7th Sunday of Easter
June 1, 2014
10 AM & 5:30 PM Liturgies
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
Our opening prayer offers a hint of what we need to try to
comprehend today. It says: “God, help us to keep in mind that
Christ our savior lives with you in glory AND promised to remain
with us until the end of time.” Our question for the day: How can
he do BOTH at the same time?
These are the ten days between Ascension Thursday and
Pentecost Sunday in which we celebrate a particular facet of the
Paschal Mystery. Two thousand years later, that Great Mystery
remains, to be sure, a great mystery. What does resurrection really
mean? What does it mean that He “ascended” somewhere? These
we continue to ponder prayerfully.
But, unfortunately, what mystifies many Christians has little
to do with the heart and soul of the Great Mystery. It is mostly just
foggy and outdated cosmology.
Ron Rohlheiser, a contemporary spiritual master, once
described the Ascension as “the most under-understood” mystery
we have. Bishop N.T. Wright, a scripture scholar and theologian of
some note, asks the question “why has the ascension been such a
difficult and unpopular doctrine in the modern Western church?”
And he answers it is because “the ascension demands that we think
differently about how the whole cosmos is put together and that we
also think differently about the church and salvation.”
Looking at the scriptural evidence, one finds that only St Luke
among all the Evangelists temporally separates the moments of the
Paschal Mystery into three events.” There is Easter Sunday; then,
40 days later, the ascension; and then 10 days later, Pentecost.
And Luke does this in both his gospel and in the Acts of the
Apostles. Neither Matthew nor Mark has any mention of ascension.
And Sandra Schneiders, an expert in John’s gospel, boldly asserts
that ascension is not even a “category” in John’s version. And that
is not an oversight; it would be a theological impossibility for John.
John has it all take place in one day, the first day of the week,
Easter day.
So where does that leave us? Some people just don’t think
about ascension at all anymore. They just ignore the whole puzzle.
(There are probably some of that group siting right here trying to
pay attention to me now, and losing the battle.) Others believe that
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only Jesus’ Spirit remains with us. Many of that group is still with
us in the 21st century. That version goes: Jesus was once with God
in heaven; then he took a body and became human for a while; then
he went back to heaven to be with God again, and promised to send
his Holy Spirit to remain with us here on earth. Sound familiar?
But that version can’t be right! Jesus’ spirit wasn’t raised at
Easter; his whole self was resurrected, body and spirit. He ate and
drank with them; he let them feel his body; and when he does leave
them—as indeed he does—he still has that same body with him.
That’s what we say together every Sunday in our Creed: “we
believe in the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.” Where
does he go with his body?
We are in desperate need of some new images for the 21st
century mind. I suggested as much back at Easter when I
referenced Sandra Schneiders’ talking about the “imaginative
implausibility” of contemporary images of resurrection. Many just
can’t imagine how it’s possible. Bodies just don’t do that kind of
stuff!
When St. Luke penned his separate versions of the Great
Mystery it made perfect cosmological sense at that time to have
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Jesus rise into the clouds at the ascension. That view of the cosmos
held until well into the modern era. Heaven is a place “up there,”
earth, “down here,” hell “down below.”
There are artistic works to illustrate that common
cosmology. An unknown 12th century painter depicts Christ
standing with one foot on a cloud, his hand raised high to the
heavens as he floats. With his other hand he seems to be waving
good-bye to his friends on earth. At the Metropolitan Museum in
New York, there is a painting by Hans von Kulmbach that depicts
only two feet dangling from a cloud. Two feet! That’s all you see.
(It always reminds me of Christopher Reeve as Superman, floating
above Lois Lane’s patio.)
Our newer cosmologies are more complex. They have to
account for string theory, particle physics, parallel universes, and
rather bizarre dimensions to what we call reality. Interestingly
enough, theology is catching-up, and rather quickly.
Professor Schneiders speaking of Jesus’ presence and now
absence and says this: “Jesus standing in their midst is not simply
resuscitated. He is alive with a new life that is bodily but no longer
subject to death or to the laws of historical space and causality. He
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is the same person, Jesus, but in a new mode of being and presence.”
[Emphasis added]
Bishop Wright comments on how much closer heaven and
earth may be in our new cosmology. Jesus has ascended into
heaven to be with the Father again. But Wright then says; “...but
when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not taking about
two localities related to each other within the same space-time
continuum or about a nonphysical world contrasted with a
physical one, but about two different kinds of what we call space,
two different kinds of what we call matter, …two different kinds of
what we call time.” The biblical heaven is a different kind of
reality, perhaps parallel to our own.
Wright relates how C.S. Lewis did a remarkable job fusing
two worlds in his Narnia series. And then Wright comments: “But
the generation that grew up knowing its way around Narnia does
not usually know how to make the transition from a children’s
story to the real world of grown-up Christian devotion and
theology.”
Listen to our opening prayer again: “God, help us to keep in
mind that Christ our savior lives with you in glory AND promised to
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remain with us until the end of time.” That’s the great mystery we
celebrate again today. Ponder it; pray with it; but dismiss it and its
significance at your theological peril.
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