Kindred in Christ,

This coming Sunday is Ascension Sunday! And while a major feast day in the church calendar, it is not accompanied by a wealth of traditions like Easter, Christmas, or even Pentecost. There are no Ascension Day cards to give to loved ones, nor any Ascension Day family dinners to attend—at least not in my family. Nor do any familiar Ascension Day hymns come to mind.

Perhaps because at first glance the story of the Ascension seems bizarre and sad—the resurrected Jesus ascends into heaven and abandons the disciples on earth (Acts 1:1-11).

Yet as much as the disciples must have wanted Jesus to just to stay put, in Jesus we do not see a God that stays put. Rather, Jesus reveals a God that transcends our assumptions and expectations, to fill all creation with divine love and bring us to a faith that is as expansive as the sky.

Christ ascends into the depth for us to find Christ everywhere, especially where the world only sees death and despair. As Lutheran theologian Vitor Whesthelle reflects, “It is from down below that he comes. Don’t look into heaven. It is from down below that glory emerges. Don’t gaze up, look down. Look down where life is broken, where creation is tortured, where nature is abused. Down there in the troubles of our days lies the glory as much as it once was found in the womb of a poor peasant maid of Galilee or lying in a manger in the midst of dung, animals, and flies. Consider then the homeless old woman in the city street and know that Christ is there and that NATO’s whole air force in all its glory is not armored as she is. So, do consider the lilies of the field, but consider as well the pollution, the waste, and the violence against which the blossoming of the most simple flower is already a triumph that beats the odds and tells a story of ascension.

May the glory down below shine through our lives in its unseemly fashion so that we might know that what God assumes God redeems and then we will also know that we don’t need to be anxious about tomorrow, for we know the places where tomorrow begins.”

Alongside you,

Rev. Paul Ortiz