Ascension Day and the Freedom of God

Today is Ascension Day.

Truth be told, even though I did a podcast about preaching on Ascension Day two weeks ago, I almost forgot that. In fact, if I hadn’t called my parents today and heard them mention the Ascension Day retired pastors’ luncheon they’d gone to earlier, I’m pretty sure I would have forgotten about it all together.

Ascension Day is one of the more overlooked holidays of the Christian calendar. It doesn’t fall on a Sunday; there are no disciplines of preparation ahead of time or rites of celebration on the day to usher it in. Fewer and fewer churches remember it, let alone hold Thursday services. It’s no wonder I, and so many others, forget about it.

Yet I think it’s worth retaining and remembering because Ascension Day reminds us that we cannot limit God. For while God came to us in the flesh in the person of Jesus, Jesus’ ascension reminds us that we can’t restrict God to any one place. Jesus’ ascension, then, isn’t about his leaving – his disciples, us, the world – but rather is about the simultaneous confession that 1) God has chosen to be located in our physical world so that God may be accessible to us, and 2) God refuses to be limited even to those important places.

No building, no people, no book, no religion, even, can limit God’s ability to be accessible to others.

On this day, the overlooked festival of the Church, I found Franciscan Monk Richard Rohr’s meditation on our inability to limit God most refreshing. I hope you do, too. His two injunctions to us this and every day: Keep God free; keep people free for God. Love it! Happy Ascension Day!

Notes: 1) If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch this video.
2) This is another great video from the good folks at The Work of the People.