From Here to Eternity
Preacher: Revd Canon Justin White, Chaplain, Merton College, Oxford
Readings: Acts 1:1-11; John 17:1-11
This last week, Christians around the world celebrated the great Feast of the Ascension. We have just heard the story of Christ’s Ascension from the Acts of the Apostles.
The colours may be festal, the music may be glorious, the Alleluias may still be echoing round the church; but, whichever way you cut it, there is something wistful about the Ascension.
After all, if the Ascension is about Christ returning into heaven, then it must also be about his disappearance from earth. Christ is, at least in some senses, no longer here.
Being theologically mature people, we can of course speak of his presence in the Eucharist, in his Word proclaimed in Scripture, in the Church which is his Body. We can speak of his Spirit poured out on all flesh. And so we can say, truthfully and beautifully, that he is with us always, even unto the end of the world.
But Jesus Christ the man – the man who walked and talked and ate and drank; the man who got tired and hungry; the man who touched lepers and blessed children and wept at the grave of his friend – that man is vanished from ordinary sight, as surely as anyone else who lived and died two thousand years ago.
There is, then, a sort of morning-after-the-night-before feeling about the Ascension: the morning after a particularly glorious and extravagant dinner party, when one comes downstairs and wonders for a moment whether the whole thing was a dream.
But it cannot have been a dream because the empty bottles, the crumbs, and the pile of washing-up testify that something real has taken place.
So too with the Resurrection. Were the encounters with the risen Christ real, or did the disciples dream the whole thing?
They were real because tangible signs remained: a fire still smouldering on the lakeshore; the remains of a fish breakfast; the crumbs of a broken loaf at Emmaus; the locked room still charged with the words, “Peace be with you.”
All evidence that this was real. Physical. Bodily.
We may be tempted to imagine the resurrection appearances as ghostly or ethereal: not quite solid, not quite serious, not quite flesh. But the crumbs and the embers and the fish bones – and, indeed, orthodox Christian teaching – forbid such an interpretation.
The Resurrection does not diminish Jesus’ bodiliness; it fulfils it. Raised by his Father to immortality, he is more present to his disciples than before. More present at Emmaus when he breaks bread; more present on the lakeshore when he eats fish; more present in the wounds by which Thomas knows him in that Upper Room.
And that ‘being present’ widens still further in the Ascension. The Ascension is an enlargement out of here into everywhere; out of now into always.
So there is no place for wistfulness today.
That, at least, is the view of the two rather brisk angels in Acts: “Men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” Or, in rather plainer English: “Oi! You! Why are you gawping at the clouds? Did you not hear what he said?”
Because Christ has not simply gone away. The love once localised in Galilee and Jerusalem – walking dusty roads, sitting at supper tables, sleeping in boats, touching particular wounds – is now made limitless and totally available.
And that is why today is such a fitting day for a baptism.
A baptism is, of course, a charming family moment. It is a welcoming of a child into a community. It is a sign that God loves this child with a love older and deeper than any of us can imagine.
But it is more than all of that.
Baptism declares that the life of the ascended Christ is here: here at the font; here in water poured over a little human body; here in a name spoken aloud before God; here in the flesh of this child – Charlotte Louise – who is marked with the sign of the cross and drawn into the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.
That is a very large thing to say about someone so small.
But then Christianity has always had the bad taste to say very large things about very small things: a baby in a manger; a few loaves and fishes; a cup of wine; a fragment of bread; a splash of water; a child held in someone’s arms.
We are inclined to think that if God is to be found anywhere, it must be in the grand, the impressive, the obviously spiritual. The Gospel keeps bringing us back to straightforward stuff: to bodies, meals, wounds, washing, touching, eating, drinking.
And today, to water.
The water of baptism blesses the body. It proclaims that earthly life matters so much to God that he will take hold of it, cleanse it, anoint it, become it – and carry it into his own future.
Theologians may argue about what the Incarnation did to God; but beyond dispute is what the Ascension has done for flesh.
At Christmas, God took on our human flesh in the form of a child, and became subject to its limitations: time and space, hunger and tiredness, vulnerability and dependence. On Good Friday, he entered flesh’s final limitation: death. On Easter Day, he smashed through that limitation and declared that death is not the last word. And on Ascension Day, God declares that it is not only the grave that cannot hold him down; neither can grave-ity – if you will forgive the dreadful pun – neither can gravity.
Flesh is taken up into the life of God.
Dare we believe that the risen Christ is still flesh? We must.
Dare we believe that the ascended Christ is still flesh? We must.
And dare we believe that in baptism our flesh, too, is caught up into that destiny? We must.
That is why baptism is the beginning of a life whose end is glory. Not ‘glory’ as in glamour, success, or religious self-importance, but glory in the sense in which Jesus uses the word in John’s Gospel.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus lifts up his eyes to heaven and prays: “Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee.”
And what is this glory?
There is no blaze of self-display here; no escape from the world; no private triumph above the mess and pain of ordinary life.
The glory of Jesus is his complete self-giving. It is love poured out to the end. It is the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, and the gift of the Spirit as one single movement of divine generosity.
And then, astonishingly, Jesus prays for those whom the Father has given him: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
That is a baptismal prayer if ever there was one.
For today this child is given a name; but more than that, she is placed within the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To be baptised is to be entrusted to that name; to be protected by that name; to be drawn into the unity of that name.
The name spoken over us in baptism is not a label. It is a home.
And this is why the promises made at baptism are both beautiful and alarming. Parents and godparents promise to pray, to teach, to turn from evil, to walk in the way of Christ.
The Church promises to welcome, uphold, and encourage. And the child – who cannot yet understand a word of it – is nevertheless claimed by a grace that comes before understanding, before achievement, before deserving.
That is perhaps the most important thing baptism says to us: before we can choose God, God chooses us. Before we can speak, we are addressed. Before we can walk, we are set upon a way. Before we can offer anything, we are given everything.
And this, too, belongs to the Ascension.
For when the disciples stand looking up into heaven, they are being told to begin living from Christ’s presence. They are to become his witnesses. They are to inhabit a mission.
“Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
In other words: stop gawping and get on with it; there is work to be done!
And baptism says the same. It is the beginning of a vocation. This child is baptised into Christ: into his dying and rising, his prayer and service, his truth and mercy, his body and blood, his glory and his wounds.
And that means that all of us who are baptised are being asked the same question as the disciples: why are you standing still, gazing elsewhere for the Christ who has promised to meet you here – in bread and wine, in water and word, in the neighbour, the stranger, the poor, the inconvenient, the difficult, the call to forgive, the discipline of love?
So the Ascension is Christ’s freedom: freedom to be present to every place, every time, every person, every wound, every table, every font.
And because he has gone up, we discover that the way up is the way down. He who ascended is the one who first descended. He who is glorified is the one who washed feet. He who is enthroned is the one who broke bread. He who fills all things is the one who emptied himself.
So if his is the end to which we aspire, then there is no point in gawping wistfully up at the sky. The way is the way of descent: the death of self, the sharing of broken bread, the pouring out of water, the daily, costly, unglamorous gift of a life given away in love.
Today, at the font, that way begins again among us.
A child is baptised. A name is spoken. Water is poured. The cross is traced. And the Church dares to say that this small body, this fragile life, this beloved child, is caught up into the life of the ascended Christ.
Not given a little religious decoration for the beginning of life. Not enrolled in a respectable institution. Not merely sprinkled with ecclesiastical solemnity.
No. Something far stranger and greater is being said: that her life, from this moment, is hidden with Christ in God; that the story begun here in water is joined to the story of Jesus himself; that the child held at this font is held also in the eternal life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And the same is true of us.
For all of us who are baptised, the line of our life does not run simply from birth to death, from cradle to grave, from one brief flicker of consciousness into darkness.
From font to kingdom, from water to glory, from the body we know now to the body Christ has carried into heaven.
That is the Christian journey.
Not from here to nowhere.
Not from here to nostalgia.
Not even from here to heaven, if by heaven we mean somewhere remote, detached from the bodies, wounds, meals, tears, and loves of this world.
But from here to eternity.
So, no room for wistfulness today.
The angels are still asking their brisk question. Why are we gawping and staring up into space?
By the grace of God, we need to crack on.