Sermons
20th May 2007 - Ascension
A friend of mine at college had a poster on her wall which showed one person urgently whispering to a friend whilst pointing over her shoulder, saying, ‘Look busy, Jesus is coming!’. The poster betrays a significant misunderstanding of how Jesus’ presence with the disciples, and with us here this morning, is described in the Bible. But it is an entirely understandable confusion, and one in which we might think the disciples shared between the time of Jesus’ death on the cross, through the unsettling resurrection appearances to the day we commemorate today, and on to the great day of awakening, the birth day of the Church, at Pentecost. What an extraordinary journey the disciples had been on! seeing the end of all their hopes in the shameful death of their leader on the cross, and then disbelieving his resurrection, Mary Magdalene mistaking him for the gardener, Thomas doubting, Peter not understanding his charge to feed the sheep, Jesus preventing Mary from touching him yet encouraging Thomas to place his fingers in the wounds of victory, Jesus appearing magically to the disciples through locked doors, and yet physically sharing their meal. And after all this confusion he is gone again, taken out of their sight in the act of blessing and urging them to wait for the gift of being clothed from on high.
It is Luke who tells us about the ascension, and I would like to look at the two versions he gives us of the event to see if they might throw some light on how the disciples kept themselves from always having to look busy in case Jesus was coming.
Luke wrote two books, the first (the gospel we have in his name) is the story of Jesus, the second (the Acts of the Apostles) the story of the church. His two versions of the ascension come at the very end volume one and the very start of volume two, and they differ in detail. This shouldn’t disturb us. The gospels were not written to prove anything historical about Jesus, but to record the witness of those people who had come into encounter with God in the proclamation of the saving truth of the promised Messiah. Luke’s two versions of the ascension differ in the same way that a black and white picture differs from a colour one; they show the same subject in different lights. If we had the two pictures in front of us we wouldn’t doubt that they showed the same thing, but we might differ on which version showed it most clearly.
In the gospel version Jesus leads his disciples out to Bethany where in the act of blessing he is carried up to heaven. Jesus has been with the disciples for forty days, showing them that he has been raised bodily, no ghost or collective delusion of the disciples, but flesh and bones, eating with them and making them witnesses to the resurrection. In his final encouragement to the disciples, Jesus tells them to wait in Jerusalem for the gift of the spirit, and that he must depart to enable the gift to be given. The accomplishment of this departure, this exodus, was spoken of by Moses and Elijah at the scene of the Transfiguration, and as Moses had to depart to hand on his spirit to Joshua to lead the people to the promised land, and as Elijah had to be lifted up to hand over the double share of his spirit to Elisha, leaving him the prophetic mantle, the clothing from on high, so Jesus must be lifted up for the Father to send the promised gift of the Spirit to clothe the disciples from on high. The disciples return to Jerusalem in joy to receive the command to mission, they await the power of God in the city of God.
Luke’s second book begins where the first leaves off. In his gospel, Luke has shown that the scriptural necessity of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension has been accomplished, in Acts he maps out the programme of the apostolic church. In the gospel Jesus set his face to Jerusalem, in the Acts of the Apostles it is from Jerusalem to the world that the mission of Jesus opens out. Acts leads us out from the gospels towards the epistles, from Jerusalem to Rome, and from the proclamation to the children of Israel to the mission of the restored and reformed people of Israel, the people of God, the Church.
In his second account of the ascension Luke describes the disciples’ confusion; they seek to know the times and seasons, they seek the coming of a political restoration of the kingdom, not yet able to see the enlightened conception of that kingdom which the Spirit will bestow. Jesus redefines their hopes for the kingdom. The kingdom that is coming is not to be bound by territory or characterised by domination but is to be the rule of the ascended Lord in human hearts, the rule of the restored and reformed people of God animated by the Spirit, the apostolic successors upon whom the whole panoply of Christian truth is to descend. The body of truth which is present in utero and will be brought to birth at Pentecost, the body of Christ himself, the Church. But this kingdom is not to be found only by gazing up to heaven. There we can discern the kingdom in its triumphant form, but here we seek it in its militant manifestation, here, in earth. As in the gospel the disciples have been made witnesses to the resurrection, so in the Acts the descent of the spirit will enable the disciples to witness to the exalted Lord.
In both of Luke’s accounts we see the beginnings of a new relationship between Jesus and his disciples. Jesus enters into glory, the glory described by the surreal visions of Daniel. Jesus comes to the Ancient of Days, and is given glory and kingship over all people and nations, and his dominion is everlasting, and his kingship will never be destroyed.
The disciples have witnessed the death, resurrection and ascension of their lord and master, and as witnesses they return to Jerusalem full of hope and expectation.
So, since the Ascension of our Lord and sending of the Spirit on that first Pentecost, we now live in the assurance of the guiding of the Church by the Spirit and hence in the perpetual presence of the author and perfecter of our faith, Jesus. Perhaps my friend’s poster in place of the caption ‘look busy, Jesus is coming’, should have had ‘be calm, Jesus is here’.