Sermon: Ascension Day, 17th Century Style

This eucharist, following the rite of the Book of Common Prayer 1662, was celebrated as it might have been in Durham Cathedral after the Restoration.  This sermon reflects some insights of that century.  

Salute the last, and everlasting day,

Joy at the uprising of this Sunne, and Sonne,

Ye whose just tears, or tribulation

Have purely washed, or burnt your drossy clay;

Behold the Highest, parting hence away,

Lightens the dark clouds, which He treads upon,

Nor doth He by ascending, show alone,

But first He, and He first enters the way.

O strong Ram which hast battered heaven for me,

Mild lamb, which with thy blood, hast marked t[i]he path;

Bright Torch, which shin'st, that I the way may see,

Oh, with thy own blood quench thy own just wrath.

And if the Holy Spirit, my Muse did raise,

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.

So, from just before the time of the Prayer Book, John Donne, the Dean of St Paul's, in an Ascension poem from his sequence of sonnets La Corona, ‘The Crown'.  The crown is of course, part of the regalia of the ascended Christ: ‘the head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now'.  But it's also the ‘crown of prayer and praise' that the worshipper offers.  And here, in this eucharist, his exaltation and our homage meet.  Our crown is here tarnished, there bent out of shape, for our worship is flawed and imperfect both in motive and execution.  ‘How shall I sing that Majesty which angels do admire?'  Yet a crown it is for all that, our love and ‘joy at the uprising of this Sunne and Sonne'.  And as Donne says, it is more than the celebration of victory and triumph.  In one of his boldest images, he speaks of the ascending Christ as God's battering Ram who breaks open the kingdom of heaven for all believers.  Now we can see the way home.

John Cosin, Canon of Durham before the English Civil War and Bishop after, compared the humility of the incarnation with the glory of the ascension.  In rolling periods he spoke about how Christ was raised ‘from the lowest parts of the earth to the highest place in heaven, from his De Profundis then, to his in excelsis now, from being hid under a stone, to sit at the right hand of God; and higher we cannot go'.[1] Like Donne, he makes the same point about how the ascension completes the divine work of exalting human nature.  ‘His being below first, descending to the lowest condition of men, and then in that condition going up, ascending to the highest state of heaven and carrying our nature thither with Him, - this is that we hold by, and by nothing else.  For if the Son of Man be gone up, we have all hope that the sons of men may get up thither after Him.... Thither is He gone as our forerunner, saith the Apostle; to lay open the way before us, saith the prophet; to prepare a place for us, saith He Himself.... It is but in heart and mind that we can get thither yet; sed qui posuit ascensiones in corde, He that can set his heart upon His ascension here, shall not fail to be with Him in person hereafter.'  Meditate on Christ in glory, and our spirits are already exalted: that's the thrust of Cosin's splendid sermon.

Even in his day, it seems, there were those (a few) who doubted whether the ascension was an event, so to speak, in the ‘biography' of Christ; and others (more) who could not see beyond the literal truth of a perplexing and difficult story.  No doubt when we confessed, just now, in the Nicene Creed, how Christ ‘ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father', those words were ascribed many different layers of meaning.  It isn't the preacher's task today to tell you how you should believe in the ascension.  But the insights of Donne and Cosin, coming out of the same century as the liturgy we celebrate tonight, so clearly direct us to look into the ascension story, and not to stare at the surface of the text like the disciples staring vacantly into the empty sky in our reading.  The gift of 17^th century Anglicanism was, perhaps, to expose something of the miraculous complexity of biblical narratives and credal affirmations, to glimpse the array of meanings that are held within apparently simple statements.  That may sound grander or tougher than it's meant to.  I simply mean that whatever else the ascension is about, it is not less than a story that abounds in the hope that Christ has opened up for the world, that tells us that we are more than miserable earthbound creatures with no other destiny than to be born, to survive for a few decades, and then to die.  It is a glorious affirmation that the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, and we are included in the cosmic scope of God's wise purposes for his creation.

Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester in the early 17^th century and one of the translators of the Authorised Version of the Bible, preached an unforgettable (by all accounts) series of sermons on the Lord's Prayer.  On ‘which art in heaven', he quotes the 19^th Psalm (‘the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork').  He goes on: ‘When we see a poor cottage, we presently guess that the dweller was no great person; but if we meet with some great house, we conjecture that some person of account dwells there'.  But we must not, he says, run into the errors ‘which so confine and compass God in heaven as if He had nothing to do in earth.... For so doth the Old Testament witness of him,... ‘Behold the heaven, and heavens, and the heaven of all heavens, are not able to comprehend Thee'.[2]  And this is the other side of the ascension story, not that Christ has somehow left us behind, but that he has expanded to fill all things with his glorious presence through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Ascension is not about an absent god but one who is nearer to us than our own souls.  And while we honour his transcendent glory on this great festival, we also love and know him as among us in immanent intimacy and closeness, both here in this holy sacrament, and in our ordinary days.

What we can't say about this matters as much as what we can.  The ascension draws us into the mystery of God, and as we contemplate it, our words begin to run out.  It's not only that we are unworthy to sing that Majesty: it's that human language is ultimately incapable of it.  ‘Of that whereof we cannot speak, we must be silent' said the philosopher Wittgenstein in words very much of the 20^th century, but which, I think, our 17^th century Anglican forebears would have understood.  Yet Christ Immanuel has come into the world as God's address to creation, his living Word of grace and truth in whom we have seen glory.  And his coming into the world, nevermore to leave it, is the sign of his loving purpose for humanity that we should evermore be with him.  ‘If he be with thee' says Donne in one of his sermons, ‘he will make thee see, that he is with thee; and never goe out of thy sight, till he have brought thee, where thou canst never goe out of his'[3]: to whom, as is most justly due, be all praise and dominion, power and might, this day and evermore.  Amen.

Acts 1

[1] Cosin, John, Sermon XIX Dominica post Ascensionem (Works, vol 1, 1843, 269).

[2] Andrewes, Lancelot, Sermons on Prayer, VIII, (Works vol V, Oxford, 1880, 384).

[3] Donne, John, Sermon on Isaiah 7.14, Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels, edited Evelyn Simpson, Berkeley California, 1963, 195