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May 8th, 2005, Sunday after Ascension Day, All
Souls' Episcopal Church
“Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that
they may be one, as we are.”
John 17:11
If one was to ask a child
the name of this Sunday, I suspect the answer would not be the “Sunday after the
Ascension of our Lord,” or “Easter 7”. Instead, most children would tell us
that today is Mothers’ Day. This fact actually bothers some religious folk who
believe that the church, a sacred institution, should not observe such secular
holidays. However, we should be reminded that the opposite of secular is not
sacred, but ecclesiastical. Those who rail against secularity should understand
that the alternative to a secular society would be a nation ruled by the clergy,
be they bishops or mullahs, whichever the case may be. In any event, our nation
has officially been observing Mothers’ Day since President Wilson signed it into
law in 1914. This recognition of Mothers’ Day came about due largely to the
efforts of two women, Anna Jarvis, an educator from West Virginia whose mother
began promoting the idea of a Mothers’ Day in the 19th Century, and
Julia Ward Howe, who also advanced the idea and who is best known as the author
of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. In the early middle ages, people in the
British Isles and Celtic Europe celebrated motherhood with a springtime festival
honoring the goddess Brigid. Also, the ancient Greeks commemorated a feast in
honor of Rhea, the mother of all gods (a feast observed weekly in our house!).
Perhaps more to the point, in the 17th Century, British Christians
began celebrating Mothering Sunday on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. On that day,
Christians would make a pilgrimage to their cathedral – the mother church – as
well as honoring their earthly mothers. This practice is still observed.
On this Sunday I want to extend to all mothers today a very happy and blessed
Mothers’ Day.
The Feast of the Ascension marks
the conclusion of the Easter Season. Next Sunday is the Feast of Pentecost when
we recall and celebrate the descending of the God the Holy Spirit who brings to
birth the Christian Church. We would do well on this Sunday to consider how
these two feasts, Ascension and Pentecost, are related, for we really cannot
understand one without the other.
The first thing about which we
need to be clear is that forty days after Easter our Lord Jesus ascended to
Heaven. This does not mean that Jesus was “putting some distance” between
Himself and His church. He wasn’t just going away. His ascension was not the
beginning of a two thousand year sabbatical. Jesus ascended. He did not
retire. He did not bid farewell to His staff and board Air Force One for
Heaven. Instead, just as God the Son went forth from His Heavenly Father and
took our nature upon Him and dwelt among us, so He returned to His Heavenly
Father having accomplished all that the Father had sent Him to do. The Son of
God, now incarnate – clothed in our flesh, our human nature resurrected and
glorified – ascends to Heaven where He is seated at the right hand of His
Heavenly Father. In Heaven, the eternal Father pours out His love for His Son
who is at once human and divine. The Heavenly Father’s love for His Heavenly
Son is united with His love for humanity created in His image. The Father
eternally loves His Son and He loves us eternally in Him. Any question and any
doubt about God’s love for humanity is answered once and for all by the human
nature – the human face and human hands and human words and human blood - of the
Son of God who was in the bosom of His Father before the foundation of the world
and who now intercedes eternally on our behalf in Heaven. On Pentecost, the
Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, descends upon the
Christian Church and brings us to spiritual birth and seals us in the eternal
bond of God’s love.
By ascending to Heaven, our Lord
Jesus Christ is not leaving his church. Our Lord promises us that He will never
leave us and never forsake us. He tells us, “I am with you always, even until
the end of the world.” In the 14th chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus
says that if a man loves Him, he will obey His words, and says, “My father will
love him and
we will come and make our abode with him.” As Jesus promises the
coming of God the Holy Spirit, He says, “I will not leave you comfortless. I
will come unto you.” It was once believed that God’s presence
dwelled in the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple. After Pentecost, the
church becomes the spiritual temple in which God’s presence dwells. In
Hebrews, chapter three, the church is called God’s household, and as St.
Paul reminded the Christians in Ephesus, we as the church have been built
together as a habitation of God through the Spirit. Rather than leaving His
church, our Lord ascends to Heaven and sends God the Holy Spirit so that the
very presence of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, may dwell within us and abide
with us in all times and in all places. The Feast of the Ascension is the real
celebration of Christ the King. By ascending into Heaven, our Lord Jesus
assures us that He is with us, presiding over His church, forever. In today’s
Gospel reading, our Lord prays for His church, that having been brought to life
by the very Spirit of love who proceeds from the Father and the Son, this same
church may dwell together in the same love in which the Father and Son are
eternally united.
Our Lord Jesus ascended to
His Heavenly with our resurrected human nature, and the Father loves us in His
Son. One way of contemplating this love for us is to think for moment about
that holiest of all mothers, the Blessed Virgin Mary. As any good mother, she
loves her son. She loved Him on that first humble morning when she wrapped Him
in swaddling clothes in the manger where she gave Him birth. Her love for Him
grew even more profound as He Himself grew and waxed strong. She loved Him as
He moved beyond her realm and began His earthly ministry when, as any mother,
she had to let Him go. She loved Him as the skies darkened in mid-day and a
sword pierced her heart in a placed called Calvary on a Friday the church calls
good. She loved Him as a mother loves her son. Any father who has watched his
sons or daughters cry their hearts out in their mother’s arms has seen a glimpse
of the love between Mary and her son, Jesus. For Mary, this love finds its
conception in the words, “Be it unto me according to Thy word.” Her faithful
obedience to the Word of God is fully expressed when she bears the Word of God
and gives birth to the Word of God made flesh – her flesh. In a mysterious way,
Mary’s love for her son and Mary’s love of God is one love, a love which truly
makes her blessed among women, blessed among mothers.
When our Heavenly Father loves His
Son, Jesus, He loves Him as He is in our flesh taken from the Blessed Virgin.
As such, the Father’s eternal love for His Son and the Father’s eternal love of
us in His Son is one love. That very love, in the person of God the Holy
Spirit, is poured out upon His church on the Feast of Pentecost. That love
brings the church to birth. That love sustains us, protects us, comforts us,
strengthens us, teaches us, guides us, unites us, and dwells with us forever.
The church is the living, incarnate expression of God’s love in this world.
And, the Head of that Church is our Lord Jesus Christ who abides with us still,
and who will never leave us or forsake us. In Him and through Him we belong to
God, united forever in the loving presence of the Father by the Holy Ghost. Let
us grow together in that love by keeping His words and by glorifying Him in His
church.
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