‘Jesus lifted up his hands and while he blessed his disciples he parted from them. Allelulia’. (Luke 24, verse 50. Also ASB Alternative Service Book, introductory service).
As we celebrate the mysterious event we call the Ascension we emphasize the fact that our Christianity, our faith, is so much more than purely a philosophy or a mere system for the conduct of life. It is a Christian faith, a belief that goes beyond philosophy; our lives are not just directed by human logic and observation. We have a religion based on the revelation (or reveal – ation) of God Himself.
If we were to try and rationalize our faith and bring it within the terms of our human comprehension alone, then we could begin to destroy it. Over the years many have tried to explain away the miraculous, the inexplicable. The only explanation of course is faith; faith in God and his son Jesus, who came to demonstrate the way.
So in our gospel story of the ascension we see Christ rising up in full sight of his apostles until he was hid from them in clouds; something that is outside of our own experience and that cannot be explained away in terms of our limited human experience.
In Christ’s day even the wisest people believed that the earth was flat and that heaven was a place above the sky, so some scholars will claim that Jesus chose this way to depart from his friends to fit in with their world view. Other scholars have thought that the disciples were put into some kind of trance, or even that St. Luke is putting down what he saw in a vivid dream or vision. But the ascension can only be understood through and with faith, in terms of the supernatural, a mystery, a miracle, a God incident; something above and beyond human nature and understanding.
Today we know we need to keep faith and it is that faith that is at the heart of our Christianity. ‘We believe’, we say those words each time we repeat the Creed, we believe, we believe Jesus was the son of God and that he demonstrated God’s love in word and deed even when that deed was beyond normal human understanding. Christ is with us, he is not merely an echo of his teaching and parables nor is he the shadow of a past presence, now gone away. He is with us as truly as he was with the widow and her son at Nain, with the lepers, with the five thousand who were fed, with the penitent thief dying on the cross beside him. He is with us for the same reason, to heal in mind, soul and body; to forgive us our sins, to feed us when we are hungry and to be with us in the hours of darkness.
From heaven Jesus continually intercedes for us while remaining with us on earth. The ascension is a guarantee that Christ at the end of his life did not lay aside his humanity but shared with us our humanity so that we might share his divine nature.
He is high and lifted up and his train fills the temple. He touches earth so we too might reach for heaven. For me, I find the ascension somewhat comforting; it is a promise fulfilled but it also shows me that there is a place, a better place to which we too may be lifted up and that by following Jesus we can follow him all the way to heaven and dwell with him ever after in eternity. The ascension is faith, is hope, is everlasting life.
Jan Walker (Reader)