beam me up Scotty- Ascension
Ascension
For a long time I had many mixed
feelings about Jesus’ Ascension. I never quite understood why Jesus left. It
was as if he was “beamed up” to the Starship Enterprise boldly going somewhere
else and leaving us down here. I sometimes wonder if the Apostles felt the same
way.
It was pretty obvious that they still
needed Jesus’ help. In our reading from Acts the disciples ask Jesus a
question. They asked him, "Lord, is this the time when
you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" John Calvin commented on the
Apostles’ question and stated that there are almost as many errors as there are
words in the question. Keep in mind that Jesus has been teaching them for fourty
days after the resurrection, and that is on top of the three years they spent
together. They still had the sense that
the kingdom was something that would happen suddenly. The sky would suddenly
open up and the kingdom would fall on them. Jesus spoke about the kingdom being
like a mustard bush- a weed that grows and spreads from a single tiny seed.
They also still had the sense of nationalism that the kingdom had something to
do with restoring the nation state of Israel to the Jewish people, and in the
process defeating their political enemies. But the mission of God was to spread
the Good News (and therefore the kingdom) across the world.
After such a
question could he really leave? It would be like leaving a teenager in charge
of the house when you go on a trip. You put emergency numbers on the fridge,
you fill the pantry with food, and just before you walk out the door to catch a
plane your teenager asks you “You don’t mind if I have a small party while
you’re gone do you?” I’m sure most of us would cancel the trip convinced they
aren’t ready for the responsibility yet.
But, Jesus goes.
The whole group of disciples come and ask him this question, but they should
know better. The question shows their ignorance. I want to yell out to Jesus at
that point and tell him not to leave them at such an important time. They need
more help. They need more training.
Sometimes
I feel the same way when I look at our world. He’s left, but we need help. We
have made the kind of world where factories collapse on people because we want
cheap t-shirts. At times I can feel
pretty overwhelmed with the mess the world seems to be in. War. Genocide.
People imprisoning people in house. School shootings. We’re destroying our
environment. We’re killing each other in increasingly creative ways. Some have much too much, while others don’t
have enough to survive. We’re scared of each other.
Sadly, sometimes the church is a mess
too. We’re confused. We argue over all kinds of things. There are politics and power
games. It’s easy to come down on governments and factory owners and
institutions like the church, but we look into our own lives and we aren’t
really all that better. Very few of us really live up to our own standards of
what it means to live a really good life, unless our standards are very low. … Surely we are just as ignorant as the
apostles who asked the question. … But he left. He left us in this mess. Surely
he must know that we need him with us- so why would he leave?
The good news is that I misunderstood
the Ascension. It wasn’t about Jesus getting beamed up into a spaceship to
boldly go where no messiah has gone before. It was not about abandoning us at
all. It was about getting closer to us.
By Ascending, Jesus was enveloped in
the cloud of the Glory of God. When Jesus ascended, in modern language we might
say that he went into another dimension- The dimension of heaven. He entered as
a full human being into the dimension of heaven. There he realized his full
glory. But, this ascending isn’t about leaving us. The dimension of heaven
isn’t on some far distant planet, it is a dimension that overlaps our own.
The Ascension is an enthronement. It
is when Jesus entered his full Lordship. It is also he also when he took on his
full Transcendence. Transcendence is a word that is used to talk about how
“other” God is. God is the creator of the universe and so is beyond the physical
universe. God is beyond any of our imaginings about Him. He is beyond our words
about him, because He is unlike anything else. If you want to understand Transcendence,
contemplate the seeming infinitude of space- The billions of Galaxies- and then
think about the being that began it all.
Or think about a being that can create time, or laws of physics (like
gravity). Our image of God as the man with the white beard sitting in the
clouds is soon blown away.
God’s transcendence can sometimes
mistakenly make us feel as if He is not close to us. This is a mistake because
His Transcendence is necessary for his immanence. Immanence means that God is
close to us. God is intimately near us. As St. Augustine said, “God is nearer
to us than we are to ourselves”. God is so close to us he hears the beating of
our heart- the blood flowing through our veins- He hears every secret whisper
of our mind.
As I said, and it seems like a
strange thing, but transcendence and immanence are two sides of the same coin.
If Jesus were to stay with us as his resurrected self without ascending he
could only be in one place at a time. That means that if he was in a locked
room with his apostles, he could not at the same time be with us here at St.
Timothy’s. In ascending into the dimension of heaven, Jesus gains the ability
to be with us always and everywhere to the very end of the age. He gains the ability to work simultaneously
through Mother Theresa in Calcutta, and Deitrich Bonhoeffer in Germany. He has
the ability to be simultaneously present in our Eucharistic meal, and also at
the numerous other meals of Holy Communion throughout this city and throughout
the world. And in a thousands upon thousands of other ways he is working to
transform us and our world. That immanent presence and power of Jesus with us
after his ascension is what we call the Holy Spirit.
An analogy is hard to come by, but
we’ll try this. I speak and my voice is limited by my volume, other competing
sounds, the acoustics of the building, etc. However, if I use my cell phone, it
can change my voice into an invisible reality that can then be heard and
received all over the world (depending on the number I call). But for that to
happen my voice has to be transformed into radio waves that we can neither hear
nor see without having another cell phone to receive the signal. My voice has
to ascend into a different way of being before my wife can then receive my call
across the city telling her that I love her. Jesus had to ascend to be able to
be with us. Though, it is a different way of being. This was the gift of the Holy Spirit they
were to wait for in Jerusalem.
The pouring out of the Holy Spirit on
the disciples is the flipside of the Ascension, and it is only possible because
of the Ascension. The Holy Spirit present with the disciples is Jesus’ presence
with the disciples. When this gift comes they receive power. This power will
enable them to live and teach what he taught. They will act and speak in
Jerusalem, but they won’t be limited by the geography or politics of the nation
of Israel. Eventually this teaching will
spread to the ends of the earth by the Holy Spirit working through disciples-
generation after generation. This is a mission we have inherited. The Holy
Spirit working through Christians has brought us this message, and is now
empowering us to deliver it into the world, just as the Holy Spirit has done
for 2000 years.
The Book of Acts is sometimes called
the “Acts of the Apostles”, but that can be a little misleading. Others have
offered to call it the “Acts of the Holy Spirit”, this can be equally
misleading. The preacher John Stott suggests the lengthy title “The Continuing
Words and Deeds of Jesus by his Spirit through his Apostles”. It is a bit
wordy, but it is accurate. I think it would be helpful for us to think of
ourselves this way as the church. The church is continuously speaking the words
and deeds of Jesus empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus entered as a human being into Heaven,
but he has not left us. His presence is different, but he has not left us. The
Ascension is about him getting closer to us, not further away. Because of his
ascension He hears every quiver of pain in our heart. And he stands as a fellow
human being holding our pain and sorrow before God’s open heart. He also pours
out on us healing and power through His Holy Spirit to do his work here.
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