May 21, 2023
“Our Hero’s Journey”
Readings: Acts 1:6-14 / 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 / John 17:1-11
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces is an influential book first published by Joseph Campbell in 1949. In it, he describes The Hero’s Journey, the archetypal story that Campbell claims is reflected in most legends, myths, and sacred narratives. His thesis is that basically all stories, from The Odyssey to The Lord of the Rings, have the same basic structure. In so many words, there’s really only one story. And it goes like this:
Our hero is living a more-or-less normal life when he receives a call to adventure. The hero leaves his familiar world and crosses a threshold into an unknown and challenging new world. The hero is helped by mentors and friends, opposed by foils and enemies. In pursuit of his goal, the hero struggles against increasingly greater obstacles until he enters the greatest challenge of his life— the abyss. Once there, the hero experiences death and rebirth and returns to his old world a changed person, with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
That’s the Hero’s Journey in brief. And of course, a lot has been written about it since Campbell first published his ideas, lots of discourse and critique, but the overall idea has remained relevant for storytellers the world over.
I’ve been thinking about this because the life of Christ is indeed a story, “the greatest story ever told,” as one film calls it. The earthly life of our Lord has a beginning, middle, and end.
So as we draw near to the end of the Eastertide season, we should be feeling a sense of narrative closure. There should be a feeling that the sacred events we have been commemorating since Holy Week have been progressing and have an end in sight.
Our Lord was betrayed, arrested, crucified— he died and was buried— he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples for forty days… and then what? Have you ever thought about how the Resurrection story could end, if not with the Ascension? What if Jesus rose from the dead, and just stuck around? Just stayed on earth, never to die again? The Paschal Mystery would be a sort of open-ended story. But it was not meant to be that way.
The Ascension of Christ into the heavens after his Resurrection is an essential part of his hero’s journey. This is the way his earthly life was meant to conclude: by ascending into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father.
The reason for this is not arbitrary. There is a beautiful symmetry in the life of Christ. In the Incarnation, Christ descends to bring God to humanity. Now, in the Ascension, Christ ascends to bring humanity to God. He went forth from God and he returns to God. He unites humanity to himself, defeats our enemies, and then returns from whence he came.
The whole of the life of Christ is one grand movement downward and upward. The Word of God comes down from heaven, leaves his “familiar world,” we might call it, and becomes human in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. He is born into our world and experiences the full range of the human condition. He knows the joys and frustrations of family life; the diligence needed to learn a trade; moments of triumph and perplexity in his ministry. He tastes the bitterness of betrayal and the desolation of the Passion. Christ has experienced the depths of our common human experience.
And like the archetypal hero, he descends into the abyss of his Passion to do battle against the greatest Enemy of all— a battle to the death. And against all expectation, he triumphs over his enemies by rising from the dead and being exalted to the right hand of God, with the power to bestow gifts on his fellow man— above all, the Gift that contains all gifts: the Holy Spirit.
The most holy life of Christ is a story, and the Ascension is its fitting conclusion.
So what does this mean for our stories? For our own journeys? I would offer two thoughts. The first is that our stories have now been swept up into his. Our stories are unfolding in the light of his story. If we are truly in Christ, if we are united to Christ in the mysteries of the Church and the life of prayer, then we share in Christ’s victory, just as he shared in our struggles. If we remind ourselves that our stories participate in the victory of his story, we will be able to drive away despondency and despair.
Secondly, it means that, while his journey is completed, even though “the strife is o’er, the battle done,” we still have work to do. The disciples were given a mission right before the Ascension: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” To the ends of the earth. Even to Sherman and Grayson County. We too are charged to take our witness to Jesus into our own time and place. Our witness is our testimony of who Christ is and what he means to our lives. That is what the local church is for: not primarily to meet the needs of members, but to reach out to those who have not yet heard the testimony about Jesus or who need to hear it afresh.
This mission is long-term. It is not accomplished overnight. And it requires certain commitments of us, which are mentioned in our readings. After the Ascension, the disciples “constantly devote themselves to prayer.” So if we want to bear witness to Jesus, we will pray. We will follow St. Peter’s exhortation to “discipline [ourselves], to keep alert.” We will humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt us in due time. And in the midst of all this discipline and hard work, we will cast our anxiety on the Lord, because He cares for us.
Beloved: Our Lord has completed his journey on this earth. The Hero has triumphed, the Villain has been defeated. And all are our stories have participated in this victory. Take your part in the narrative. You too have a role in the Story. May God grant that your life be a powerful and beautiful witness to the Risen Lord, the Hero who triumphs over all. Amen.
Dogmatic Joy 