Homily Reflections for Feast of Ascension 2005

During the week I flew to Townsville to attend the funeral of Fr Brooks Patterson who was at the Seminary with me. He was ordained in Winton, western Queensland on the same night as I was ordained in Brisbane.

The Townsville Diocese is vast, extending from the coast to the Northern Territory border. There are only about 14 priests ministering in this large region. This includes imported priests from the Philippines.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, one Christian evangelical group started a magazine called, “The Christian Century”. That title expressed their belief that by the end of the 20^th century the whole world would have been “Christianized”. Perhaps we are a bit wiser realizing that the so called Christian century did not arrive but also spawned two world wars and many others.

However, the message of the Ascension calls us to preach the gospel to all the nations. The accounts of Jesus' last moments with his disciples is not concerned with the details of how it happened. The Gospels differ about that any way. The point of Jesus' departure is his giving the commission to his disciples to preach the Gospel to all nations.

Only Luke in his Gospel and in his Acts of the Apostles places the Ascension 40 days after the Resurrection. The other gospels seem to assume that the Ascension and Resurrection are essentially the same thing or at least happen on the same day. For catechetical purposes Luke separates the events in accordance with the Jewish liturgy of the day: namely, the feast of 50 days between Passover and Pentecost.

Jesus gives three commands in Matthew:
        Make disciples of all nations.
        Baptise them in the name of the Trinity.
        Teach them to observe all the commands he gave.

But in leaving them he is not deserting them. “Know I am with you always”. Where he is there is the Church carrying on his mission.

Every day we read of the amazing growth on the Sunshine Coast. How demand for land and housing has pushed home prices up beyond the reach of many people. How Councils are finding it very difficult to provide services for the booming population. How government is planning more schools and hospitals, roads etc. So what do we do? Do we sit on our hands and let it all happen? What does the gospel ask of us here and now?

We cannot pretend we can Christianise the Sunshine Coast. I do not even think that is what Jesus has in mind. He asks us to make disciples. If those disciples become Christian well and good. If not, are they living the values of the Kingdom? In all honesty that is often all we can hope for. We who are the church, nevertheless, must still become, and be, the light of Christ for our world.

But building a Church, to proclaim the Kingdom, is not something that can be planned as a new hospital or road can. To build a new hospital you need to have clearly mind the various needs such a building will serve. You need the best of equipment and quality control and so on so the building will serve its purpose. We come to our task knowing first of all our brokenness, and our incompleteness. We do not have it all together. We have an institutional Church, too, that has its own brokenness and divisions. It has a seeming inability to provide enough leadership and priests for communities. But what it does have is Jesus promise: I will be with you. We think we cannot do certain things. He is saying we can! We are often too afraid to step out and do things differntly. He sends the Spirit to dwell with us. As he was a broken man on the cross so we in our inadequacy, relying on the Spirit can confidently take up our mission, which is also our cross.

That confidence is expressed in that beautiful prayer of Paul to the Ephesians we read today.

Fr Graham