A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on May 29, 2022 by Revd Dr Sam Wells
Reading for address: Luke 24: 44-53
When you move to a new part of the country or to a new English-speaking country there’s always expressions you’ve never really been aware of that you first have to learn and eventually fetch up using. When I lived in Liverpool I was baffled by the expression ‘made up’ until eventually I realised it meant ‘really happy.’ In Newcastle, ‘Why aye pet’ is so much more vivid than just saying, ‘Yes’. After four years on Tyneside I didn’t want to say ‘Amen’ at the end of the creed – I wanted to say, ‘Why aye pet.’ In the American South there’s the term ‘y’all,’ which means ‘you’ (plural) and is so useful I still find myself saying it and more often writing it. But one ubiquitous American expression I never got used to was the phrase ‘reach out.’
‘Reach out’ isn’t what it appears. It sounds like a dramatic movie moment in a storm, where the ship’s sinking and, before the prow slips under the waves, a passenger reaches out from a lifeboat to rescue an escapee. But it’s far more prosaic than that. If you had a meeting with someone a week ago and they promised to sort out a few things afterwards but you haven’t heard from them and you send an email politely enquiring why not, you’ll get a reply that starts ‘Thank you for reaching out,’ which is a customary way to acknowledge your message while quite possibly masking a passive aggressive indication to say ‘I’ll get to this in my own time, if you don’t mind, and there’s no need to rush me.’
‘Reach out’ began to be used in America from the seventies, after the Four Tops sang ‘Reach out and touch,’ promising ‘I’ll be there with the love that’ll see you through.’ Now it’s become widespread as a synonym for ‘make contact.’ Those who loathe the expression, and would prefer to say, ‘Thank you for contacting me,’ have to reckon with the fact that ‘contact’ only became a verb around a hundred years ago, having previously been simply a noun. That’s how language evolves.
I want to reflect on this phrase in the light of Jesus’ Ascension, which we celebrated on Thursday. Traditionally Ascension’s one of the four great festivals, along with Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. But it’s become the poor relation. Why? Because two of the gospels don’t mention it, while one only just does; because the accounts in Luke and Acts are short, and the accounts don’t agree on whether resurrection and ascension were on the same day or 40 days apart; because it’s not clear why it matters; and perhaps most of all because the idea of Jesus being taken up into a cloud seems fanciful.
It helps a little if you realise Elijah was taken up into a cloud and a double portion of his spirit fell upon Elisha, so Luke’s story’s clearly echoing this tradition when Jesus is taken on high and the Holy Spirit falls on the disciples. And it helps if you realise that ‘cloud’ is a way of saying ‘God’ – as when a voice speaks from the cloud at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration. But I think the real issue in our difficulty comprehending Jesus’ ascension is much more profound.
The real issue is that we tell the story of God and us the wrong way round. We assume the story is all about us and we’re the centre of the story. The story goes something like this. Humanity was put at the centre of all things. We messed up. God called Israel to be the people with whom God brought salvation to the world. When that project faltered, God sent Jesus to deal with sin and death and bring forgiveness and everlasting life. Jesus sent the Spirit to be his permanent presence on earth to spread the gospel until the last day – when God will finally take sin, death, evil and suffering out of the picture forever.
In this version of the story the Ascension doesn’t have much of a place. It does answer the question of where Jesus went after the resurrection, but the real point is that, if Jesus came to save us by dying and rising, once that’s done, tying up loose ends is neither here nor there. It hardly qualifies for a major festival.
But just look what happens when we turn the story round. Here’s the story from God’s point of view. God dwelt in the glory of eternity, utterly sufficient in three-personed unity. Out of fathomless love, God resolved to be defined by relationship: not just the inner relationship of the three persons with one another, but outer relationship. Humankind is the name for the partner in that relationship. God’s life was shaped to be in relationship with humankind, first by Jesus being both fully of God and fully of humankind, and second by the creation of the universe as the setting for that relationship. Israel was chosen as the people amongst whom God was to come among us in Christ.
What we then get are two sets of key moments. I want you to imagine a pair of square brackets inside a pair of curved brackets. The first outer, curved bracket at the beginning of time is God’s original decision never to be just content with the inner relations of the Trinity, but to resolve to be in relationship with a partner – humankind. The final outer, curved bracket at the very end of time is the moment God turns that relationship from one with all the contingency and flaws and suffering and fragilities of being in time into a relationship that’s forever: a moment we call heaven.
But inside those two curved brackets is a pair of square brackets. The opening square bracket is Christmas. Christmas isn’t just the nativity of Jesus, it’s the whole story of the coming of Jesus, most obviously the annunciation to Mary, which is how we describe Jesus’ conception. This is the moment Jesus’ earthly life, the full relationship between God and humankind for which the universe was created, begins. The closing square bracket is Jesus’ ascension. This is the moment Jesus’ earthly life ends. In other words, Ascension is the flipside of Christmas – two ends of the same rope, as it were. And in the middle, between all those brackets, is the epicentre of God’s story: Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The crucifixion plays out the logic of the first two brackets, that being with us whatever happened would stretch God’s character and love and commitment to the very ultimate. The resurrection anticipates the logic of the last two brackets, that nothing can separate God from God, which we see played out in Christ’s ascension, and that nothing can separate us from God, which we see confirmed on the last day and the entry-point to heaven. That’s what it means to see Good Friday and Easter Day as a microcosm of the whole history of everything.
In this version of the story, the ascension is no longer just a quaint description of the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry. It’s one of the handful of key moments in the whole drama. Let’s go back to the notion of reaching out. The reason ‘reach out’ is such an irritating phrase is because it sounds dramatic and magnanimous, but it’s actually become mundane and commonplace. But if we restore the idea of reaching out as compelling and captivating, then we can see more precisely how together, Christmas and Ascension are exactly that – reaching out.
Stay with the image of the ocean liner, but now imagine that ocean liner floating happily just a foot or two away from the quayside. The quayside, dry land, is like heaven, the state of being utterly permeated by God’s eternal grace; the ocean liner is the universe – more precisely the earth. At Christmas, God’s longing to be in relationship with us means God reaches out and, in Christ, becomes a true passenger on the ocean liner – still utterly God, but now fully dwelling on the liner, fully inhabited in humanity. Then at Ascension, humanity reaches out to heaven. Humanity reaches out from the ocean liner of timebound existence into the forever of God’s eternal essence.
But here’s the crucial part. At Christmas, because Christ is fully divine, we can trust that the whole character and heart of God is wrapped up in Jesus being among us. Jesus isn’t a parcel delivery van, sent to drop off a gift called salvation then skedaddle back to heaven. Jesus is God completely invested in relationship with us, without reserve. Now, look what happens at Ascension: because Christ is fully human, we see that he represents and embodies every single one of us, every person that ever lived and ever will. When he reaches out to heaven and is embraced into the whole of the Trinity, we are too. Christmas means God forever belongs with us. Ascension means we forever belong with God. Christmas is God in Christ reaching out to us. Ascension is us in Christ reaching out to God. At Christmas Jesus embarks on the central definitive embodiment of God’s indelible relationship with us. At Ascension, Jesus disembarks from that definitive moment and brings us with him into the heart of God. We could even say Ascension is more important than Christmas, because God being with us isn’t much good if God sinks into the human predicament and never gets out. But at Ascension, we discover that God takes us up into forever, and that changes everything – and I mean, everything.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on the term ‘reach out,’ even if it’s just a florid way of saying ‘contact.’ Because ‘contact’ is a simple way of saying maintain or keep alive a relationship, and the good news of Christianity is that relationship, which starts in God and is extended to us and then embraces all creation, is what the whole of essence and existence are all about. And ‘reach out’ is a reminder that relationship sooner or later involves effort, challenge, courage, sacrifice and trust. Reaching out is a costly, risky form of contact. So every time we hear someone use the phrase ‘reach out,’ rather than get irritated with the exaggeration and embellishment, we can be renewed in recognising the dynamic heart of our faith.
And this is our faith, in two simple sentences. At Christmas the whole of God reached out into unbreakable and eternal relationship with us, whatever the cost to God; and at Ascension, the whole of humanity and all creation reached out into unbreakable and eternal relationship with God, whatever the reluctance from us. Why aye pet.
