Homily: Ascension 2026

Homily delivered on May 17, 2026, at the Parish of St. John of Kronstadt, New York.

The First Lesson

Acts 1:6-14

When the apostles had come together, they asked Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.

The Psalm

Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36

Exsurgat Deus

1 Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered; *

let those who hate him flee before him.

2 Let them vanish like smoke when the wind drives it away; *

as the wax melts at the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.

3 But let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; *

let them also be merry and joyful.

4 Sing to God, sing praises to his Name;

exalt him who rides upon the heavens; *

YAHWEH is his Name, rejoice before him!

5 Father of orphans, defender of widows, *

God in his holy habitation!

6 God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom; *

but the rebels shall live in dry places.

7 O God, when you went forth before your people, *

when you marched through the wilderness,

8 The earth shook, and the skies poured down rain,

at the presence of God, the God of Sinai, *

at the presence of God, the God of Israel.

9 You sent a gracious rain, O God, upon your inheritance; *

you refreshed the land when it was weary.

10 Your people found their home in it; *

in your goodness, O God, you have made provision for the poor.

33 Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth; *

sing praises to the Lord.

34 He rides in the heavens, the ancient heavens; *

he sends forth his voice, his mighty voice.

35 Ascribe power to God; *

his majesty is over Israel;

his strength is in the skies.

36 How wonderful is God in his holy places! *

the God of Israel giving strength and power to his people!

Blessed be God!

The Epistle

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.

The Gospel

John 17:1-11

Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

Homily

Ascension of the Lord

May 17, 2026

The beginning of today’s psalm references the rising of God and the scattering or “melting away” of sin before God, “like wax before the fire”, which coincides with the “melting away” of death into resurrection as the Lord ascends to Heaven and as we transition to the season of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit.

As a part of this “melting away”, the seasonal transition from the death of sin to the life of the Resurrection, we get a foretaste of the upcoming feast in the words of St. Paul: in today’s Epistle, speaking to the people of God well after the events of Pascha, he calls the experience of suffering, discrimination, and discord among the early church a “fiery ordeal”, “so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed”. He connects the collective suffering to the fire of the Holy Spirit, telling us that the ordeals we face are, themselves, blessed: “because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.”

The lectionary concludes with today’s gospel reading, back in time just before Pascha, with the words of Christ Jesus in John 17: “...glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent“.

Take note of “eternal life”.

Today marks the seventh Sunday of Pascha in our calendar, the day we celebrate the Ascension of the Lord. This is the last Sunday before Pentecost in the Western Church, and the Eastern church is offset by a week. We’re more or less out of sync.

But the words of today's Gospel are not located in a one-and-done event. Christ’s prayer in the Gospel of John is eternal; he speaks in the past, future, and present tenses. These words are an insight into the person of Jesus, where Jesus exists in time, and what Jesus promised us, has accomplished, and will accomplish in His coming Glory. These are words to highlight the joy and triumph of his Ascension.

You could say we are time travelers. When we celebrate the Divine Liturgy throughout the liturgical year, we are experiencing multiple times and places at once. Liturgically, we are at the Ascension of the Lord. In the lectionary, we are also before the time of Jesus, and we are right before Holy Week before Pascha even happened. At the same time, we also live in the present time of the completion of the Resurrection, which has already happened, and continually works its grace. Gathered as church, we enter the future life of the world to come. We ascend to meet a moment of our future, just for a few hours, of our coming reunion with the Lord. As we gather and become the Body of Christ, and as we share in the sacred mystical union with Christ, through drawing into God’s eternal time, we transcend time. We become outside of time as we know it.

Christ Jesus acknowledges this time traveling in this prayer. Christ references His death and resurrection, the completion of His ministry - something that hadn’t happened yet, has happened, and will happen. When we partake in the sacred mysteries, we are not just in Church, but we gather to become the Body of Christ, and together in the Sacrament, we meet Christ in Heaven, in communion with Saints past and future. We are in the promised world to come. Christ’s body has ascended and with it, so has the body of mankind. Saint John Chrysostom says, “Therefore the angels descend in order to see the unusual and marvelous vision: Man appearing in heaven.” The Ascension of God and Man into heaven is the crown of Easter. Ascension is Jesus preparing the way for us to enter God’s time, eternity.

How can we enter eternity when there are bills to pay, new laws that seek to exclude the disabled, the immigrant, and the queer communities from public life, appointments, disappointments, loss, fear, and other fiery ordeals? How do we see joy in the Ascension when we can’t see outside of our own very pressing needs? When God ascends into Heaven and leaves us among the Holy Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, among the Apostles, among the Saints of the Church, and among the People, we are not abandoned. It is Jesus’ Ascension, of God in Man, and of mankind itself, that brings us the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit ushers us into the time of Heaven, eternal time.

When St. Paul references the ordeals of discrimination, hostility, exclusion, and the political threats over the marginalized, he also asks us to cast our anxieties, our worries, and our experiences of suffering and discrimination up to the Lord, who is in and among the body of the Lord, the community. St. Paul says, “And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you”.

We also know that the Lord is embodied, and actively acts in the world, in and among us, the gathered people, Christ’s hands and feet. At our best, we are little windows into heaven. We can think of the Church, in its most ideal form, as an icon of the Mother of God, as the mystical womb holding God, which births God into the world in and through us gathered. It is through us, on fire with the Holy Spirit, that God works to restore, support, strengthen, and establish. Ascension brings us into Heaven and God unto the world. But this isn’t automatic.

St. Paul asks us to be active, to have courage in giving ourselves into God’s eternity, and not getting too caught up in what Sister Vassa Larin calls mechanical time, or clock time. For some of us, there is enough free time and energy in between our “taken” hours, our 9-5 jobs, our 7-2 classes, or our obligations, to devote to whatever it is we love. For most of us, what hours and energy remain from the “taken” hours are not enough.

How do we leave mechanical time? We’re not meant to be busy. Mechanical time is organized to get the most “stuff done” out of us in a given day. Mechanical time does not believe in the Sabbath. Like the Apostles’ disbelief at the resurrection of Jesus, the “busyness” of our calendars is how we harden our hearts. By freeing us into God’s eternal life, Jesus is asking us to soften ourselves and melt into a different type of time. In the past, present, and future of the Resurrection, and in the reality of our promised union with God here and now, Jesus beckons us to enter into God’s eternal time in a radical loving, caring community with each other, even when we have stuff to do.

This is not convenient. Eternal time won’t account for hours that are taken or do the work we really need to do. However, the Lord asks us to expand our idea of time. We have been set free from the bonds of death to choose eternal time. We can also call eternal time community time. Community is never convenient, but God’s time is time freely shared and freely given. It is not beholden to deadlines, obligations, bills, or our own very practical needs. It is never too busy for someone who needs it.

One way we embody the Ascension, and to grow closer to Christ, is we give our time to those in need, to our loved ones, to our communities, and to the people and creatures for whom God has charged us to care. When we give our time and energy freely to those who need it, it seems to last longer, and it seems to mean more. Like the apostles gathered, we open a window to heaven. We should look to the Theotokos and to the Saints for guidance, compassion, and shining examples of how to answer God’s call to enter into God’s eternal time.

I think this would be a fitting way to celebrate the meaning of Ascension: to freely spread this ascension into heaven with others by giving our time freely, and to invite each other and the world into eternal time, in radical loving, caring fellowship and community, whether Christian or not, whether able or disabled, whether citizen or immigrant, whether straight or gay, whether cisgender or transgender, and whether or not it’s convenient. When we give freely, we get much more in return.

As the season of Easter melts away into the fire of Pentecost, I invite us to contemplate what it means when we give our time. When someone is in need, we as ministers learn to respond to this call and give. We give our time to our people, to prayer, and to the joys and sorrows of companionship with each other and the community. By doing so, when we gather and break bread, we give our time to God. It is by realizing the true value of time, by giving it without expectation, we enter into the joy of God’s time and the eternal promise of resurrection.