Sermonstudio

It was an amazing moment. Everything that had happened before now seemed to lead up to this. All of those things — the stories and teachings, the miracles, the cross and the empty tomb, all of those things seemed to come together to create this one moment in time.

Jesus spoke with them, explaining once again how all of these things had to happen for him to fulfill the things his father wanted him to fulfill. He reminded them that repentance and forgiveness of sins was the message they were to carry out and proclaim to the world, and he promised that God would soon be sending them some power from on high. It would be a power that would help them fulfill their mission to spread the word.

The crowd was standing in a large semicircle facing Jesus. They were standing on the hill near Bethany, just across from Jerusalem. Behind Jesus, they could see the temple courtyard and the Roman fortress where so many things had happened. They could just make out the cemetery on the far side of town and that hole in the ground with the empty tomb. All of those things, and all of the amazing power they represented, seemed very small compared to this moment.

Jesus was almost radiant. His robes were a brilliant white and his face was aglow with a look that struck everyone who was there. It almost looked as if there was a light shining directly on him, creating a halo of bright light around his head. It was an amazing site.

Then slowly, with everyone standing and watching in pure amazement, Jesus began to rise. Of everything that had been seen thus far, this was the most amazing moment of all. From the rock on which he had been standing as he spoke with them, he slowly began to float upward. As he arose, the glow around him appeared to brighten and take on a heavenly color.

Then Jesus stopped.

As everyone watched in amazement, instead of continuing to rise upward, Jesus just kind of tilted a bit to the left and actually appeared to be a bit surprised and thrown off-balance by it all. He appeared to shake slightly, and then as if by some unseen force, Jesus began to lean forward, and his body began to do a very slow, but very complete forward somersault in the clouds hanging there over everyone’s head.

The technicians behind the scenes at the Passion play were scurrying around trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the lift mechanism, and the other actors on stage were trying to figure out how to maintain some form of dignity and awe, while the lead actor tried to hold his robe in an appropriate manner as he found himself upside down in front of the entire audience. As the curtain was lowered, the orchestra began playing the “Hallelujah Chorus” and a group of angels swooped onto the stage to distract the audience, while a stagehand brought out a long stepladder to help get Jesus back down to earth.

The ascension has always been troubling, hasn’t it? Once we get through the intellectual struggle to come to grips with the resurrection, we are then faced with the challenge of the story of the risen Lord, actually being lifted up into the clouds, into heaven. This may have been a bit easier to accept in the days before satellites and our overall understanding of things like astronomy and physics, but today, let’s just say it is simply too much for some of us in our faith journey.

In short, the common telling of the story is that Jesus was with his disciples on the Mount of Olives. There is a church there today, marking the spot where tradition believes they gathered. Some traditions claim to know the actual rock Jesus was standing on as he spoke with them. After talking with them for a while, he ascended. He physically rose up, and floated into the sky, returning to heaven to be with his Father. It is one of those things you either believe or do not believe, or you just pretend it never happened and don’t talk about it. That way we avoid the problems.

We do have to admit that the idea of someone floating up from a hill in the Middle East and ending up in a physical heaven is very difficult to fit into the rest of the things we know about life in general. The old beliefs about seven layers of physical heaven forming a dome around the earth was set aside many years ago. It seems that if we are going to be able to accept this physical ascension, we are either going to have to argue that what we have learned in the sciences is wrong, or that somehow the real existence of heaven is somehow shielded from view by some heavenly force that protects it from our observation. Both approaches have been taken. This is one of the stories that provides fuel for the strong view that our human sciences stand in direct conflict with a real and true religious faith. The belief is that if we teach these facts of science, we are undermining the very root stories of faith, and that must not happen. Some argue that questioning the stories of faith is dangerous and cannot be allowed. Other groups have no fear of modern science and say that if God wants to hide heaven from our earthly view, God can just do that. That’s why heaven does not show up when we go looking for it.

What can we do with this story of the ascension? Is there anything we could say here today that might do anything at all to ease this amazingly divisive conflict?

First, consider this: The stories in scripture never say that anyone actually saw Jesus rise from the ground and float up into heaven. Take a look at today’s passage. It says, “While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven” (v. 51). He withdrew from them. This is the same phrase we see many other times when Jesus physically went away from everyone else: to pray in the wilderness, to take his disciples to Caesarea Philippi before going to Jerusalem, and to pray by himself in the garden at Gethsemane. Luke tells us directly that Jesus withdrew from the crowd, to be alone. Exactly when and how Jesus then made his way to heaven is not something Luke actually tells us.

While it is still possible that Jesus ascended exactly as tradition envisioned it, Luke simply points out that it is possible the crowd was not there to see it.

Or consider that what is most important is that whatever the crowds may or may not have seen in the sky, their focus quickly returned to what was going on down here. We are told that as Jesus was speaking with them, he told them that since they had been witnesses to the things he had done, they were now to go out into the world and tell those things. They were to announce that repentance and forgiveness was free for everyone. Jesus told them to stay in the city until they were “clothed with power from on high” (v. 49), so they could do the work they had to do. What is important is that rather than standing there, staring up into the sky, fretting about heavenly things, they quickly returned their focus to the real needs of the world around them.

It is easy to lose sight of what it was that the ascension would have been for. We get wrapped up in trying to prove things that are very difficult for us humans to prove, when we perhaps would be accomplishing more if we focused our view on those around us who are hurting or homeless, and doing what we can to help. We spend too much time worrying about how science might threaten the stories from the Bible, when we could be focusing on how to use that science to figure out how to give water, food, and peace to a starving and self-destructive world. It is sometimes helpful to remember that the God who loves us, loves everybody else on this planet just as much.

Whichever way Jesus made his return to his Father, and wherever that may actually be, the number one thing Jesus is concerned about is how well we are following his clear directive to love one another, rather than arguing over how he made the trip back home.