Sunday of the Fathers of the First Council
Ascension Text: Lk. 24:36 – 53
Oops!
Today we celebrate the holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea — those bishops who gathered from across the known world, many bearing the scars of persecution, to articulate what the Church already knew in her bones: who Jesus Christ is, and what He has done.
Among the words they gave us — the words we recite together at every Divine Liturgy — are these:
“Καὶ ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Πατρός.”
“And He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
These are familiar words. Perhaps too familiar. We say them every week, and yet, if we are honest, we are not entirely sure what they mean for us. The Ascension can begin to sound like the fairy-tale ending of a great story — Jesus floats up into the sky to live happily ever after. Lovely for Him. But what about us?
Ascension is not a feast most people know what to do with.
Pascha? We understand Pascha. Christ is risen. Death is trampled down. The tomb is empty. That has weight. That has fire in it.
But Ascension can feel abstract, distant — almost like Jesus exiting the stage.
Ugh!
Let me push that honesty a little further.
We love Pascha because we can immediately grasp what is at stake. The martyrs understood it. They walked into prisons and executions singing hymns because they knew, viscerally, that Christ had conquered death itself.
But the Ascension? It falls midweek. We have jobs to get to, children to feed, bills to pay, obligations to manage. And somewhere in the back of our minds is the quiet suspicion that the Ascension is simply Jesus leaving — going somewhere far away, somewhere above the clouds — while we are left behind to muddle through as best we can.
And if that is what Ascension means, then it is hard to see why it matters very much at all.
But that is not what the Church proclaims.
Notice something astonishing in today’s Gospel: Christ departs from His disciples while blessing them.
“While He blessed them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven.”
The final visible act of Jesus before the Ascension is not abandonment. It is blessing. His hands remain raised over His people.
The Ascension is not Christ turning away from the world. It is Christ taking His throne for the sake of the world.
Aha!
The Ascension is not about geography. It is not about distance. It is about authority.
Listen carefully to what the Fathers encoded in the Creed: Christ ascended and is seated — enthroned — at the right hand of the Father.
In the ancient world, to sit at the right hand of a king was not to retire to a comfortable chair. It was to be invested with royal power. It was the language of dominion, rule, sovereignty.
The Fathers were not describing a pleasant retirement. They were making a staggering claim: Jesus of Nazareth, crucified under Pontius Pilate, is now Lord of all creation.
And this is precisely why Nicaea mattered.
Because if the One seated on the throne is merely a creature, then creation is not saved. But if the One enthroned at the Father’s right hand is truly “Light from Light, true God from true God,” then humanity itself has entered into the life of God.
In Christ, our human nature now sits upon the throne of heaven.
Additionally, when Scripture speaks of heaven, it is not primarily describing a destination in the sky. Heaven is the throne room — the realm from which God governs the cosmos.
To say Christ ascended into heaven is to say Christ reigns.
He is the judge of the living and the dead. He is the one before whom every knee will bow. He is actively ruling over the very world that looks, at every turn, like it is spinning out of control.
And this truth is both the most comforting and the most demanding thing we will ever hear.
Whee!
It is comforting because it means Christ has not abandoned us.
The grief we carry, the divisions in our families, the violence of the world, the confusion of our age — none of it is ultimate. All of it has a boundary.
St. Paul says creation groans in birth pangs, not death throes. There is a difference. Birth pangs are painful, but they are moving toward something. If Christ is enthroned, then history is not meaningless chaos. The world is not unraveling into nothingness. Creation is laboring toward transfiguration.
And the One who reigns is still blessing His people.
Yeah!
But here is where the Ascension becomes challenging — where it becomes a judgment upon us.
If Christ is King — and He is — then His words are not suggestions.
And thanks be to God, He does not command us from a distance. The enthroned Christ gives us His Spirit. He gives us His Body and Blood. He gives grace upon grace so that our lives can slowly become obedient to His Kingdom.
But obedience is still required.
When He says to love your neighbor, He does not mean only the neighbors you already like. He means the family member you have not spoken to in two years. He means the coworker whose presence irritates you. He means the person whose politics make your blood pressure rise. Not merely tolerate. Love. Pray for. Serve. Find a way.
When He says to take up your cross and follow Him, He is not offering a spiritual metaphor for mild inconvenience. He is calling us to genuine ascetic struggle. To pray when we do not feel like praying. To fast not as a diet, but as a discipline that teaches the body who is Lord. To give not merely out of abundance, but until generosity actually costs us something.
When He commands us to forgive, He knows every reason we have not to. Every wound. Every humiliation. Every betrayal. And He commands it anyway — because He is King, not a life coach offering helpful strategies for self-improvement.
Brothers and sisters, we are living in the Paschal season, moving toward Pentecost, and the entire arc of this journey has been preparing us for exactly this: to become people who actually live as though Christ is Lord.
Not people who merely admire Christianity from a safe distance.
Not people who check the liturgical box and remain unchanged.
But people whose lives are being reordered by the reign of Christ.
The Feast of the Ascension is not the quiet ending of the Gospel story.
It is an enthronement.
It is the declaration that the crucified and risen Jesus now reigns over heaven and earth.
And every Divine Liturgy is the Church standing even now before that throne.
Christ is risen.
Christ is ascended.
Christ reigns.
So let us live as citizens of His Kingdom.
Amen.