The Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord
Today is one of the seven principal feasts of the church year (the others are Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, and All Saints’ Day), and so this note brings you best wishes for the festival recognizing Jesus’ ascent into heaven to sit, forever, at the right hand of God the Father.
This Thursday, though, my own festivity is tempered by the reality of the shootings in Uvalde, Texas, as well as last week’s shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Laguna Woods, California. I have grieved so deeply in these past days, a grief peppered by anger and frustration at our American fetishization of power and violence and the valuation of individual license over the principal of common welfare, each of which is anathema to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the central ethic of Christianity. My heart is heavy, and my patience with obstacles to change has grown thinner even than it was before. It has for me, as it has for you, been a very hard week.
Jesus’ disciples were grieved over the idea that their Lord would leave them; their whole existence was built around this man and the ministry he began with them. But Jesus, who knew his disciples like he knows us, promised that he would not leave them comfortless, even as he ascended to heaven. He promised that he would send the Holy Spirit to guide and comfort, to lead and to inspire, to shield and to reveal God’s wisdom to them—and to us. This week I have taken great comfort in the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Holy Comforter, whom Jesus promised to us and whose power we know in this community. I take comfort in knowing that our pursuit of justice and dignity for every human being is led by the Holy Spirit, and that while the work is ours, the power behind the work is God, and that God’s light will always triumph over the darkness. Always.
So, this great feast day, my siblings, as we celebrate Jesus’ ascent to the brilliant realms, we take heart that the Holy Spirit comes on Pentecost as God’s gift to our anxious and wearied souls, to lead us into the work of the Kingdom, to remind us that our journey toward justice and equity is the journey toward the heart of God, and to assure us that we are never, ever alone.
Burl+
