A Homily for the Ascension of the Lord
Acts 1:1-11 Ephesians 1:17-23 Matthew 28:16-20
The philosopher George Santayana wrote that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Should we add that willful ignorance of history is a sin? Two reasons for saying that. The first is Santayana’s point: our inability to move forward when we forget our past. The second is more properly theological: our inability to appreciate the heaven of history that awaits us.
Let’s explore that odd turn of phrase—“heaven of history”—with a bit of history.
In the summer of 1917, President Woodrow Wilson was leading the United States into its first European war—and only the second to be fought entirely outside American borders. Then, as now, there were many in America who viewed international conflict as an instrument to enrich the already wealthy. One such group was a labor union founded in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World, the I.W.W., though they were more commonly known as Wobblies.
Adam Hochschild’s book American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2022) details the often quite illegal abuse the Wobblies suffered for their unwillingness to assist in the birth of what would become America’s military-industrial behemoth. If you think that America only recently became a dark and threatening place for liberty and civil rights, this book is a must-read.
The mineral copper would be essential to the American war effort. It was already being sold in vast quantities to the Allies, funding American investors in the largest domestic copper mine, located in Butte, Mont. Hochschild writes:
Mining was dangerous to begin with: an average of one man killed in Butte every week, and it was said that more young miners lay in the town’s Mountain View Cemetery than worked in the mine itself.
In the summer of ’17, a fire broke out in the Butte mine.
By the time the flames were out after several days, at least 163 men were dead. The true toll was probably higher, as some bodies were never found. Many died with agonizing slowness, trapped for days with little food or water, breathing ever less oxygen.
That is a bit of history. Now let us consider heaven.
When Christ became man, God entered human history. When Christ returned to his Father, human history entered God.
If our Lord’s ascension into heaven represented only his departure from us, it would not be a cause for celebration. No, our reason for joy is contained in a phrase from today’s second reading from the letter to the Ephesians:
May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,
what are the riches of glory
in his inheritance among the holy ones (1:18-21).
When Christ entered heaven, he took something with him: a human nature forged by the story of our striving and suffering. When Christ became man, God entered human history. When Christ returned to his Father, human history entered God.
Now, God is no longer the unmoved mover, the impenetrable, the eternal stillness and satiety of Greek thought. Now, we proclaim that God has walked among us, fallen in love with us and forever bears our wounds. This is Christ’s inheritance among his holy ones. This is heaven!
In the summer of ’17, an I.W.W. organizer named Frank Little stepped off the train in Butte, Mont.
“We have no interest in the war,” he told a crowd of thousands. Little called American soldiers “scabs in uniform,” and promised to “make it so damned hot for the government that it won’t be able to send any troops to France.”
That sort of talk could not—or would not—be tolerated after America had just entered the “war to end all wars.”
It matters greatly to us that history should be taken into heaven.
A few days later, armed men broke into Little’s boarding house room and seized him.
The men threw him into a black Cadillac sedan and drove off. A few blocks away they stopped the car, took Little out, and tied him to the rear bumper, dragging him along and scraping the skin off his kneecaps. His body was found a few hours later, still warm, hanging from a railroad bridge… A note in red crayon was pinned to his right thigh…[On it were written] the numbers “3-7-77.”
What did the numbers mean? One theory is that they are the dimensions of a grave.
No one would ever be arrested for the crime, and 11 days after Frank Little’s death, federal troops entered Butte with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets. They would remain there for three years, ensuring that strikes did not slow the war effort. Woodrow Wilson’s vice president Thomas Marshall “cynically coined a pun on the victim’s name. In solving labor problems, he quipped, ‘A Little hanging goes a long way.’”
It matters greatly to us that history should be taken into heaven. This is “Christ’s inheritance among his holy ones.” It is where long-denied justice is done, and the wrongs of time are redressed. But that can only happen because in Christ’s ascension, history enters heaven. It does not, as we popularly assume, stop at heaven’s door.
Heaven does more than set history right. It transforms human striving from the ephemeral to the eternal. Far from being forgotten, in heaven, countless unknown acts of valor and sacrifice are revealed as foundations stones for the city of God.
At the war’s end, Wilson broke down during a dedicatory speech for what would be the first of many European cemeteries for American soldiers. Looking out on a field of 1,500 crosses, the president took responsibility for them, saying, “I sent these lads over here to die.”
Those poor but celebrated lads! In heaven they march with the unsung coal miners of Butte. They parade together, nay, arm in arm, to hear Frank Little speak. Why? Because in heaven, history matters still.
