Assumptions about Ascension
Rev. Kelley J. Lackey II - St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Friday, April 25, 2008
Pentecost Sunday, when we commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit, is May 11 and is a day second in importance for Christians only to Easter.
However, another principal feast of the Church happens ten days before Pentecost. Ascension Thursday (May 1) is the fortieth day after Easter Sunday and commemorates the ascension of Jesus into heaven.
Jesus indicates to his followers that he must disappear from them before the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, can rest upon them to enable them to become the Church. In the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight (Acts 1:9). In the longer, later, ending of Luke, Jesus is taken up into heaven and sits down at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19).
The ancients had a three-tiered worldview in which the cosmos is much like a house. The earth is the main floor; there is an underworld in the basement upon which the pillars that hold up the earth are found. Upstairs is heaven, accessed by trap doors in the firmament by persons that God chooses to let in. In this worldview, God literally sends down rain, lightning bolts, hail and other meteorological phenomena by opening a door and dumping them downstairs onto the earth.
Every Sunday Christians stand up in church and say, in the words of the Nicene Creed, that we believe that Jesus Christ ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. But what does this mean? For early Christians this was easily proclaimed. They literally believed that Jesus floated up into the sky, entered through a door and then took his seat at the right hand of the Father.
While the Ascension was an easy proposition for Christians in earlier centuries, we are challenged by the facts of science. There are no trap doors up in the clouds, only decreasing atmosphere that ends with outer space. Furthermore, astronomers have mapped the Milky Way Galaxy, and are able to give mathematical formulae to determine the size. Assuming that Jesus did literally float into space and his body would have miraculously survived in this vacuum, he would only be about 2000 years out. Even if he ascended at the speed of light, he still would not be out of our galaxy!
Therefore, when we say we believe that Christ ascended into heaven, then we are doing one of two things: either we are engaging in naive, magical thinking based on a centuries old worldview or we are conveying some deeper reality that cannot be adequately conveyed by words alone.
What we say and believe about the Ascension is important because it involves heaven and how we believe we will participate in eternal life. More immediately important, it says something about what we believe to be true of our relationship with Jesus Christ here and now. Many Christian theologians have examined what the images of the Ascension of Christ in scripture mean for the Church and have identified several key aspects.
According to the Liturgical Press’ New Dictionary of Theology, the ascension story is a metaphor used to express the real, transcendent destiny of Jesus. It serves to explain his ongoing paradoxical absence from and presence in the Church, his supremacy over all of creation, his pouring out the Holy Spirit on his followers, and his role in revealing heavenly things to us as the highest of high priests. It conveys that we should expect the return of the same Jesus who was resurrected, not someone else. Finally, the image of Jesus’ bodily ascension reveals God’s intention for the rest of humanity.
The ascension story provides a context to explain to us that Jesus takes our humanity into a state of being where he is now over all things and all times. Former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, said this about ascension, “The ascension of Christ is his liberation from all restrictions of time and space. It does not represent his removal from the earth, but his constant presence everywhere on earth.” In the Ascension, we are given the promise that Jesus Christ is always with us wherever we are, even to the end of the ages.
Perhaps most relevant to us is the balance in relationship the ascension stories convey. Jesus is divine while maintaining the essence of being human. Furthermore, the Ascension completes the circle that is begun at the birth of Jesus. The divine participates in humanity in order that humanity may participate in divinity.
The reality conveyed in the ascension stories is that God has destined us for something greater than our own immediate experiences. We are destined, not for a place called heaven, but for a state of being in which humanity and divinity fully embrace each other.
F “Sunday Sermon” is a forum for Emporia area ministers to share their sermons, thoughts and observations. This week’s sermon is from the Rev. Kelley J. Lackey II of the of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.