A look at the highly underappreciated Feast of the Ascension of the Lord

Up, up and away?

As I’m writing this on May 9, our Roman Catholic and (some) Protestant cousins are celebrating the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. As you’re reading it in early June, my fellow Orthodox Christians are preparing to celebrate the same feast on June 13. We’re five weeks apart this year, but that’s a story for another day.

The event which is commemorated in this feast is mentioned briefly in St. Mark’s gospel (v. 16:19) and St. Luke’s (vv. 24:50-51), but the main source is St. Luke’s “Acts of the Apostles”:

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. — Acts 1:1-9

Because this feast always falls on a Thursday — exactly 40 days after Easter, which always falls on a Sunday — it is perhaps the least appreciated among all the Christian feasts. And that is a pity, because it is so deeply rich in meaning.

First, when we say in the Nicene Creed that “Jesus ascended into heaven,” we don’t mean that He shot off like a rocket into space. Heaven is only “up there” in a metaphorical sense, not an altitudinal. Heaven is the dwelling place of God, and so when Jesus returns there at the end of His earthly ministry, having accomplished His passion, death and third-day resurrection, it means that He has returned to the “place” from whence He came, sitting (to quote the Creed again) “at the right hand of the Father.” He is, as it were, God the Father’s “right-hand Man,” intimately involved, with the Holy Spirit, in everything the Father does.

But this is more than a return to the status quo ante, to the way things were before Jesus (once again, from the Creed) “came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man.” Because when He ascended to sit at the Father’s right hand, He did so as the incarnate Son of God, in the human flesh and the human nature which He took on in His incarnation. He did not shed them as a snake sheds a skin he has outgrown. In fact, and as mind-blowing as it sounds, there is now a human being seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven. A human being is His right-hand man.

And finally … from this human being will come a renewed humanity, a renewed people of God. St. Paul refers to Jesus as “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45), and contrasts Him (in this chapter and also in Romans 5) with “the first man Adam,” whom we read about in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. I would dare to say that rather than considering the first Adam to be Adam 1.0 and Jesus, Adam 2.0, it would make more sense to consider the first Adam to be a pre-production model, a work in progress — and more accurate to consider Jesus to be the human being God always had in mind: His faithful companion and servant, the One who diligently tends His creation and offers it back to Him in praise and thanksgiving — His ultimate and intended right-hand Man. And when we, as the Body of Christ, are united with Jesus, our Head … we, ourselves, take our intended place at God’s right hand.

The Rev. Seraphim Solof is assistant pastor of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral in Worcester. Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright ? 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Books and Bibles, a Publishing Ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Keep the Faith: An appreciation for an often overlooked holy feast