Ascension

The Ascension is a very strange story. If you’re looking for a strange episode in the life of Jesus to confound would-be followers, then there’s nothing stranger than this one. Okay, resurrection’s pretty far fetched and a virgin birth is just about unbelievable. But somehow it seems easy to assimilate those stories to the meaning demands of our time, than it does the Ascension. Resurrection is about new life and the virgin birth about Jesus’ origins in God, but Ascension, what’s Ascension got to do with anything logical or rational or practical or comprehensible in our day and age? In the modernist scientific and historical assumptions that underlie much of Western culture, the language and imagery of Ascension simply doesn’t make sense.

And despite this incredulity, the Ascension is not something that we’re free to give away or leave it. The Ascension is identified as part of the must-haves of the Jesus story in both the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds, the most ecumenical statements of Christian faith we have. Both creeds have virtually the same text: “On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father.” (ELLC Apostle’s Creed).

The story of Jesus’ Ascension appears in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Both books are from the same Christian community and possibly even the same writer. But if it’s the same writer or community, then the story has been recorded twice in two slightly different ways. So at least for the community of Luke-Acts, the Ascension was a significant event. The Gospel of John mentions it (20:17), but does not portray the scene. Sparcity of occurrences in the Gospel literature is no excuse for overlooking the story however. Only Matthew is concerned by the virgin birth; and Mark’s resurrection is very minimalist event if ever there was one.

No, the Ascension has to stay. But where does that leave us? The directional settings in this story are unbelievable. It doesn’t make sense to think of “heaven” as “up”—we know something of the vastness of the universe—a flat earth and a three-tier cosmology doesn’t wash. And this stuff about the right-hand of God brings back unpalatable memories of left-handed people being treated abysmally by parents, teachers and the general society. It’s a long time in Western society since left hands were for cleaning bottoms and right hands for eating. It’s not quite so long since we stopped forcing left-handed children to try writing with their right hands; but we know how futile and cruel such an exercise is now.

The story of the Ascension is unbelievable, directionally challenged and fairly difficult to swallow even with its right-handed bias. So what is its continuing significance and why should we bother with it now? What meaning can it possibly hold for twenty-first century intelligent humans schooled in Western philosophy and science?

It is not to the Ascension story in the Gospel of Luke or in the Acts of the Apostles to which we turn in the first instance to consider this enigma; it is the letter to the Ephesians, an epistle in the Pauline corpus.

The reading from Ephesians today is couched in the form of a prayer. It’s part of the usual establishing of relationship that occurs at the beginning of ancient letters; and particularly so at the beginning of the Christian epistles, and especially the Pauline ones. The introduction of the Pauline letters generally follow the basic structure of “Who From”, “Who To”, “Greeting” and “Thanksgiving”. When we get to v. 15 of the first chapter of Ephesians, we are definitely into the “Thanksgiving”: “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.” (vv. 15-16 NRSV).

But the prayer doesn’t finish there. It moves from thanksgiving to intercession, asking for God to endow the Ephesians with wisdom and insight in order that they know the fullness of who they really are: Christ’s body. And the motif which the letter-writer uses to explain the heritage of the people of God, the body of Christ, the Christian church is the imagery of the Ascension: “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 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.”

And the power which God puts to work is the power which exults the Crucified and Risen Christ, calls Christ’s followers to hope, endows those same followers with the richness of the inheritance of Christ and continues to work within Christ’s body which is the fullness of Christ. This power is hope and rich inheritance and our enfolding into the fullness of Christ.

In the story of the Ascension, the supremacy of Christ and Christ’s work is affirmed. Far more has been accomplished in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection than we might ask or imagine. And in the process, the hierarchy of power among earthly rulers is subverted. Jesus’ Ascension, the establishment by God of the reign of Christ, is a radical overturning of all human reigns and claims to sovereignty. God’s reign is re-affirmed in Christ, as Christ, because of Christ—a radical inversion of human power relations, the least has become the greatest through the powerful work of God. And what’s more, in Jesus’ Ascension, the church is marked out as Christ’s heirs in fullness as the body of Christ. And our inheritance is one of hope, one of riches and one of power. But not false hope or fools’ hope—this is a real hope found in the risen, reigning Christ. And not earthly riches or worldly riches, but the riches of being enfolded into Christ’s body, the riches of being Christ as the corporate community of the church. And not the power of might or the love of power, but the power of love gifted to us through the graciousness of God because of what God has made us in Jesus Christ, risen, ascended to the right hand of all power, and reigning in and through the church.

The Ascension of Jesus is a call to us to rise up as God’s people, as the body of Christ and to claim our inheritance, not out of pride or arrogance, not out of the need to be loved or recognised, not out of our earthly power, but out of the power that we have because we are called to be the fullness of Christ as the body of Christ, now Christ has ascended to God.

The 16th century mystic, Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) put it this way:

Christ has no body but yours,
no hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks
compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which Christ walks doing good;
Yours are the hands with which Christ blesses people now.

And that’s not an invitation to go about being busy, to do a lot of doing, or to think that we need to save the world. It is an invitation to recognise, accept and live out our inheritance from the Risen and Ascended Christ.