A Different May-December Thing

When you think of the days leading up to Memorial Day and compare them with the days leading up to Christmas the contrast is pronounced. The weather is different, certainly the temperatures. Also, Christmas involves the customs of gift-giving, decorating, seasonal foods, and parties. Contrasted to this, Memorial Day weekend involves us in ceremonies and prayers of gratitude and remembrance of the war dead. We engage in cooking outdoors, on the grill—gatherings in our back yards.

Now let’s compare the Christian theology that comes up with the two times of the year, I think we will find a creative kinship with them. The theology of Christmas is that of the Incarnation of the eternal Word of God. The theology of the Ascension, which falls this time of year, is about the return of the Incarnate one to the heavenly eternal sphere alongside the Father. Our faith teaches that God is eternal and omnipresent—beyond time, and there is no place where God is not. God comes to be special and particularly present in the temporal human realm in Christ Jesus. The man who grew up in Nazareth, taught as itinerate rabbi around the Sea of Galilee, and offered up his life at Jerusalem was the Son of the Father, who, from the beginning is the Co-creator.

There never was a time when the Son, the Word, was not, and yet, in Jesus, he was fully human with a lifespan of thirty-three years. The ever-present and eternal One, in the experience of the Galilean disciples, alongside them, spending one day at a time with them. I press this point of the Infinite One coming to be within the limits of time and space because I want to look next at the theology of the Ascension of Christ. Concerning time and presence, the Ascension accomplishes the inverse of the Incarnation. When he ascended, the fully human, fully divine Jesus, present in the temporal realm with the disciples, came to be in the realm of the eternal and omnipresent Father as before the Incarnation. The Word who was particularly present in the person of Jesus, came again to be present in that other way, everywhere and for all time. It is magnificent to think of such a mystery, though the mind hardly grasps it.

The conversation Jesus has with his disciples, and his prayers for them to the Father before his arrest (John, chapters 14-16) convey his message that he must go away so that he can send the Spirit. Here are the things Jesus offers:

“I have told you all this while I am still with you; but your Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will call to mind all that I have told you. Peace is my parting gift to you, my own peace, such as the world cannot give. Set your troubled hearts at rest, and banish your fears. You heard me say, ‘I am going away, and coming back to you.’ If you loved me you would have been glad to hear that I was going to the Father.” (John 14:27-28)

“But when your Advocate has come, whom I will send you from the Father—the Spirit of truth that issues from the Father—the will bear witness to me. And you also are my witnesses, because you have been with me from the first.” (John 15:26-27)

“O righteous Father, although the world does not know thee, I know thee, and these know that though didst send me. I made thy name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love though hadst for me may be in them, and I may be in them.” (John 17:25-26)

We should see the Incarnation and the Ascension as two sides of a coin. God who is not limited by time and space, comes to be present to people to announce the kingdom of God and the power of belief. He can be heard, seen, and known only where Jesus is present, though the one they see is the infinite Son of God. He departs from them so that through the divine agency of the Holy Spirit, people can come to know Christ wherever they are, in any generation.