Homily by John Kerrigan for Ascension 2012

Did you ever wonder why the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus—albeit three notable events in his life—get so much attention and yet his ascension hardly ever seems to merit honorable mention? After all, this great ecumenical feast of the Church, which occurs 40 days after Easter, appears equally important even if it is far less well understood. It’s important because the Ascension has very little to do with the absence of Christ, and everything to do with his magnification. Pope Benedict tells us that Jesus was “not transported to another cosmic location.” Rather, his Ascension galvanized his disciples; they became witnesses who resembled thunderbolts in terms of the energy they brought to the task of proclaiming the Good News.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to take a step back, and ask you to picture with me three short vignettes. The first took place 16 years ago this week. It was Friday, May 24th, 1996, three days after our oldest daughter, Lauren, was born and time to leave the hospital and go home. After months of preparation, days spent devouring numerous books and articles—including the classic “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” putting time aside to baby proof our home, and the wonderful support of hospital staff and family, it was now time for Elizabeth and me to take full responsibility for this beautiful little girl. Among the many emotions I experienced that Friday morning was a genuine fear—one might even say panic—that I was utterly unprepared for this challenging task. Elizabeth and I looked at each other and I said, “It’s our baby, baby!” I suspect many parents have had a similar experience.

Vignette two: a few weeks ago, a Stanford student told me about the end of her first day as a freshman here at The Farm. Here are her words: “That first night, as I lay in bed, I thought to myself, I may never live at home again. I am on my own.” Can any of you identify with this thrilling, and at the same time, intimidating feeling?

This third vignette occurs at Stanford every year just about mid-June when thousands of black robed students in mortarboard hats flow past this Memorial Church, with beaming relatives trailing behind them decked out with cameras and bouquets. It’s graduation time, a time of great celebration. The students will be told many wonderful things, about leadership, about staying true to their ideals…. And implicit in all the speeches is this sobering point: now, perhaps for the first time in your life, you are going to be held responsible. After graduation parties have wound down, and academic gowns have been turned in, it may come as a shock for many graduates that from here on out the responsibility of making decisions and putting their lives together, getting jobs, paying off loans, even folding their clothes, rests no longer on parents or teachers, advisors or counselors, but on themselves. Life: “it’s your baby, baby!”

The joys and apprehensions felt by new parents, or a first-year or graduating student, are, I suspect, similar to the emotions experienced by the disciples described in today’s reading from Scripture. For a period of time after Christ’s death and resurrection, the apostles and disciples would encounter the risen Christ in unexpected places—in the upper room, or at the seashore of Lake Tiberius, or on the Road to Emmaus. But gradually these encounters grew less frequent, until finally they stopped altogether and the apostles realized that they were on their own. They couldn’t run to Jesus and ask “What do we do now?” Or “what’s next on the agenda? Where do we go next week to attend the sick or preach the Gospel?” No, now they had to figure that out for themselves.

This is the meaning of the feast of the Ascension: it marks that point in the mystery of Easter when the apostles realized that Jesus was now in the full embrace of God’s love, or as the readings put it, had been taken up into heaven. Neither they nor we are going to see him again until the end of time. This message is also clear: don’t stand there staring at the sky; the ball is in your court now! And whether they know it or not, the disciples are more than ready for the ball to be in their court. For over the past 40 days after Easter, we’ve been hearing about the transformation of Jesus’s followers from tentative, afraid and anxious men and women into persons who resemble thunderbolts in their zeal to proclaim and witness to the Good News.

Well, the ball is in our court too. The Feast of the Ascension reminds us each year that the apprenticeship is over; we’re the witnesses now. Whether you and I feel strong and firm in our faith, or like so many, have as many questions and doubts as answers—you and I are the ones chosen to make God’s love known, not throughout Judea and Samaria, but here in Palo Alto and the Bay Area, or in the daily asceticism of our academic disciplines and professional lives.

And when we do so with the vigor of these early disciples, these thunderbolts, we like Jesus before us will find ourselves more and more in the full embrace of God’s love.