"The Ascension" by Giotto (1266--1337)
“O GOD the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ
with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven; We beseech thee, leave us not
comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto
the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and
reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.” This is the
Collect for the Sunday After Ascension Day, and there is great pathos is the
“leave us not comfortless”.
Before I write about that, I wanted
to say something about the Ascension, a feast Thomas Cranmer intended to be
major but which is much neglected today, probably because of vague
embarrassment about its verticality.
1) "And when he had
said these things, as they were looking, he was taken up; and a cloud received
him out of their sight." (Acts 1:9)
2) "And he led them out
until [they were] over against Bethany: and he lifted up his hands, and blessed
them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted from them, and was
carried up into heaven." (Luke 24:50-1)
3) "[Jesus,] after he
had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right
hand of God." (Mark 16:19)
I’ve put the three
accounts of the Ascension in this order because of the point of view. In Acts,
we are seeing it through the disciples’ eyes: they are looking at him, he rises
and disappears into a cloud. That’s all they see and know. Luke goes further
and says where he went, though still implicitly seeing it from below: he is “carried
up into heaven”. And Mark goes right to the end, as if he was present in Heaven
at Jesus’ arrival: he was “received
up into Heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God.”
We, in our modern
knowledge, however imperfect, of what is “up there”, could of course sneer at
that vertical take-off into the cloud. And yet, does knowing that “up there” is
really “out there” change anything, really? We know there was what they saw as
some kind of lift-off, and that he went from them into what we might call another
dimension. Each generation describes it in terms in understands. He sits at the
right hand of the Father. We need not inquire upon what kind of armchair. We
know what is meant. If we pretend otherwise, we are being disingenuous.
More or less from the
start of his resurrected period, he had warned them that it was going to be
limited. He had, after all, come from Heaven; he had walked on earth, he had
died, been buried, and risen again; but back to Heaven at some point he had to
go. And in these passages, the moment has come. Notice their reaction: they do
not mourn. As Luke says, they worshipped him, and went back to Jerusalem with
great joy.
Nevertheless, as the
days went by, it must have been hard. They’d had him back, eating grilled fish
and honeycomb with them, joking with Thomas, explaining to them the infinite
goodness that had overcome death; and now he’d gone away for good.
It’s out of that
feeling that today’s Collect comes. “Leave us not comfortless.” Yes, he had
said something about sending someone else to help them; but it had never been
very clear and was now perfectly fuzzy in their minds. There was still a lot of
hostility about; they were still the weirdos who maintained that Yeshuah
Ben-Yousuf, a provincial carpenter, born suspiciously early in his parents’
marriage and eventually executed as a troublemaker, had been the
centuries-long-awaited Meschiach; and now they were starting to feel
exceedingly alone.
The rest of the
Collect refers to Whitsun, which happens next week. For the moment, let’s think
about his departure and the ensuing loneliness. The Catholic Church, nowadays, places into today’s Gospel reading
the High-Priestly Prayer from John 17; and I find that both entirely right and
deeply moving. This text, which my parents loved above almost all Bible texts,
is Jesus’ testament before his crucifixion. It can stand also as his prayer
just before being “received up into Heaven”. So I will end with it, in the KJV.
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes
to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son
also may glorify thee: as thou hast given him
power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast
given him. And this is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I
have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me
to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with
thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
I have
manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine
they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now
they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of
thee. For I have given unto them the words which
thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they
have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for
them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they
are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are
mine; and I am glorified in them.
And
now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee.
Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that
they may be one, as we are. While
I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest
me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the
scripture might be fulfilled.
And
now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have
my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy
word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as
I am not of the world. I pray not that thou
shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from
the evil. They are not of the world, even as I
am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy
truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into
the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And
for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through
the truth.
Neither
pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through
their word; that they all may be one; as thou,
Father, art in me,
and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that
thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou
gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I
in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the
world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved
me.
Father,
I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that
they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before
the foundation of the world. O righteous Father,
the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that
thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them
thy name, and will declare it: that
the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
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