Ascension Sunday, Year A | Luke 24: 44-53 | Acts 1:1-11
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
May 21, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“…why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” – Acts 1:11a[1]
Of all the strange things recorded about Jesus in the Bible, the Ascension might just top the list. Somehow, impossible healings, transmutation of matter, resurrection, and even monoparental conception feel more plausible than someone just launching themselves “up, up and away” into the sky, never to be seen again—at least not yet. Much of the ancient world’s literature was written to convey information more significant than the story itself. Unfortunately, if Luke did have more complex or mystical intentions, perhaps something obvious to the audience at that time, the details and explanation have been lost. However, despite our lack of connection to the original context, the story remains an important part of what our early Christian forebears were trying to convey.
One helpful way of looking at the Ascension can be by addressing it through the viewpoint of the ancient world’s cosmology. We’ve talked before about how people in Jesus’ time thought about the universe, looking at it in light of three primary realms: the Heavens, home to the gods; the Earth, home to humanity; and the Underworld, home to the dead and beings unknown. Moving from a higher to the next lower realm wasn’t that big of a deal. Gods, having created the Earthly Realm as a buffer between the orderliness of the Heavens and the Chaos of the Underworld, could interact with humans whenever they felt the interest, and all humans eventually entered the Underworld. Heading the opposite direction was where things got tricky. A dead human attempting to leave the Underworld for Earth would unleash chaos, and the same went for a living human attempting to enter the Heavens.
Within this context, the “Christ Event,” as theologians sometimes call the life of Jesus, makes a lot more sense. In order to unite the three realms, the celestial Christ incarnates as fully human, thereby becoming native not only to the Heavens but also to the Earthly Realm. As a genuine human, they eventually enter the Underworld as a full citizen, something the gods either wouldn’t or couldn’t do. Once in the Underworld, this emissary of the Heavens floods it with light and divine order, offering vision and hope to those forever trapped in darkness. The Resurrection then disrupts the barrier dividing the Underworld from the Earthly Realm, freeing those enslaved to Chaos. The Ascension punches a final hole through what had separated the Earth from the Heavens, finally uniting the whole of reality within the Kingdom of God.
Having that in mind might somewhat explain this seemingly odd story, but that isn’t how we understand the Universe anymore, so what might it mean for us today?
One of the first things I can think of is that God communicates with people in a way that they’ll be able to understand. The Ancient World needed to understand that God reigns everywhere, not simply in the Heavens and not to some restricted degree on Earth. The Kingdom of Heaven spreads throughout the whole of reality. For us, then, perhaps we need to understand that God’s Kingdom continues to extend throughout our reality as well. We might not think in terms of the universal distinctions that the Ancient World did, but we still create plenty of walls and barriers within our own understanding of life. Remembering a few weeks ago when we talked about Jesus not simply as the gate but as the Gateway, the opening that actively unites rather than a barrier that passively restricts and controls, perhaps we should tend to the divisions we see within our own lives and society. Where have we restricted the fullness of God’s Reign, acting as if God isn’t in control or feeling like we need to block others from freedom or fellowship?
The second is that now is not an accident. The ancient world wasn’t a mistake. The Christ Event wasn’t a mistake. And we, here and now, are not a mistake. Sometimes we act like the Church Age, so called, is simply a placeholder in God’s plans, just an unfortunate bump of the cosmic pause button while we wait for God to get back to their “real” work and intention. Like the disciples at Jesus’ ascension, we “stand looking up toward heaven,”[2] dreaming of what was and imagining what we hope might be while all this time God has given us specific work to do throughout our world and lives. We “are witnesses to these things.”[3] We are to proclaim the completion of the Way of the Lord and to continue to keep it clear and to smooth out the rough places. We are to tend to the Gateway, keeping it free of obstruction, allowing access to all who would pass through. We are to build and spread and reveal and extol the Reign of the Heavens, carrying God’s Kingdom of love, forgiveness, and unity wherever we may go. We, the Church, are Christ’s “body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”[4] And that body, guided by Christ and empowered through the Holy Spirit, still has plenty of work to do.
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Acts 1:11a
[3] Luke 24:48
[4] Ephesians 1:23