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| Rembrandt's Ascension of Jesus |
During these weeks following Holy Week and Easter, we celebrate the paschal or “Passover” mystery of Jesus Christ – including the passage of Jesus from earthy life through death into a new, transformed, heavenly reality—anticipating our own future.
The ascension is Jesus’s final leave-taking from his first community of disciples so something new can happen: the descent of the Spirit of God upon the disciples at Pentecost in order to empower them to continue the ministry of Jesus. Jesus Christ lives and because he lives, we live: God lives in us and we in God.
The ascension signals the close of Jesus’s earthly ministry and heralds the beginning of the Church’s ministry--proclaiming the Good News“to the ends of the earth”
In the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus tells the disciples to be missionary, to proclaim the Gospel to every creature. They are now the hands and feet and eyes and ears and voice of the living Christ until He comes again in glory at the end-time to transform this universe of ours into a new heaven and a new earth.
The living Christ has created new relationships for us—with God and with one another. In light of this, I would like to pose three questions:
First, what makes you feel alive? Visiting Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon? Watching a space shuttle launch? Seeing your favorite team win? Holding a baby? Accomplishing a good task? These experiences, and many more, can make us feel alive.
Second question: what does it mean to be alive in Christ? We have been gifted with God’s life in Baptism. To understand its significance, we have to appreciate who we are in relation to God. At birth, we lack God’s life. That’s what original sin means: a lack of relationship. The Book of Genesis captures this graphically. In the beginning, man and woman walked with God, had friendship with God and one another. Somehow, they lost that. Genesis describes that they “hid” from God, blamed one another and even the earthly elements worked against them.
But God would not leave us to our worse selves. God became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth so that we could have his life. God re-established his friendship with us, re-connected us to himself. Through baptism we enter this community of disciples, this fellowship of grace. We are alive in Christ.
Third question: How really alive in Christ are we? The Spirit of God is within us, to bring about the design of God in this universe. That Spirit calls us to continue the saving work of Jesus Christ until He comes again in glory. We are indeed his “hands and feet and eyes and ears and voice.”
Consider North Korea’s recent release of three Americans: a Christian missionary, a humanitarian worker, and a pastor. Freed from a dictatorship where open practice of religion is stifled, the three Americans publicly thanked God: a good and compassionate God who is ever near and will guide us safely home.
Living a life such as theirs, we indeed continue the saving work of Jesus Christ.
