The Feast of the Ascension is inextricably tied to an image—a fantastic image, for sure, but an image, nonetheless. Jesus goes up into heaven to the right hand of his Father. Humanity and all of creation are brought up into the Godhead. And we know that soon, in just ten days’ time, the Holy Spirit will come back down. Up, then down. Up, then down.
But we no longer live with an understanding of a three-tiered universe, like the world in which St. Luke lived. Heaven doesn’t have to be literally above our heads. And gaudy representations of the Ascension, like that in a certain chapel in England, which show only Jesus’s feet hanging from the sky, may need some theological enrichment and a modicum of taste. So, perhaps another image is helpful on this glorious feast.
I’m thinking of a verbal image that a friend of mine once used to describe the lusty hymn-singing in the parish where we were both members at the time. One of the two brilliant organists there would begin a hymn introduction, orchestrating a grand crescendo that led up to the congregation’s first sung notes. By the end of that thrilling organ introduction, everyone in the church could sense that something magnificent was about to happen. It was as if the whole congregation, hymnals in hand, had risen to the tips of their toes, ready for a great drama to begin.
In the final seconds before the congregation began to sing, as my friend colorfully described it, you could hear the intake of breath. And in that tiny space, between organ introduction and congregational song, a dazzling electricity filled the air, sensed in inaudible vibrations and palpable excitement. You could even hear the breathing on audio recordings. It was as if the congregation collectively poised to sing in unison had its own personality. You could hear the intake of breath. Something incredible was about to happen.[1]
Ascension Day sits in the space between the intake of breath and the beginning of the hymn. Up, down. Breathe in, breathe out. The meaning of Ascension Day lies between Jesus’s going up into heaven and the breathing of the Holy Spirit on the Church at Pentecost. It’s as if on the Mount of Olives, as Jesus blesses the disciples and then is taken up into heaven, God breathes in.
And immediately after that breath, the disciples are left hanging in the air or standing on their tiptoes, ready to sing. They’re not ready to go to the ends of the earth in mission because they haven’t been properly commissioned. They haven’t yet been anointed for that purpose by the Holy Spirit. They’re left in that odd but dynamic space between the intake of breath and the release of that breath on the world in a marvelous hymn of good news. They return to Jerusalem to wait. Ten days might seem like an eternity, but it’s a blip on God’s radar as the eternal breath goes in, before that breath comes vigorously rushing out.
In the aftermath of Jesus’s ascension, waiting in Jerusalem, the disciples are once again in a strange place, bereft of Jesus’s earthly presence. It would be tempting to think of this as an end to the Incarnation, as some have wrongly described it, but in truth, the Incarnation makes no sense without this next part. The Incarnation goes on forever. This next part is part of the perfection of the Incarnation. What was concrete on earth in Jesus’s life will soon be made concrete in the lives of those disciples who will be propelled forth in mission by the power of the Holy Spirit when God breathes out again. And Christ will continue to be with us sacramentally in Bread and Wine. He will never leave us comfortless.
As Jesus goes up into heaven, we can hear the intake of breath. Something earth-shattering is about to happen. As God breathes in, we’re reminded of those mind-blowing words from John’s Gospel, chapter 14, where Jesus tells his disciples that whoever believes in him will not only do the works that he has done but even greater works. Try to wrap your mind around that claim. God is going to breathe out in due course, and something incredible is about to happen. You just wait.
But the truth is that, in her modern state, the Church usually lives in one of two places. On the one hand, she dwells predominantly in Jerusalem, twiddling her thumbs, waiting for a commission, as if she doesn’t already have one, resting complacently on her laurels and last vestiges of power, and shirking her responsibility to proclaim the Gospel in both word and deed. She lives imprisoned within the walls of her churches, narcissistically lost in her worship and watching hopelessly as everyone outside the Church reports on her decline.
Or on the other hand, the Church spends all her time out in the mission field, spreading herself thin to the ends of the earth but never returning to Jerusalem for sustenance. And scattered across the globe with no rootedness in Jerusalem, the Church becomes puffed up, arrogant, proud, and obsessed with her ego-driven human projects. She behaves as if the mission is hers or as if Jerusalem is simply in her past.
But Ascension Day is about going up and going down, breathing in and breathing out. Before Jesus goes up into heaven at the tail end of Luke’s Gospel, he opens the disciples’ minds to understand the scriptures, interpreting his own passion, suffering, and death in the light of the Easter Gospel of the resurrection. Now, it all makes sense. It’s as if Jesus is telling the disciples that before they’re breathed out into the world, they must be taken back to Jerusalem. They must remember the paschal pattern of dying to self before rising to a new way of life and entering into a new creation. Up, then down. Breathe in, breathe out.
Ascension Day is the great fulcrum that balances the Church. We can’t spend all our time in Jerusalem, watching the Church die on the vine or pretending like we have no call to mission. Nor can we wear ourselves out in the mission field with no return to the Temple for worship, prayer, and inspiration. Ascension Day lies at the hinge point of our paschal identity in Christ. When we’re drawn in with God’s breath, we return to Jerusalem. We’re humbled by the cost of discipleship and in recognizing what we must relinquish to follow Jesus. We adore the One who came to save the world first by going down into death and then rising up to destroy sin and death. But when God breathes out in Pentecostal fervor, we’re sent out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, having died to our egos and human aspirations and risen again to God’s vision for a new creation.
If we’re only out in the mission field, we will lose our breath. If we’re only inside our churches, we will hyperventilate. Ascension Day sits in that thrilling space where the breath has been taken in and will soon be let out on the world for its own salvation and inspiration. This is the space of the present, between the past of Jerusalem and the future of Galilee. In this present space, we puzzle in discernment over our next steps. In this present space, we anguish over a broken world and the collapse of relationships.
But the present space is never a vacuum tube. It’s full of dynamic energy, hopeful for a new future, anticipating a new creation. God has breathed in, and Jesus has gone up. But very shortly, God will breathe out, and we, Christ’s earthly Body, will put our feet on the ground and move forth to the ends of the earth. Do you hear the intake of breath? Something incredible is about to happen.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Ascension Day
May 29, 2025
[1] This phrase is lifted from the Godly Play curriculum by Jerome Berryman.