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Homily for the Feast of the Ascension
(May 20, 2007)

In Richard Bach’s novel, when two gulls come to take Jonathan Livingston Seagull home, Jonathan hesitates. But the gulls tells him: One school is finished and the time has come for another school to begin.  Jonathan realizes that it is time for him to go home. He takes one last look at everything that had been home to him for so long and then in a burst of magnificent glory, he rose with the two star bright gulls and disappeared into the sky. In writing his novel, I wonder if Richard Bach did not have the  Ascension of Jesus in mind?
      Jesus Ascension is an invitation for all of us to realize that our life on this earth is not all that there is. 

As I prepare to leave Bowling Green, I have been trying to sort through many things – including a number of letters I have saved over the years. As I re-read letters from the time when I left St. Francis de Sales and when I left Defiance , I reminisced about how hard it is to leave a place that has become my home.  It will be hard for me to leave all of you— my connections with you have given meaning to my life these past 8 years. As I go to a new home in Wauseon, I realize God continues to prepare me for the day when I leave this earth to go to my home in heaven.  

Mark Link describes an ancient legend about Jesus arrival in heaven.  His body still showed the wounds of his crucifixion – the holes made by the nails and the spear; the stripes on his back—The angels bowed down to adore him and Archangel Gabriel said:
   Lord, how greatly you suffered. Do the people on earth know and appreciate howmuch you went through for them and how much you love them?
    Only a handful of people in Palestine know that. The rest have not even heard of me. They don’t know who I am; or how much I suffered; or how much I love them.
    How will the rest of people on earth ever learn about your suffering and your love?
    I left, Peter, James and John, Mary Magdalene, and a few other men and women to tell the rest of the world for me. They will tell as many people as they can; and those people will tell other people. I hope some day the whole world will know about my love for them.
      Gabriel was disturbed, thinking that it was not very reliable to depend on a bunch of human beings –He asked Jesus, so what’s your back-up plan? – just in case
      Well I am sending the Spirit to encourage them, but if they let me down, I don’t have a back up plan – I’m counting on my disciples and friends to tells others about my giving my life for them and my love. 

The Feast of the Ascension is a very important reminder that the faith gets handed on from person to person; one generation teaching another. Jesus is no longer on earth going from town to town, but his Spirit is in us, depending on us to tell others about our faith and hope in Jesus.

It is like a relay race. When Jesus went back home to glory, he handed the baton to his disciples and they were to hand it on to others.  After someone brings the faith and love of Jesus Christ to you, you have a mission to run the race as well as you can and hand that baton on to the next runner.  When the church fails in her mission, the baton gets dropped, until  it is picked back up. How can anyone come to faith if no one tells them about Jesus? If we have failed to tell others about the love of Jesus and our hope of a home in heaven we have dropped the baton. That is a terrible sin. Then the next generation will not know Christ. We must repent, turn around and go back to hand on what we have been given, so that our children will connect with Christ and have the hope of  going home to Heaven when it is time for us to leave our home here on earth.