Ascension Sunday, Year B | Luke 24:44-53; Acts 1:1-11
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
May 12, 2024
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” – Acts 1:11[1]
The Ascension is one of those stories from the Bible that isn’t simply strange but genuinely does not make any sense today. We hear it as Jesus pulling a Superman and flying up into the sky, suggesting not only that heaven is found in some sort of alien world or alternate dimension but that Jesus is somehow inherently different from us—more demigod than actual human. The incident was clearly surprising for the disciples—this, at very end of his Gospel, is the first instance where Luke states they actually worship Jesus—but shock value aside, it probably made a lot more sense to them than it does to us.
If we want to try to understand the Ascension, we need to review how the ancient world understood the universe to function. We’ve talked before about the concept of the three primary realms, but to really grasp the significance of what Jesus has done, we need to step back even further than that.
For most Ancient Near Eastern cultures, “in the beginning” was primordial Chaos—the preexisting and basic state of reality expressed through disorder and confusion. At some point the gods appeared and fought back Chaos and its champions—the ancient monsters of legend—carving out a space of Order and peace that eventually became known as the Celestial Realm[2] and leaving what remained of Chaos to become the Underworld. But there was always trouble at the edge of those two realms, with continuing fighting and disruption as Chaos attempted to undo Order and return the cosmos to its natural state.
To deal with those ongoing annoyances, the gods carved out the Earthly Realm, a third space that would stand between the Celestial and the Underworld. Earth—not as a planet but as a realm, a layer of reality—became a sort of borderland, a place the gods still ruled but that continued to experience both incursions and influences of Chaos. To maintain the Earthly Realm, the gods created people to be agents of Order, keeping Chaos at bay so the gods could focus on more interesting things. But people, being native to or even technically part of this border Realm, also contain aspects of Chaos. When people turned to the gods, Order would hold sway, and goodness, peace, and joy ruled the land. When they turned away, Chaos would begin to overwhelm their hearts, spreading confusion and disarray that expressed itself in anarchy or cruel and evil behaviors.
Movement between the realms was limited. Gods would occasionally come to the Earthly Realm, but they generally used messengers to avoid the risk of dirtying themselves or somehow succumbing to the influences of Chaos.[3] While alive, the power of the gods kept humans safely within the Earthly Realm, but since we all contain seeds of Chaos, at death we return to our basic nature and become residents of the Underworld.[4] Any human trying to enter the Celestial Realm or return from the Underworld caused major disruptions to the system, which is why myths of success—either way—are rare no matter where in the world you come from. The Underworld, as the remnant of primordial Chaos, swallows everything that comes to it, so unless they had specific duties in that realm, like overseeing dead humans, Divinities would rarely, if ever, tread there.
Ancient Hebrew tradition, however, introduced a twist to this widely accepted view of the universe. While Chaos—physically expressed as the sea or “the deep”—appeared to remain the initial state of reality, their stories told of no great battle that created the Celestial or Earthly Realms. The Divine was always and fully in control, needing only to speak for Order to take form.
On the first day, God spoke the difference between light and darkness, establishing two parts of a whole—essentially a state or scale based in polarity—as the basis of reality. On the second day, God spoke the sky into being, establishing the Celestial Realm. On the third day, God spoke the Earthly Realm into being, not by causing land to fall into the sea or to erupt from somewhere beneath the ocean but by collecting the waters to reveal the Order underlying Chaos.
The next three days of Creation, God populates the Realms in order of creation: the stars, sun, planets, and other similar beings—not things[5]—dwell amidst the Celestial, demonstrating perfect order and harmony. The fish and sea monsters and sky-dwelling birds appear next—none of them had preexisted as a champion of Chaos. And on the sixth day God populates the Earthly Realm with animal life and, ultimately, human beings. On the seventh day the Divine rests, celebrating and loving and caring for all that they had created—each of the three Realms and all of the weird and magnificent beings within those Realms.
However, people eventually forgot that God was ruler and guardian of all the Realms and began telling stories about how the Underworld was the natural state of things, humans were more or less tools forced to tend a boundary Realm, and the Divine remained aloof, only interfering with the Earthly Realm as necessary to maintain that boundary and secure its own purity.
That’s part of why Jesus, which theologians sometimes called “the Christ event,” was such a big deal. Jesus did what absolutely could not happen: a Divinity is born into the Earthly Realm, not as a demigod but as a true human who somehow never falls to the Chaos entwined with human hearts; that same being enters the Underworld in the manner of all humans—and in the process floods the remnants of Chaos with light, revealing the Divine order and reign even within Death. He then rips off Hell’s gates from the inside, opening the path back to the Earthly Realm and offering all who wish to follow the opportunity of a completely different sort of Life. The Ascension, then, where this same native son returns to the Celestial Realm, isn’t simply a postlude or way to tidy up why people stopped seeing Jesus. It stands as the pinnacle of this entire achievement, the opening of the Divine to the human and final evidence that the Reign of the Heavens is more than a Celestial phenomenon. It’s the reality and hope throughout all Realms!
To the disciples, the Ascension would have been an essential sign, the final logical and necessary step in establishing a loop which affirmed that God is truly the Ruler, Creator, and Lover of all! Jesus’ return to the Celestial Realm proved the fullness of God’s power and love and allowed the Earthly, the Dead, and the Divine intimate and unfettered access to one another. It completely reforged human understanding and perception of Reality. Chaos is neither our natural state nor attempting to devour us all—there’s no need to give up or give in and simply let it swallow you; Divine Order is the basis of all existence. There’s no need to fear Death or the Underworld. The Earth truly is filled—from top to bottom—with the Glory of the Lord! And instead of barring us from the wonders of the Celestial Realm because of our failings (aka: “sin”), God welcomes us—all of us—to participate in and enjoy Divinity’s benefits in Life and Death and whatever lies beyond!
The Ascension shows us God communicating with the disciples in accordance with their own experience and understanding of the world. For us in the modern world, with a deeply different conception of reality, God still speaks, but in different ways that, if we were willing to take the time to consider, we might better comprehend.
I’ll admit I have more questions than answers at this point, but I can at least share those with you. So, what exactly might Ascension look like for us today? Where do we see God undoing seemingly permanent divisions and shattering the barriers we use to divide ourselves from one another? How do we experience that Celestial joy, love, and mercy in our own lives? And how can we, children of God and native citizens not simply of Earth but of the full depths of Reality, express that hope to those around us? And is it possible that we the Church—the body of Christ—might also yet ascend?
“[People of Las Cruces,] why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Similar to what we think of as “Heaven” but not identical with the modern conception.
[3] Messengers similar to but, again, not quite the same as what we call “angels.” We define angels as morally “good.” Divine messengers appeared to be more neutral but, as “divine,” actually stood outside of human concepts or categorizations of “good” or “evil.”
[4] It’s also important to note that the Underworld was also beyond moral categorization and was neither “good” nor “bad.” It simply was, and it was where all people naturally went.
[5] Objects are acted upon. The Divine populace each had personality, will, and intelligent function.