If we look at the scripture that addresses the Ascension, it is no surprise that we find several conflicts across the Synoptic writers. But I believe it is John who gives us the line that opens up for us the best way to get to the deeper meaning of the Ascension, when Christ says, “it is good for you that I am going away. For unless I go away the Spirit cannot come to you.” In essence, Jesus seems to be making a connection between absence and presence - that it is necessary for absence to take place before we can be opened to presence. For this Feast Day really teaches us so much more about our life and about our loving God. What is it really all about? Check it out…

1. 1 Deacon Jim Knipper
29 May 2022 Feast of the Ascension of the Lord Princeton, NJ
This morning we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension. Normally this Feast is celebrated 40 days after
Easter which would have been this past Thursday but many Dioceses, like ours, move the feast to this
Sunday in order that it is easier for the faithful to celebrate and commemorate the bodily ascension of
Jesus into heaven.
And it has been through the centuries that artists have given us so many renderings of this event, most
often, showing the eyes of the crowd looking upward to the sky as Jesus ascends on a cloud. This
imagery reflects the cosmology of the times when these Gospels were written: a heaven above, an Earth
centered on Jerusalem and the underworld below. It was thought that humans looking up at the blue sky
were witnessing the floor of heaven made of blue lapis lazuli. So, a departure to heaven could only have
been envisioned in terms of being literally “taken up.”
But if we look at the scripture that addresses the Ascension, it is no surprise that we find several
conflicts. The Gospel of Luke, which I just read has Jesus ascending the same day he was resurrected.
Acts, written by the same author of Luke, has it taking place 40 days later. The corresponding scene in
Matthew ends with the great commission of sending forth the disciples to baptize all the nations…but
there is no mention of the actual ascension. In the Gospel of Mark, there is a general consensus among
scripture scholars that the last lines, which say Jesus was “taken up to heaven” were added at a much
later date. And then John’s Gospel has Jesus making three references to an ascension, without giving a
specific account of the event. But I believe John gives us the line that opens up for us the best way to
get to the deeper meaning of the Ascension, when Christ says, “it is good for you that I am going away.
For unless I go away the Spirit cannot come to you.”
In essence, Jesus seems to be making a connection between absence and presence - that it is
necessary for absence to take place before we can be opened to presence. Think about it…after all, how
common is it for us to be blinded in all that we have and who we have in our life? How easy is it for us to
take for granted people who are in our lives every day and slowly stop appreciating them? But when they
are gone you realize then how much you miss them and what they meant to you.
So, absence and presence seem to be terms that are co-related in as much as one needs absence
before one can appreciate presence. Another word for this is “suffering”…it is when we do not have what
we want or who we want in our lives and we feel incomplete...where we long for re-union, for wholeness,
for companionship, to have the one we love back in our arms…in short, for a peace that the world cannot
give.
And so, it would seem that Jesus needed to leave his disciples – to ascend back to God whereby the
disciples and the world could experience the physical absence of Christ. Thereby creating a hole in our
lives – one that feels like an emptiness, a yearning, a desire, a longing. And in doing so God creates this
internal barren space that we spend so much time, energy and money trying to fill – only to, hopefully
one day, realize that it is space that only God can fill.
And then, how often does God take us to the edge of what we feel we can handle, lost in total
powerlessness and ready to just give up only to then for God to be made known to us, always ready to
sustain us, to love us, to hold us, to dwell within us and to feed us…where desolation leads to
consolation, where death leads to resurrection, where doubt leads to knowing, where darkness leads us
to light, where ascension…leads to daily presence.

2. 2 Deacon Jim Knipper
So, where most of us have grown up with the concept of the Ascension simply being the historical time
where Jesus hopped onto a cloud and rose up into the sky to take a seat on the right hand of God…This
Feast Day really teaches us so much more about our life and about our loving God. For the resurrection
and ascension of Christ is not a onetime miracle but rather the revelation of this universal paschal pattern
of life, death and resurrection - that is so hard for us to see and to live.
But Jesus made it clear when he said “unless I go away the Spirit cannot come to you.” In essence, he
needed to leave in order that we would feel his absence in order to open our hearts and minds and souls
to the daily presence of the Spirit…to where we can experience a deeper union with God, and never feel
abandoned…to where we will find the wisdom and strength to continue his work, to embody his message
and, as we were reminded this past week with the tragedy in Uvalde and the ongoing war in the Ukraine,
the need to join God in the healing that this country…and this world so desperately needs.
But to actually participate in that healing, in the midst of doubt, tension and fear, we must wrestle with
living in the liminal space between absence and presence…living in the unknowing of this liminal place –
but which is the exact space of our lives where faith is formed, hope is cultivated and love is needed – all
focused not so much on what is seen, but what is unseen…which is the dependence on God and on the
graces given to us.
Spiritual writer, Parker Palmer, best summed it up when he wrote, “The deeper our faith, the more doubt
we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more
pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to
hold them in the hope of living without doubt, despair and pain, we also find ourselves living without
hope, faith and love.”
So, my sisters and brothers, while Christian art gives us the images of Jesus ascending on a cloud to be
with his Father, this Feast of the Ascension reminds us that loss and suffering is not evidence of God’s
absence, but rather of God’s presence. That God works through our losses, our wounds and our faults –
meeting us where we are broken in order to lift us up so that one day we will be rejoined to the Christ…in
the place where there is only presence…a place filled with Divine love...and the place that Christ has
gone to in order to prepare an eternal dwelling for each and every one of us.