Sermon on May 24, 2020: Easter 7
Some of the strangest art in the Christian tradition are the scenes that portray the ascension of Jesus into heaven. They often have a feature known as the “disappearing feet.” In these works of art, especially the medieval ones, you don’t see the full body of Jesus. Instead, what you see is cloud at the top, and Jesus’ bare feet sticking out from below the cloud. As if the top part of Jesus had already crossed over into heaven, while his feet were momentarily still present on earth. In these scenes, the disciples are standing nearby, perplexed, looking up at the partially-ascended Jesus. Looking up at his feet.
This way of depicting the Ascension is so wonderfully strange; and the more you look at it, the more it looks as though Jesus’ feet are stuck in the ceiling of the earth. And that’s especially true in churches that have a sculptural relief of these disappearing feet. An example of this can be found at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in England. Go into the chapel of the Shrine and look up, and you’ll see Jesus’ feet protruding from the ceiling. A permanent fixture, just half-way between heaven and earth.
Our own St. Paul’s does not have any disappearing feet. But we do have the Ascension windows: a triptych, just above the gallery in the choir loft, which I can see clearly from where I’m standing right now. I wish you were here to see them as well. Next time you are nearby and outside the church at night, look up above the old red doors, and you can admire these lovely, illuminated windows. And even though we don’t have the disappearing feet, there is nevertheless a strangeness to the image. Jesus’ body is long and thin, almost flattened, as if he is shifting into a different dimension. His toes are about as long as his fingers. The disciple just below him looks distraught, and is reaching upward as if trying to grab onto Jesus’ feet and pull him back down. The scene is both glorious and unsettling at the same time, not unlike the ascension itself.
The strangeness of ascension imagery mirrors the strangeness of today, which is the Sunday after Ascension Day. It is perhaps the strangest day in the whole church year, capturing the weirdness of the liminal space between the bodily presence of the risen Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit. In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard how Jesus was lifted up into heaven while the disciples stood there staring up at the sky, hypnotized. And then, eventually, they just left and went back to Jerusalem, and waited for 10 days in what must have been a very strange in-between time, after God’s presence in the flesh had left them, but before God’s presence in the Spirit had arrived. Jesus ascends, but the Holy Spirit has not yet come. I wonder if the disciples had that unsettled feeling, as if they had fallen into a gap. It’s the same gap that we are in today, on the strangest Sunday of the whole church year, in what is certainly the strangest time that we have ever lived.
After Easter, we can never escape life in the gap. On Easter Day, life overcomes death, and Jesus overturns the death-dealing powers of the world; and yet death remains, and its powers seem to be the ones in charge. When Jesus rose from the tomb, he destroyed death; and yet we still die, and we see others die, and it is not apparent that they will soon be emerging from their tombs. It is hard to see how Christ has destroyed death when the powers employ it so diligently. It is hard to believe in the truth of Easter Day, when it feels like we are still stuck in the tomb. It’s unsettling to live in the strangeness of the gap between the already and the not yet.
Our Collect of the Day acknowledges this strange in-between-ness. God has exalted Jesus with triumph to God’s heavenly kingdom; even so, we pray for God’s presence, saying, “Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us.” To see God’s victory over death only to then see God’s apparent disappearance from the world is an unsettling thing. Like a bright ray of hope that shines for a moment in the sky, before disappearing behind a cloud.
“Do not leave us comfortless.” That is our prayer for God’s presence in our midst. Life in the gap means that it’s normal to feel comfortless, with the sense that “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” And yet in today’s reading from the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus praying a prayer for us. He prays not just for those in his midst, but for those who will come after them who he does not see. Jesus prays that they—we—“may be one,” just as he and the Father are one. He is praying for unity—that even amidst our many differences, even in our diversity of nation and language and race, that somehow all of his followers would be one. Not divided, not hostile, but one. On the surface, it seems like Jesus’ prayer has gone unanswered, doesn’t it? But that is what the view from below looks like, staring up at the disappearing feet. That’s what it means to exist in the strange in-between. Because it’s only Christ who has overcome death; and it is only Christ who can take the many and make us into one. For that to happen, it will take a second Easter—a second coming.
We know that Christ has not left us comfortless, and has sent us the Holy Spirit to strengthen us. That is the truth we will hear next Sunday, on the Day of Pentecost. We have not been left orphaned. The presence of God is among us, and has come into the world. And the next time he passes through the vault in the ceiling of the earth, it will be with power and great glory—and it will be once and for all.
Amen.