Taking Up Space

Feast of the Ascension/Easter 7A

There’s a story I read some time ago of a priest who was going through his normal routine of preparing for worship Sunday morning. As was his custom, he opened the church and walked through the sanctuary, praying for those who would gather in that sacred space that morning. He then walked outside like he did every Sunday, to ensure that the peaceful grounds of the church were in order. This morning, he noticed that a man, a vagrant, was sleeping in the courtyard. To make matters worse, the scruffy stranger had his shoes kicked off and his feet propped up on their statue of St. Francis of Assisi. The priest didn’t want to cause a scene with worshipers set to arrive any moment, so he quickly went to the man and told him that, while he was welcome to worship at the church that morning, the parishioners would be most upset to see him defiling their sacred statue with his dirty feet. The stranger looked at the priest and said, “I’m happy to move my feet to a more suitable place if this is too holy. To keep me from repeating this mistake in the future, could you tell me what ground is not holy?”

As the story goes, the unknown man then revealed himself to be St. Francis himself, and then poof — he was gone.

There’s something about this story that resonates with the story of Jesus’ Ascension, and I don’t mean just the disappearing act. I mean rather the matter of some places being sacred, where God is present, and others not. You see, our Feast today celebrates how at Christ’s Ascension God claims all ground as holy, under God’s care and blessing.

This is not, I know, obvious at first glance. I mean, when we read the story of the Ascension, we could be tempted to read it simply as a story of the vanishing of God from the face of the earth, a sad memory of the day when God left us. And, truth be told, you could read Luke’s entire Easter story this way. For, his telling of Jesus’ resurrection is marked more by absence than by presence. 

Recall Luke’s retelling: On Easter morning, the women show up to the cemetery to anoint his body but, when they lean into the opening, all they find is a spacious, empty tomb. Later that day, the disciples on the road to Emmaus walk with the risen Christ long enough to realize who he is and then, just like that—poof—they are left with nothing but an empty seat at the table where Jesus had just been sitting. And then, in the reading for today, Jesus finally shows up to be with his disciples after the resurrection. He’s there, filling the room with his presence, eating with them and reminding them of all the things he taught them. And just when Jesus’ presence seemed to be the most joyous, most sacred, most right thing they could imagine, he takes them outside, out of Jerusalem, to some spacious open fields near Bethany, blesses them and poof — he’s gone. 

Which would be the end of the story ... if the story ended there. But of course, it doesn’t end there. Rather, it continues from Luke’s gospel right into the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, so important is the Ascension in Luke’s story that he tells the story again in the sequel. In Luke’s Gospel, it comes at the end of the book, but in Acts it is at the very beginning, starting a new chapter of the story, setting up all that follows—the coming of the Holy Spirit, the miracles of the apostles, the perseverance of the early church amidst persecution, the spread of the gospel throughout the known world.

The impression we get from this is that Jesus had to go away in order for his mission to take off, in order for the church to grow. For it is in the space that has been created by the Ascension, by Jesus’ “absence,” that the church learns the full extent of what the resurrection means. In the “absence,” in the void, left by Jesus’ ascent into heaven, the church learns to live in the resurrection, learns what it means to be the resurrection in the world.

Yet, what the Ascension of Christ marks is not really God’s absence but rather God’s ubiquity, his omni-presence, his everywhereness. Because Jesus has ascended, left the physical plane of existence, he is now present everywhere on earth. No longer is Christ’s presence limited to the small space taken up by his human body. He is now able to be present throughout all creation, as he sits above it all, ruling over the whole earth, from his throne beside God the Father.

I know, as it’s described, this sounds rather abstract and mythological. Yet in asserting Jesus’ elevated ubiquity, his omnipresence, we are not just making a “spiritual” claim. We are also making a political claim. The Church's insistence that Christ is ubiquitous is over and against all other claims made by governments or ideologies, that assert control over us and over the world. Jesus, the Ascension declares, is above and over all. His rule transcends and supersedes the rule of everything else, breaking down the bounds of every other institution and belief system. Jesus, sitting beside God’s throne, claims all for himself. There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ does not cry, “Mine!” 

This explains the ancient practice in British churches of “beating the bounds.” During the days leading up to Ascension Day, churches would walk the boundaries of their “parish,” essentially a county in England, blessing the homes and the fields as they went. Reading from the Psalms and the Gospel, the processing priests and town officials beat the boundary posts of the parish to mark the territory cared for by this portion of Christ’s body. Reminding everyone of the parish boundaries had practical implications, you understand, as churches had certain duties, such as the care of children born out of wedlock in the parish. But beyond that, beating the bounds asserted that God’s boundaries, the Church’s boundaries, supersede all other political or social limits. The Church in the name of Christ ignores man-made boundaries, jurisdictions and property lines, and claims all this land and the peoples in it within its bounds, within the bounds of God’s grace.

Ascension is then not about Jesus’ absence from the world, but rather his continued presence in the world through the Church, the Body of Christ, through which he beats back the false boundaries of this world, reclaiming territory that had been taken over by sin, death and the devil. Broken down now are the boundaries between spiritual and worldly matters. Thrown out, now, are all the assumptions that God only cares about our souls but not our bodies, our prayers but not our behavior. Abolished is the notion that we Christians should just stay in our pews and not get involved in the world. Utterly rejected are any claims that Christians are “best seen but not heard,” that religion is acceptable so long as we keep it private, in our heart, doing “useful things” like helping the poor and needy, and do not let it impact anything else, like our behavior or our speech or the way we vote. Jesus will have none of that, for Jesus claims it all and is determined to take back the ground that had been captured by God’s enemies.

CS Lewis described this situation vividly when he called the world “enemy-occupied territory.” He likened Christianity to “the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church,” he goes on, “you are really listening in to the secret [broadcasts] from our friends: that is why the Enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.”

The idea is that, at the Incarnation, God launched an invasion, and with the resurrection, Jesus won the decisive victory and broke the stranglehold that sin, death, and the Devil had on the earth. And ever since then, since the Ascension, God has been filling the whole world with his forces, with people and practices that heal the broken, that set loose the captive, that bring the dead back to life.

You see, the Ascension declares that God is still in the business of taking up space in the world, still working to reclaim territory through the Body of Christ. From this point on, all ground is holy, all life is sacred, all places are ripe with the potential of resurrection. Today, we revel in God’s ongoing redeeming work as Christ’s kingdom takes up more and more space in creation.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a contemporary of CS Lewis, observed: "A truth, a doctrine, or a religion need no space for themselves. They are disembodied entities—that is all. But the incarnate Christ needs not only ears or hearts, but living people who will follow him." That’s the purpose of the church: to take up space, to claim space, to take back territory for God. And as the church “beats the bounds,” we break apart these artificial boundaries erected by greed and hate and lust for power to make space for God’s grace, for God’s good rule to enter in.

But of course not everyone is on board with this. The powers-that-be won’t let go of their power easily, but are determined to fight back. Indeed, despite the gains the church has made over the millennia, it seems like everything around us today is working against us, denying the claims of the church, seeking to reduce, circumscribe and shrink the place of religion in society and public life. And the sad thing is, some churches have been happy to go along with this, to cede ground to Christ’s competitors—the rulers and rules that seek to control the world as their own.

But such a faith as these churches show has no substance, it takes up no space, and as a result, it has no impact, leaves no footprints. And so is at odds with how Jesus envisions the church’s mission. The church, in Jesus’ absence, is to take up space, and so reclaim space from the people, institutions and forces that are at odds with God’s Kingdom.

So, today, on this Feast of the Ascension, let us recover an ancient practice. We gather now this morning to receive the Word and Sacrament, hearing this spacious story of Christ’s Ascension and celebrating Christ’s continued presence with us. But, as you are dismissed, let us scatter out in the community to “beat the bounds.” As you go about your business, wherever you are, this next week, pray over the homes, the streets, the offices, the halls and schools, all those places that make up our “parish.”

Pray for the struggling single moms who need community, for the newly relocated families who are looking for a church home, for the youth who are wondering how to connect with God, or even if there is a God, and for the children who simply need a place to play with friends. Pray for the stranger to be welcomed, for the vulnerable to be sheltered. Pray for the estranged to be reconciled, for the sin-sick to be healed, the spiritually dead to be brought back to life. Pray for all those who are yearning to find their space in God’s life, that they will find a place here because of the space God is making through you. 

The Ascension reminds us that this world is not simply a place of suffering, of conflict, but also a place of hope, for it is a place that Christ continues to dwell, continues to make his home, continues to fill with his presence and his rule, until his kingdom is “all in all,” on earth as in heaven. As our Psalm has it: “God has gone up with a shout! Sing praises…He is king of all the earth.” Indeed, he is. Thanks be to God!