Ac 1:1-11
24 May 2009
Ascension Sunday / 7th Sunday of Easter
“Witnesses to Ascension”
Today
is Ascension Sunday. This past Thursday was the fortieth day of the
Easter season and the day on which we mark the Ascension of the Lord. Since we didn’t have a service on Thursday,
this is the day we celebrate the ascension of Jesus Christ.
Ascension is one of those things that I think we have trouble figuring out. Are we celebrating Jesus’ flying up into the sky? (And if that’s the case, how high did he go? Did he go straight up through the atmosphere into outer space?) Or are we recognizing the event of his being “beamed up,” Star Trek style, off the planet surface? Or did he slip into one of the eleven dimensions which many physicists believe to exist?
Taking the poetic language of those with a first century understanding of the universe—and posing 21st century questions of science to them—will lead us into some pretty strange places, if you hadn’t already noticed. And besides that, we’ll miss out on the whole meaning of ascension.
It’s easy to see how this could degenerate into an escapist theology. That is, being so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good. But the faith of the incarnation (God in flesh), the resurrection, the sacraments (the water, the bread, the wine)—that’s faith that matters. Really! It involves matter!
Also, it’s been noted that by ascending from the earth, Jesus has given us “hope of rising to true selfhood.”[1] It is God, not we, who defines what it means
to be a person. And of course, the
meaning of ascension is about our personhood; it’s not our knowledge of astronomy, nor is it “an anti-creation,
other-worldly” perspective.[2]
In our Book of
Confessions appears the Heidelberg Catechism, which was published in 1563. Something it says about the ascension is
that by entering heaven bodily, and not just spiritually, Jesus guarantees
the same for us. In its sixteenth century language, “we have our flesh in
heaven.” By ascending in bodily form, he
has enabled God to forever be joined with human flesh. The creation has
been joined with the Creator.
When Jesus parts from his
disciples, he is fully present. He isn’t
a ghost. In fact, he proves it to them
on more than one occasion. Verse 3
speaks of “ways that proved beyond doubt that he
was alive” (GNB). The NRSV refers to
“many convincing proofs.”
This also means something
else. This goes right to the heart of
personhood. When Jesus parts from his
disciples, they are losing a friend. And
for some, if not all of them, they’re losing their best friend. It’s a tough
thing to say goodbye to your best friend, especially if it’s for what you
believe to be the last time.
I’ve had that experience once in my life, when I
was preparing to graduate from Bible college—Southeastern College in Lakeland,
Florida. In December 1988, I had finished my coursework and was about to
join the small number of students who were also finishing at the end of the
fall semester. My roommate still had over two years to go. He was
about to go home for the Christmas break.
On the face of it, we didn’t seem to have very much
in common. We didn’t share tastes in
music, movies, or books. He sometimes
irritated me with his antics in public. It
seems like our faith was the main thing we had in common, but as it turned out,
that was more than enough. Whatever the reason,
I can say that I came to love him as my best friend. (This was before I met Banu!)
And so it happened on the day that a fellow student
pulled up in the parking lot to take him to the airport in Tampa, we each found
ourselves at that terrible moment of saying goodbye to our best friend.
I just wanted him to get in the car and leave
quickly. I could feel the pain increasing. As soon as the car left
the parking lot, I turned and hurried back into the dorm. I didn’t want
anyone to see me with my eyes watering up. Besides, I could barely see
where I was going. Even then, in that moment, I was imagining myself
tripping on the stairs and rolling back to the bottom. But I did make it
to my room, where I put my head on my desk, and for about three or four minutes
straight, I just cried.
But that isn’t the end of the story. We kept in touch via letters and telephone
(this was before the whole world discovered the internet), but if you recall
something I said last week, it’s not the same thing as being there. As it turned out, we did meet up several more
times, especially after I went to Philadelphia.
Three commuter trains separated me from his place in Connecticut. He’s now in Costa Rica; we stay in touch via
Facebook.
As for Jesus’ departure from his friends, the disciples, I’m not sure if the overall tone is one
of sadness or not. Luke, the author of
Acts, tells us that they’re “gazing up toward heaven” (v. 10). That could mean a number of things; you can
make of it what you will.
One thing I think it’s safe
to say about the disciples: they still
don’t really get it! In verse 6, they’re
asking Jesus, “Okay, is now the time
when you’re going to kick out the Romans and restore the kingdom to Israel?” Like most of the Jewish nation, they’re still
fixated on that. It’s hard to blame
them. They’ve been taught that when the
Messiah comes, he will usher in a reign of peace. They look around, and there’s still no peace.
They must be thinking,
“What better moment than now? You’ve
gone out of your way to prove that it’s really you…back from the dead…in the
flesh! So do your thing!” The response of Jesus: “It is not for you to
know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority” (v.
7). Okay, well if you ask me, that
just…stinks!
However, he doesn’t leave them with
that. Jesus adds that “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” (v. 8). And that
is what he leaves them with.
They—and we—are mistaken if we believe that Jesus does it all by
himself. Over and over, he reaches out
to the high and the low, the in-crowd and the outcast, in his mission to
restore community. He calls for as many
who are willing to join him, to be his witnesses. (I’ll say more about that in a moment.)
The epistle reading for Ascension is
in Ephesians 1. Paul speaks of Christ as
raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of God, “far above all rule
and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not
only in this age but also in the age to come” (v. 21). Ascension is fully integrated into
resurrection.
The apostle continues, saying that God
“has put all things under [Jesus’] feet and has made him the head over all
things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in
all” (vv. 22-23). We’re getting to why
ascension is so important. Even raised
from the dead, Jesus is still one person walking around (and doing other cool
stuff, like passing through walls!). But
being ascended, Jesus is so much more; he “fills all in all.”
I’ve sometimes heard
people say, “If we only lived when Jesus walked the earth; things would be so
much easier.” To that I would say, first
of all, go back and read the scriptures.
You’ll see that, as we’ve already noticed, the people around Jesus had
some troubling figuring him out. And
there were others who did know what
he was saying, and they didn’t like it!
But secondly, because
Jesus now “fills all in all,” he is everywhere.
No matter where we are—in every nation, down deep in the sea, way up in
the International Space Station—Jesus is always with us. And his Spirit is abundantly present to give
us the courage and strength to be his witnesses.
This brings us back to
verse 8, where Jesus tells his disciples, “[Y]ou will be my
witnesses” all over the world. The Greek
word for “witness” has three basic meanings.
The first is in a legal sense: to
testify or verify in a court setting.
The second is a little different.
It’s about being an observer or a spectator of something—being the
witness of an event.
The word came to take on a third definition,
as well. After hearing the Greek word,
you’ll notice the meaning we usually give it.
The word is martu" (martus). That’s where we get our word “martyr.” That’s an extreme witness—one who gets killed while identifying with Christ. So in Greek, the word for “witness” also
means “martyr.” That should shed new
light on both of those words.
Our passage closes with a
cautionary note about being “carried away” by the ascension. In verses 10 and 11, two guys in white robes
suddenly show up; the obvious assumption is that they’re angels. They ask the disciples, “Galileans, why are you standing there looking up at the sky?” (v.
11). Why are you gazing into the
heavens?
Bosco Peters, Anglican priest in New
Zealand, translates that as: “The metaphorical language of
‘up’ must never allow for an escapist spirituality. If we do not find God in our everyday life of
work, sport, friends, food, music, nature, bodies,…we do not find God at all.”[3] We’re designed to take hold of life right
now, not in the sweet bye-and-bye.
We are
not, nor will we ever be, angels. We are
not beings of pure spirit. That is a whole
different order of creation. Yet, we
have eternity in our hearts. We are
creatures of contradiction. Still,
recall what I said earlier. By ascending from the earth, Jesus gives us hope. He gives us the hope of rising to true selfhood. We take our promised place, because “our flesh is in heaven.”
What
does it mean for us to be witnesses to ascension? How do we testify on behalf of the friend who
seems to have departed, but is very much with us all?
I want
us to really think about this. What does
it mean for us, using the language of the Heidelberg Catechism, to say “our flesh
is in heaven”? What would your “true
selfhood” look like? What does Christ
fully formed in us look like? I invite
all of us to flesh out the questions!