In another vein, we can think of ourselves as being carried by Olivier Messiaen as he struggles to go beyond words in his organ suite on the life of Christ - the section on the ascension which we are hearing today. This is another facet of the struggle to bring the infinite to appearance in this case without the benefit of words.
It may be that the advice given to the onlookers from Galilee also holds for us in a world which has in a sense been turned inside out. In an infinite universe we must now look as it were within ourselves to be witnesses of Christ’s glory. We are dependent upon a subtler language to further this quest to proclaim he is risen. We know in ways unimagined by his first followers that he has vanquished from our sight. Perhaps the poetry of Fortunatus still rings true
Praise to the Giver of Good!
Thou Love who art author of concord,
Pour out thy balm on our souls,
order our ways in the peace.
The Rev. Roger A. Balk, Ph.d.
