The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
This is the first anniversary of my breaking my wrist. It’s not really the first anniversary because a first anniversary is a commemoration of something that took place a year before on the same date. While it seems like a year, it has only been a week ago today that I broke it, but I don’t know what you call the weekly remembrance of something, so I’ll call it an anniversary.
It has been an interesting experience, to say the least. Have you ever thought about how many things you do with both hands? Buttoning a shirt, putting on a pair of pants, tying one’s shoes, putting toothpaste on the toothbrush, cutting food on a plate, putting on a clerical collar – try doing any of those things with one hand and you’ll get a taste of what it’s like to have a broken wrist.
I have known people who have had broken wrists, and I have always sympathized with people who have had broken wrists, but until you experience it for yourself you have no idea what a handicap it is. And compared with so many other physical handicaps, it is a really small thing, so I have no right to complain, but it is a pain in the wrist!
There are some positives in all of it, though. First, it does make me much more empathetic of people who have similar maladies. And second, the older I get the faster time flies, but with this injury time has virtually stopped and it seems like it has been forever that I’ve had this problem and that it’s going to be forever until it goes away.
Thank you for indulging in this bit of a personal reflection, but it does have a point as we celebrate the feast of the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ into heaven. Almighty God, who made all things visible and invisible, who is pure spirit, who is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and many other omnis of which we are not even aware, took flesh and became a human being in Jesus of Nazareth. As a human being, he suffered cold and heat, knew what it means to be hungry, went through the indignities that go along with childhood and adolescence, knew what it was to be tempted, and, of course, suffered the greatest indignity of all, suffering and dying on the cross, taking the sins of the whole world onto himself.
This Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day and in his gloriously risen body appeared to many. And finally on the 40th day he ascended into heaven, where he now sits on the right hand of the Father.
Now I’m going to say something that may put me on shaky theological ground, so take it for what it is. I know that God is omniscient and that he knows us thoroughly, far better than we know ourselves. But when he became a human being, God certainly saw humanity from a different perspective, from the perspective of a human being as a human being. As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews said, “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
Jesus is able to sympathize with us in our weakness because he, too, knew the weaknesses that are inherent in being human. Furthermore, he took that same human flesh with him into heaven where he dwells eternally. And as the man in the commercial says, but wait, wait, there’s even more! Through our baptism, he has made us members of his body. Therefore, as St. Augustine wrote, “Where the Head is, there is the Body, where I am, there is my Church, we two are one; the Church is in me and I in her and we two are your Beloved and your Lover.”
Our human flesh is in heaven and now a part of the Godhead. Humanity has been given a greater honor than even the angels and archangels. I now know what someone goes through who is handicapped by a broken wrist because I have a broken wrist myself. It is indeed an imperfect analogy, but God knows us as one of us. He knows what it is to be a human being not only because he made us, but also because he is one of us. Jesus has ascended into heaven “to prepare a place for us, that where he is, there we might also be, and reign with him in glory.”
Sermon preached by the Very Reverend Fredrick A. Robinson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
Ascension Day
5 May 2016