Ascension is Resurrection

Ascension is Resurrection

We were warned forty days ago. “Do not cling to me,” Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, ‘for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and sisters, and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Even on that first Easter Sunday, Jesus’s “message” to Mary the Magdalene, His “message” to his disciples then, and his disciples now, is Ascension, even more so than Resurrection.

The message is Ascension, even more so than Resurrection, because Jesus’s Ascension is the completion of his Resurrection. For the rest of us, there comes a time; sooner or later, expectedly or unexpectedly, prepared or unprepared, but inevitably the soul and the body must separate, and the soul return to that dimension of existence that is purely spiritual, return to the one Spirit who created the soul and to whom the soul must return.

But not Jesus; he too has gone back to the Father of whom he the Word has always been begotten. But now the Word has a physical body in that dimension of existence that before was exclusively spiritual. And where the resurrected Christ has gone, we can trust that someday we too, resurrected, shall be with him in the fullness of resurrection, body and soul reunited, never again to suffer and die. That is how Ascension completes the resurrection. By ascending with his resurrected body, Jesus opens the way for us to follow him in God’s good time.

Still, we might prefer to identify with Mary, who so wanted to touch her risen “Rabbouni,” her Teacher. Perhaps we don’t feel ready for graduation, to leave the ivied walls of our classrooms where the answers to our questions have been close at hand. Perhaps we didn’t like being reminded on Easter Sunday 40 days ago that the risen Jesus’ first words to Mary were, in the Latin trope of so many Gregorian chants, “Noli me tangere,” do not touch me, or more accurately, do not cling to me.

But if we insist on touching Jesus’s physical body, then only certain people get to touch him, those lucky enough to be in the same place and time where his body happens to be. No, what we need right now, more than his body, is his Spirit. And having ascended to the place that is pure spirit with his physical body, Jesus is no longer bound within his body. In the Spirit that blows like the wind, he is present in every cool breeze. In the Spirit that breathes the same air as us, he is present in every calm breath. In the sounds of our breath shaped by our tongues as we speak, he is present in every word of love. As the WW II Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, wrote, “Because He is ‘in Heaven,’ He is everywhere on earth; because He is ascended, He is here now.”

We were told this us where we were headed 40 days ago. Do not touch me, Our risen and ascended Lord says. Do not touch him; breathe him.

May 14th, 2026

Feast of the Ascension

The Rev. David Kendrick