The
women were standing there gazing into the empty tomb. While they were perplexed
about this. Suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women
were terrified and bowed there faces to the ground, but the men said to them,
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?’
Luke 24:4
While
he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white
robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee,
why do you stand looking up toward heaven?’
Acts 1:10-11a
Where’s a person
supposed to look? If not down, and not up, then where?
Forty days after the
Resurrection He left them in the flesh. I wonder if they felt what we feel when
a loved one moves away or dies. Alone? Abandoned? Desolate? Or did they recall
His promise, one that would be fulfilled in ten days? On Pentecost He would
return to them pouring out His spirit. What a moment in time, between Ascension
and Pentecost, between loss and promise. He does promise that we will see Him
again, as we will one day see our loved ones. But what should we do in the
meantime?
The forty days between
resurrection and ascension represents a serious number: fullness of time,
plenty of time for the men and women who were his disciples to probe the
mystery. Jewish students study with a Rabbi for forty days, a symbolic number
meaning the amount of time it would take to learn the master’s teaching well
enough to repeat it.
The ascension event is
told in a way that is full of allusions to biblical precedents. Being lifted up
before their eyes into the cloud refers to the cloud of God’s presence, which
went before the people of Israel
leading them through the wilderness to freedom. By being gathered into the
cloud, Jesus is not so much going up as he is going ahead of his apostles into
glory.
On Easter morning the
women were told not to look down into the tomb; now the apostles are told not
to look into the heavens. ‘beginning from Jerusalem
you are witnesses,’ Jesus said. ‘I am sending upon you what my Father promised
… you will be clothed with power from on high.’ The issue is not where Jesus
was, or even where he is, but where he is sending them, clothed with power from
on high. The direction is not down or up but out. They are no longer hearers of
the word, but its heralds.
Do you remember
another mountain, the mount of the transfiguration? ‘While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his
clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they {Peter, James and John} saw two
men, Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus. They appeared in glory and were
speaking of his departure, which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem.’
I have yet to find connections
made about the transfiguration – resurrection ascension event made in any biblical
commentaries, or between Moses and Elijah, the two men at the tomb, and the two
men at Bethany,
but I have a funny feeling that there may be such a connection.
Both Moses and Elijah
know what passing the torch is all about. When Moses died and was buried
(although no one could ever find his grave), Joshua took over. The staff of God,
which opened the way of promise was now in his hands. Before Elijah was taken
to heaven in a chariot of fire, his successor, Elisha, asked for a double share
of his spirit. Clothed with Elijah’s mantle, he continued his mission mightily.
The ascension also
stands as a pathway between the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the apostles. As
we move through the ascension experience, Luke’s point of view changes. The
issues change. We move, as it were from the story of Jesus to the story of the
Church, from then to now. In the ascension story, the staff of Jesus is passed.
‘Clothed with power from on high,; clothed with his mantle, the disciples are
charged with the continuation of his mission.
The gospel of Luke
tells of the disciples’ journey towards faith in Jesus. The ascension, a
crucial moment, reflects something new, which the Acts of the Apostles will
carry forward even to our own time and beyond.
The issue in the
moment is not so much our faith in Jesus as his faith in us. The issue is not
our giving his resurrection a certificate of authenticity, but his decision to
pour out his spirit upon struggling believers. The issue is not for us to prove
that Jesus is alive but for him to prove that we are not dead. The issue is no
longer his identity with God, but our identity with him.
I stumbled upon a text from Hans Urs von Balthasar about the
ascension, which helps bring this together, as he always does, really
penetrates deeply into the mystery. He says, “In the ascension, God’s earthly
image”—that is, Jesus—“is seized and drawn up definitively to the Father, and
the disciples stand, blessed and full of longing, staring after the one who has
disappeared into God. The Transfigured One took their hearts with Him up to God
and they will never again feel altogether at home in this temporal world. For
that part of the world they most loved is now with God. And this is why
everything that they see on earth becomes transparent to heaven. The Holy
Spirit, which the Son sends to them from heaven, kindles in them the fire of
longing in which every image on earth becomes radiant for heaven, for the
everlasting life which springs up from triune love.”
Now the disciples, as it says here, stood staring after the one
who disappeared into God. So the angels had to come down and wake them up and
say, what are you doing, staring up into heaven? He’s going to come back the
same way that He left! And so they went back to the temple and worshipped Him
and praised Him with joy.
That’s what we’re doing here, too. We are gathering at the temple,
worshipping and praising Christ who has ascended to heaven, and at the same
time we hear that voice of the angel that says, He’s going to come back. Every
time we come to church to worship, part of what we’re doing is waiting, looking
for Him to come back, and worshipping Him who has gone and has promised to come
back. We stand both in body and in spirit, longing for the return of the Son of
Man.
Do you feel a shaky at
times as you face your own life with all its ambiguities? The mystery of the
ascension invites us, even in our shakiness, not so much to believe in God, but
to believe that God believes in us. In other words, don’t get stuck looking
down in discouragement, or looking up in bewilderment. Staff in hand, mantle
around your shoulders, look out and step out with grace, longing and courage
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