Ascension Thursday
May 31, 1984
Acts 1: 1-11Don Bosco Tech, Paterson, N.J.
“Men
of Galilee , why do you stand here looking up
to heaven?” (Acts 1: 11).
Why
were the disciples staring up to
heaven? Because Jesus had just
physically departed from them, and they felt a terrible sense of loss. Their friend, their leader, their teacher was
gone, and they were on their own. Many
of them apparently were looking for something to happen, like an immediate
transformation of the world into a perfect place to live, a return to the
garden of paradise, or something of the sort.
Not
only has Jesus, risen from the dead, not changed the outward appearance of the
world radically, but he has commanded the disciples to take over his mission of
preaching the good news, and he has left them alone.
At
least it seems that they’re alone.
Obviously they don’t grasp his meaning when he says, “I’m with you
always until the end of the world” (Matt 28:29), nor when he tells them, “The
Holy Spirit will come down on you” (Acts 1:8).
Jesus had been such a real part of their lives, and suddenly he’s not
there. No wonder they stared into
heaven!
Our
situation is quite different. We men and women of 20th-century America don’t
look to heaven. Jesus hasn’t been a real
part of our lives.
Instead
of looking for a transformation of the world into a radically better place, we
take it for granted that the world will always be the same. Activist songwriter Bob Dylan said in an
interview the other day, for instance, that working for world peace is a waste
of time because it’s just not going to happen.
Although
the Holy Spirit has come upon us in Baptism and Confirmation, we haven’t
allowed him to transform our lives. He’s
the Spirit of the living Jesus who’s always with us. But what difference does he make in our
lives? Is Jesus for us a person of the
past, or a living person, a present person, a friend, a leader, a teacher?
Once
the disciples accepted the Holy Spirit, once they believed that Jesus was with
them, once they realized that they were now Jesus’ messengers in a world that
needs salvation, then they could stop staring into heaven and change the world.
They
did change the world, or at least a substantial portion of it. The apostles made the civilization of Rome more human by
Christianizing it. Missionaries brought
not only Christ but learning and a new sense of human dignity wherever they
went.
The
apostles, of course, could only begin
to carry on the good news of Jesus—that Jesus is life, that Jesus obtains the
forgiveness of our sins, that all of us are God’s children. Each succeeding generation of the disciples
of Jesus has had to carry on the mission, to be the witnesses of Jesus to the
ends of the earth (cf. Acts 1:8).
Now
Christ counts on us, on this generation.
Geographically, the gospel has been proclaimed just about to the ends of
the earth. In time, it has not. To every human being, it has not.
But
now the angels wouldn’t say, “Men of America, why do you stand here looking up
to heaven?” The apostles looked for a
heavenly solution to their problems and their hopes, and had to be fired into
action on Christ’s behalf. We don’t even think about heaven, about
sin, about grace, about the lordship of Jesus Christ. Our activity is entirely earth-centered: jobs and money and vacations and SATs and
girlfriends and arcades and cars—and on and on.
Men
of America ,
are those realities of the earth going to transform the world we live in? Will they make mankind less violent, less
greedy, more helpful, more generous, and more closely-knit into a single human
community in which all men and women are not only created equal but treated
equally? In which all men and women can
read and write and work and have enough to eat and live out their days in
peace.
We
men and women of the 20th-century, particularly we of America , have
to begin looking again to heaven. We
have to begin looking again for Jesus:
“this Jesus who has been taken up” but who “will return” too (Acts 1:11),
this Jesus who is with the Father and also with us, this Jesus who shares with
us his power to heal the sick and broken world, to forgive sin, to change the
hearts of individual men and women, to make a real difference in the history of
the world.
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