Ascension Sunday – May 24, 2009

This past Friday, some members of this parish, some of the parish staff, and I watched together the 1981 film Chariots of Fire about the heartache, struggles, passions and setbacks of a group of British runners as they try to qualify for the 1924 World Olympics in France. One of the sub-plots to the story involved a Presbyterian minister Eric Liddell, who after year upon year of struggling to perfect what he believes is his God given gift to run like the wind for God’s glory, finds ironically that his qualifying heat is to be held on the Sabbath. In a ‘straw which has broken the camels back’ moment, after all he has suffered through, and now faced with having to break his strict observance of the Sabbath, he throws up his hands at a public speech and voices an answer to the question that has been plaguing him throughout his journey – ‘where does one find the strength to endure? From within. From within!

The truth of the ascension this Sunday finds its bearing then in the truth of this statement, that we, as the people of God, as the Christian faithful, as heirs of the resurrection, who live on in the Spirit of divine love, we too find the strength to endure as well from within. The problem of this feast day, as it is reinforced in all our prayers over and over this evening, is that we put so much focus on the fact that God ascended back to his heavenly existence to sit at the right hand of God, that we forget to realize that it was only by Jesus’ ascent, and then and only then, that the Holy Spirit of divine love could be sent to all the world. The ascension allowed for the fullness of God, for that divine Spirit, to find its power and presence within us, within comm unity, within the words of Scripture, and within the Eucharist we share. So it is here in the Christ alive within all these things, that we, as people of God, find our strength.

Now there may be a fortunate few of us here present this evening who have never had to endure physical, emotional, or spiritual suffering of any kind; who never needed affirmation, nor forgiveness for the things they have done, who never needed another for strength, nor been loved by being challenged or pushed to excel – but somehow I doubt it. The world, does still grown for perfection, and so for the vast majority of us, I think, we all have faced some pretty hard and harsh stuff in our life; things that tested our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Things like debilitating, chronic, or terminal illnesses, the death and dying of family and close friends, and all the heartache that goes along with that, lost loves and broken hearts, economic struggles, physical disabilities, violence, persecution and discrimination, to name but a few.

Yet we find out of these experiences, as these experiences test and try us, the truth of a strength of character born within us, and the strength of communities that do care, which rise out of their ashes, and grace us with the capacity to see the Christ in us and the Christ alive in one another. We are, and have been, truly touched by the spirit of Christ and can feel and see how lost love and broken hearts have made us more compassionate, how our own illnesses move us to care for the pain and suffering of others, how persecution and discrimination move us to fight for the equal human dignity of all. We find how even a small and simple Christ-like gesture can bring out the best in us.

Hopefully, in humor, a personal story of triumph over something I physically had to endure, and how I experienced Christ in another, will help to illustrate this. The holy grail of mountain climbing, as there are so few mountains that fit this category, is to climb a mountain over 14,000 feet. I am proud to say, with the strength of Christ in two Jesuit friends ,who helped me find the strength of Christ within, me, this ‘Father go get me a dough-nut’ made it to the top of Mount Baerstadt in Denver, a peak with an elevation of 14,060 feet.

Let me set the scene. We awoke very early in the morning – VERY early. By we, I mean Pedro, a Jesuit from Peru whose hometown is high up in the Andes mountains, and another Jesuit friend, Matt, from New England, whose life goal is to climb every 14,000 foot or higher mountain in the world, and me, a flat-lander from Chicago, and truly, as you can all tell, of excellent physical condition. Now I am not sure what I was thinking by telling these two Jesuits that I would go mountain climbing with them – I mean I love nature, I have climbed some mountains, if you can call Mount Adams down the road a mountain, (at least at its peak there are some nice jazz clubs), and although I am no Iron-man contender, I thought well how hard could it be – so I said ‘sure I’ll go’

The day was cool, sunny, with a slight mist and fragrant smell of pine in the air, as we faced our ascent, slowly going back and forth over the switchback, climbing higher and higher, a hundred feet at a time. The sun grew higher, the air warmer, and thinner, AND THINNER, and the higher we got the more I felt my head pounding, as if it was saying to my skull, ‘forget this mess – body I’m outta here’. Pedro, in his exuberance and Andes mountain prowess, ran up and down, up and down, and up and down, the mountain saying to Matt, who stayed back with me out of pity, ‘¡Que Grande!’ ‘¡Que Grande!’

With head pounding and heart flip-flopping, my first thought, (besides getting rid of this Pedro character in a way that would not cause an international incident), was, and in my best Roseanne Roseanna Dana impersonation from Saturday Night Live, ‘I think I’m gonna die’. Yet, in these two Jesuit buddies, (buddies who waited for me, kept affirming me and prodding me on, who shared their water with me, who were patient with me, who did not judge my being out of shape, who carried at times my load), the Christ within them brought out the best in me and helped me to endure, so that in the end all three of us were able to reach the summit.

Here, in the presence of God’s grandeur, seeing the creator’s beauty in three dimensions from all sides of the mountain, my heart expanded (and this time not from a heart-attack), and as I looked down on the summit marker, my heart swelled with pride – I made it! 14,000 plus feet – I made it. And from that experience I now had something to be proud of, to claim as my own, to say, in my best President Obama impression, ‘Yes I can (and did)’!

The truth of the Ascension, for the apostles and for us, is not that in the ascension, Jesus is no longer present, rather quite the opposite, as Ephesians assures us, Jesus, this God who descended, and took on, or rather ‘endured’ our human form out of love, died a human death, rose and ascended, did so that he might, in the truth of the Divine Spirit sent, fill all things with goodness and hope. Jesus, now, not limited by physical human form, is found within, within our hearts, within our communities of apostles who care, prophets who speak the truth of God’s justice, pastors and teachers who lead us and guide us, and the holy ones in ministry who build us up. Jesus is found in the Word we hear today, in the body and blood we share – is found indeed in all things.

And so in Christ alive within our hearts and within our community, this Christ who is over all, through all, and in all, we can endure all things, hope in all things, and find strength that the demons of our lives will be driven out, the struggles and sufferings of serpent stings which we experience will not harm us, that sickness will find healing and that death will be no more. Jesus, in our readings from the Acts of the apostles, affirms that the Spirit which has been sent gives us the power to restore dominion, to restore love, to restore all good things.

‘Why then’, on this day of ascension, we hear God’s messengers challenge us, ‘are we still staring into the sky’? Jesus’ ascension urges us to transformation and to action – if you want to find the strength to endure, look within, look within your hearts, look within the people you worship with, look within the hearts of women and men who fight for justice and mercy, and there you will find me fully alive. Together, the me in you and the you in me, we will find strength in one another and we will climb any mountain or obstacle in our way in order to raise this world to the full realization and beautiful promise of God’s grandeur – together yes we can, and together yes we will, and herein lay our strength!

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Kent Beausoleil, S.J.
(513) 745-3005 (Office)