Deanna Watson, Wichita Falls Times Record News Published 6:26 a.m. CT Jan. 25, 2020

According to tradition, Jesus went "up" to heaven which may not be up, exactly, as much as it's beyond and what he went there to do was to finish what he had begun with us here on earth.

The Very Rev. John D. Payne: By ascending bodily into heaven, Christ showed us that our human nature is good, not bad.(Photo: Contributed)

It was not enough that through Jesus God was born into the body of this world; that was just his Christmas gift to us. His ascension gift was that through him the body of the world was borne back to God.

By presenting his own crucified, risen body to be seated at the right hand of God, Jesus imported human nature into those holy precincts for the first time. He paved the way for us, so that when we arrive there later everyone will not be quite so shocked by us.

The ascended Christ restored the goodness of creation, and ours in particular. By ascending bodily into heaven, he showed us that our human nature is good, not bad; that it's good enough for Jesus, good enough for heaven, good enough for God. By putting on human nature and keeping it on through the resurrection, Jesus has not only brought God to us; he has also brought us to God!

There is another way to look at Acts 1:1-11. The ascension of Christ is the day the present Lord became absent, which may be one reason why Ascension Day is the most neglected feast. Who wants to celebrate being left behind? Who wants to mark the day that Jesus went out of this world, never to be seen again?

This may be, however, the one compelling reason why we do go to church. Because we have sensed God's absence in that hollow, empty place in our hearts and because this thing has not discouraged us from coming. We come to seek the presence we have been missing.

Absence is an entirely underrated thing. Absence is not nothing, after all. something: a heightened awareness, a sharpened appetite, a finer perception. When someone important to me is absent from me, I become clearer than ever what that person means to me. Details that get lost in our togetherness are recalled in our apartness, and their sudden clarity has the power to pry my heart open.

There's something else that happens during an absence. If the relationship is strong and true, the absent one has a way of becoming present. There can be no sense of absence where there has been no sense of presence. You can't miss what you have never known, which makes our sense of God's absence the very best proof that we knew God once, and that we may know him again. It is our sense of God's absence, after all, that brings us to church in search of God's presence.

The angels in the ascension story remind Jesus' friends that if they want to see him again, it's no use looking up. Better that they should look around, at each other, at the world, at ordinary people in their ordinary lives, because this is where they are most likely to find him.

We also hear the angels' admonishment to stop looking up and to start looking around. Don't feast your eyes on some romanticized version of the church in the past, or on some idealized vision of a perfect church in the future.

What we must do is look around us at the church as it is, a company of saints and sinners who hold out empty cups to be filled with bread, with wine, with the abiding presence of the absent Lord.

The Very Rev. John D. Payne is the Rector Emeritus of All Saints' Episcopal Church in Wichita Falls.

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