Religion
High rise
Martin Sullivan
Ascension Day fell three weeks ago. What are we to make of this event and how are we to interpret it? The accounts of it in the New Testament are limited and restrained. One looks for its purpose, first in the lives of those who experienced it and then in the effect it has now upon the Christian community. The fourth Evangelist meant us to understand that the death of Christ, His Resurrection, His Ascension and His return in the form of the Holy Spirit are four inseparable moments in what he calls the 'Glory'. The Spirit is simply Christ tinder another form. Past, present and future are swallowed up in the present of eternal life. When Mary Magdalene was told by her Lord on Easter Day, "I ascend to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God", in St John's Gospel, the indication seemed to be that subsequent appearances would not only be post-Resurrection, they would also be post-Ascension. These reflections help us to look at this strange phenomenon in a .different light. We are not trying to rationalise a journey into space. The crude question "Which is the way to heaven?" is answered by the statement, "Christ is the way to heaven", and Peter's bustling inquiry "Why can't I follow Thee now?" is met with the reply that the difficulties are moral not physical. He who is still capable of denying Christ cannot yet go where He is going.
If we want the news behind this headline we are obliged to probe for it. What value has the Ascension for us? It is a clear pointer to that relation between Christ and the believer in which we now stand. St Luke reports calmly and succinctly; "And He led them (i.e. His disciples) out as far as Bethany and was parted from' them". From then on they had to live without His visible presence. For men who relied upon 'feel and touch', this must have been a severe deprivation, and yet we are told they went back to work with joy. The apostles seemed to pass without difficulty from fellowship with Christ in the flesh to fellowship with Him in the Spirit and the latter state was obviously more real, more effective and more inspiring than the former. They did nothing while He was around. Why should they? He was always within hailing distance and He had the power they lacked. Now they had it.
HQW can we rise to this? Perhaps, by doing what they did: coming to know Him. His friends have left us the kind of record which enables us to share their experience. What He was to His disciples, He can be to us. We have no reason to believe that we shall learn, in a mystical way, anything fresh about Christ and His will, but our experience may make the records come alive. There are sceptical critics who claim that we can know very little of the historical Christ, but the strictest and most accurate scholarship does not point to this -gloomy conclusion. The picture of Christ in the Gospels is not a figment of the imagination of the early church. We may not know all that we should like to know about Him, but there is enough to enable us to see Him clearly and to hear Him plainly.
The man who learned this lesson quickly and passed it on to us was St Paul. He never knew Christ in the flesh, and yet if there is one phrase more than another which describes his personal religion, it is summed up in the simple words, in Christ'. He had been told, as we have been, about the historical Jesus, but he went on to make his discoveries part of his very life. "Who are Thou?" he asked on the Damascus road. From that moment on, he knew. For this great man, as for us, Christ's ascension is the festival of His presence in the world, rather than His departure from it. "It is expedient for you that I go away", He said to His friends. As they came to understand what He meant, so have we.
Martin Sullivan is Dean of St Paul's
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