Christ is Risen!
The streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles would scarcely seem a likely place to get in touch with one’s humanity. Broken hearts and shattered dreams of once self-sufficient, perhaps even powerful, men and woman stare out through vacant eyes and blank expressions in the souls one encounters here. Listening to one man after the next relate the story of his “fall from grace” in matter-of-fact tones, as if merely telling the story of another, the fragility of status and position cuts much too close to home. “Surely, I could never end up in such a place as this?” is the thought that creeps in uninvited.
How then does one correlate this grim visage of beleaguered humanity with Prince Hamlet’s optimistic (albeit sarcastic!) assessment (Act 2, Scene 2) “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!”
The 82nd Psalm would surely agree; “I have said that you are gods and all of you sons of the most high…” (if only the verse ended here, but it continues) “…nevertheless you will die like men and fall as one of the princes.” And it is into this pitiable state that the Son of God appeared to salvage even from the very dregs of human wretchedness our sin-battered image and to restore it to the glory He intended for us when He first made us.
The Feast of the Ascension of Christ generally passes little observed and virtually unremarked in parish life today. Few working men and women can afford the luxury of attending this Thursday morning service, and so by degrees the divine potency of the message of this feast loses its resonance within us; and this at a time when it is most urgently needed.
Not content “merely” to appear to wear our broken humanity; not content “merely” to live and move among us, to become “an object of our senses” as the great Athanasius would write; not content “merely” to pour out His life on the wood of the Cross, accepting the very worst form of torture and death then devised; and not content “merely” to harrow Hades, to lead captivity captive and to burst forth in His Resurrected Glory on the 3rd day, Jesus Christ does one more thing to seal His awesome victory!
He ascends into the Heavens still robed in our once-corrupted but now-glorified humanity to resume His place at the right hand of the Father. From the very precipice of the abyss of non-being, even from the mean streets of Skid Row, to the Throne of Glory, Christ has redeemed us! “You have left nothing undone until brought us to heaven and granted us your future Kingdom.”
Prince Hamlet spoils his assessment in the next line “and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” Thanks be to almighty God that He has raised us from the dust through His Son, Jesus Christ, whose glorious Ascension we venerate in this holy season!