Sunday after Ascension – Only Holy Sees Holy

1 St Peter 4:7-10       St John 15:26f

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
The King of glory shall come in.

This morning in the Church we remember the in-between time – the ten days between the Ascension of Jesus and Pentecost.  The Ascension is when Jesus, after his Resurrection, went up bodily into heaven before the eyes of the Apostles.  Pentecost, was when His Spirit was first poured out on us, it is the birth of the Church.

------------

There is a Psalm which has been associated with Jesus’ Ascension since early times in the Church, Psalm 24, which is the final in of a series of psalms from 15 to 24 – that form a kind of victory procession.  Psalm 24 echoes verses in Psalm 15:

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord,
and who shall rise up in his holy place?

And the Psalmist answers that question in the later verses of Psalm 24:

The King of glory shall come in.

And the Psalmist describes it as an ascent leading up to the holy hill of Sion, the place on earth of the Temple.  But that Temple in Jerusalem was an image of heaven itself, where God is seated on the Throne, surrounded by the heavenly host.

Heaven is where we all desire to go – to see God face to face.

The Psalmist describes us when he says,

This is generation of them that seek him:
even of them that seek thy face, O Jacob.

Like his generation, and every generation since, we are that generation.  In our heart of hearts we desire transcendence, to go up, to see that beatific vision – the vision that our earthly eyes are not yet ready to behold – no one can see it now, but we are being made ready to behold it.

The Psalmist tells us how we might see it both in Psalm 15 and 24:

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord,
and who shall rise up in his holy place?
Even he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart:
and that hath not lift up his mind unto vanity,
nor sworn to deceive his neighbour.

It is the call of the whole of the Old Testament – that only like can see like – only a holy people can see the holy God.  Before that happens, our minds and hearts are just not ready to behold such glory.

The high call of the Law of Moses is the high call of love.  It was too high for the people of God, who, when we follow the history in the Old Testament struggled and fell, who struggled and fell, and were left crying out for a Saviour.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
The King of glory shall come in. 

This is the good news for us today.  There is one who can behold the Father – who can ascend into the hill of the Lord, who can rise up in his holy place.  Jesus Christ the Son of God, who is perfect in righteousness, who needs no help to ascend, but ascends in accordance with His righteousness, and is lifted into the holy place.  Jesus can see, not only as the Divine Son, but with human eyes, made perfect through suffering, the glory of his Father.

But is this cause for celebration for us in this Ascensiontide?  Do we not find ourselves to be like the Apostles, gazing up into heaven, but in the absence of our Lord – wondering, what next? and feeling, not joy at his victory, but loss because of his absence? [from Hans Boersma’s sermon for Ascension]

After all, can we really say, that we have clean hands and a pure heart, or that we have never lifted our minds to vanity, nor done evil to our neighbour?

And Jesus confirms the same – it is the pure in heart who shall see God.  This beatitude of Jesus – blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God – can seem more like a curse than a blessing for us. [Boersma’s sermon for Ascension]

But the Good News for us today is that we can be lifted up into the hill of the Lord by Jesus if we believe in Him.

As Catholic and Reformed Christians we have before our minds that we are justified by faith in Jesus – that our trusting in the righteousness of Jesus means we too can ascend into the hill of the Lord.  We too can come with our Lord, because of His righteousness.  We are accounted righteous by our faith in Jesus.

And yet, still, only like can see like.  Only what is holy can see what is Holy.  We have a promise of ascending with Jesus, and this gives us a fervent hope, and encourages us in our present circumstances.  We can even be opened up to flashes of a vision of holiness, that encourage us on, when we behold it in others, of if we are given a gift of a dream or a vision.  But we must be sanctified – we must have a pure heart and walk in love to have a sustained vision.  We must not only be accounted righteous, but made righteous through that union with the Holy One, to begin to realize the full benefits – to ascend into the hill of the Lord with all that we are – our heart, our mind, our soul and our body – to see God face to face.

We trust we have, and yet we know also that we have not yet, ascended into the hill of the Lord.  We know that having clean hands and a pure heart matters greatly.

• Think of the envy of most of the Pharisees, who followed the Law outwardly, but could not see the holiness of Jesus when he was standing before them, they only saw him as a threat to their position, to their authority, to their power.
• The Apostles were intrigued by Jesus’ teaching, but only when he performed miracles did they fall down before him and beg him to leave because they saw their own sin by contrast with His holiness. (Remember St Peter at the miraculous catch of fishes). Their eyes also were veiled by their sin.
• Because of our envy, we can find ourselves tearing down in our midst, those who are gifted, rather than rejoicing in their gifts, and seeking what we can do to support them. And we descend…
• Because of our own shame, which we cannot bear to have exposed, we can find ourselves shaming the innocent in our midst, rather than being moved by their innocence to become innocent. And we descend…
• Our blindness to holiness, can make us despair that there is such a thing as holiness, and so we pursue, each man for himself, vanity. And we descend…

But we are here this morning because at some point in the past we have caught a flash of that holiness of Jesus – and we are not content to remain justified but not also sanctified.  We want to see more, we want to see the face of God,

this is the generation of them that seek him:
even of them that seek thy face, O Jacob.

The good news is:

Lift up your heads, O ye gates,
and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors:
the King of glory has come in –

and he’s bringing us with Him!

Jesus reassures us in this morning’s Gospel:

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” 

It is by the gift of the Holy Spirit, first poured out at Pentecost and ever since in our baptism, that we can ascend into the hill of the Lord…

St Augustine says,

By your Gift, the Holy Ghost,
we are set aflame and borne aloft,
and the fire within us carries us upward.
‘Our hearts are set on an upward journey,’
as we sing the ‘song of ascents’.
It is your fire‘ your good fire’
that sets us aflame and carries us upward.
For our journey leads us upward
to the peace of the heavenly Jerusalem…

[Confessions, Bk XIII, para 9]

------------

St Peter says in today’s Epistle, the end of all things is at hand, the final end towards which all things are moving – the King of glory, Jesus Christ – is at hand.  God is very close to us in the New Covenant – God could not be closer than our hearts.  This is true especially because of our faith and baptism into Jesus Christ, through which the Holy Spirit has been poured out on us. [Rom 5:5].

If God is very close at hand, then what?

Are we a bit nervous about what we say?

We should be – we should attend to every word that comes out of our mouths, as if spoken in front of Jesus Himself, because it is.

         Are we are a bit afraid of what we do…We should be.

But fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom…

To have an awe, and a reverence, to walk humbly, carefully, this is holiness.

Take off your shoes for the place on which you stand is holy ground…take off the dead animal skin of the old Adam, and have revealed your humanity in its glory as it is in Jesus Christ.

Be therefore self-controlled, says St Peter, and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.

To be sober-minded is to live our lives, in a way that our prayer life is guarded and protected and nurtured.  Because it is in prayer that we ascend to God.  Or that the life of heaven above is manifested in our hearts here below.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

When we love our neighbour, we ascend.  Or rather, the life of heaven above is revealed below, here in our midst, through continual forgiveness and forbearance.

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.

As we use our gifts, we ascend.  Or rather, the life of heaven above is opened up here in our midst.

------------

True holiness of life, transformation, comes about within our souls now as we live the life of heaven here on earth.

This morning the intermingling of the life of heaven and the life of earth happens very simply: when a heart that is repentant and believing in our Lord, meets with the Bread that comes down from heaven, and the Blood that washes us clean.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord,
and who shall rise up in his holy place?
Even he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart:

Let us prepare ourselves now by eating the pure Body of Christ and being washed in His Blood to ascend into the hill of the Lord.

Amen +