21st May - Canon Stephen Carter

ASCENSION DAY 2009

Ephesians 2: 6

“God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places”

After our cat Tiger was tragically killed on Norman way, a heated theological debate took place at the Rectory. The subject: “do animals go to heaven?”

The Vicar of Old Heath allowed his sound theology to override pastoral sensitivity: pronouncing that “as animals don’t have souls, they cannot get to heaven.” At the risk of preaching heresy, I think I would have given the animals the benefit of the doubt, in this particular discussion, and said something like, “I’m sure God can sort it all out”.

The Vicar of Old Heath was not to be deflected by wooly theology. If animals go to heaven, he argued, we will meet up with all the chickens and lambs we’ve eaten. In response, Richard and Nicholas pointed out the wonderful diversity of God’s creation in this world. They put forward the view that heaven, being even more wonderful than this world, would have even greater diversity. If it is only humanity that is represented in heaven, something will be lacking.

Scripture, as far as I can see, is silent on this question. I return to my original hope that God will sort it all out as seems best to him. But personally, it will be rather good to think that all Fr Richard’s Sunday lunches will be lined up to welcome him when he enters the heavenly places.

One of the important things about Ascension Day is that it  points us to the reality of the heavenly realm. That this world is not all that there is. That there is another reality beyond time and space; beyond what we now know. That there is another dimension beyond what we can apprehend with our physical senses.

It is clear from the scriptures that because Jesus has ascended, our humanity has been taken up into heaven. This was one of the great themes in the teaching of many of the early church fathers.

Jesus, they say, descended to earth to take upon himself our human nature. He shares our life and death, is raised from the grave, and then returns to heaven to the side of the father. And by returning to heaven, our human nature ascends with him.

Cyril of Alexandria explained it like this:

“Jesus has ascended to heaven as a human being. Being like us, though with the status of the Son of God, he transmits to fellow members of the human race, the glory of being children of God. It is as a man that he sits at the right hand of God the Father. It is as a human being on our behalf that he appeared before the Father today. He took his seat in heaven to enable us, as sons and daughters through him to be called the children of God”

To our modern minds this may seem like rather abstract theology. But to the first Christians this was mind blowing stuff. Because of the Ascension, humanity has been raised up and exalted to the very presence of the eternal God.

150 years after the publication of “On the Origin of the Species” it is remarkable that there are still Christians about who feel very threatened by Darwin’s findings. Personally, I have never felt that my faith in God the creator is undermined by knowing that I am descended from the apes, nor that I share much of the same genetic material as my cat.

As human beings, our physical nature belongs to the world. As we affirm on Ash Wednesday, “We are dust and to dust we return”. At one level, we are just like all the other  animals. But our faith tells us that God has intervened wonderfully and decisively to raise up our human nature. He has done this in the incarnation, in the resurrection and in the ascension.

“What is man,” asked the psalmist “that thou art mindful of him?”

The answer is that man is more than dust. He is more than his genetic material. He is more than the other members of the animal kingdom.  He is as the psalmist said, “little lower than the angels. Thou hast crowned him with glory and worship”.

The Victorian poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, like his contemporaries, had to wrestle with the new science and the new thinking. He concludes that the resurrection has burst in to transform  our human nature.

“I am all at once what Christ is” he says. “Since he was what I am. And this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond- IS immortal diamond”

Today we give thanks for the glorious ascension of Christ. That he has taken our humanity to the very side of God’s presence in heaven. That through what he has done, we are immortal diamond.

That in the words of the Epistle to the Ephesians,

“God has raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly places”.