Nearness of Jesus

“[A]s they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.  Acts 1:9

Grace and Peace to you on this gloriously sunny Saturday. I pray that you sense that God is very near to you today, and always.

This past Thursday, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Ascension, forty days after Easter when Jesus ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God, as we proclaim each week in the Nicene Creed.  Tomorrow in church you will hear the account of Jesus’ ascension as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles.

Putting aside the cosmological implications of Luke’s description of what happened on that day two thousand years ago, the ascension of Christ conveys a truth about the Apostles’ experience of Jesus and our understanding of who Jesus is with and for us today.  In one sense Jesus is no longer with us and in another sense, he is even more present, in a different and perhaps more universal way. Just as Christ is more fully present in the world, we are more fully present to God. Just as Jesus took his humanity into the realm of God, so our humanity dwells more fully with God. In the Ascension, heaven and earth have drawn more closely together.

There are times when I feel the nearness of Jesus, and of heaven. Such experiences often defy description. Poetry can sometimes approximate and so I offer you this sonnet by Malcolm Guite as a possible way to gain insight into the Ascension:

We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we our selves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.

[Source: Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year by Malcolm Guite. Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2012]

Is there a line in this sonnet that rings true to you? For me it is this one, “He took us with him to the heart of things.” May we all know the heart of the matter as we seek to be God’s cloud of witnesses.

 The Rev. Jenifer Gamber, Rector
St. Peter's Episcopal Church