One of my favorite little snippets of Scripture is Acts 1:10-11. It is the passage about Jesus’ ascension into heaven after his resurrection. The disciples are with him as he rises into the air and disappears behind a cloud. Then it says, “While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven?’”
First, I love the advice that the disciples are not to waste their time gazing into the sky, waiting for him to come back, like dogs staring out the window looking for their master to pull into the driveway. Neither are we supposed to be pouring our mental energy into figuring out exactly when he’s coming back. Jesus has earlier told them that it is not for them “to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” In other words, the specific time-table for the return of Jesus is not their concern.
We have in the last few years witnessed some Christians misled by idiotic proclamations of the exact date. This happens in every generation, which is part of the point. We are to live the the urgency and immediacy of God’s imminent Presence. God and God’s Kingdom is always near. Indeed, Jesus says it is within us! (Luke 17:21 KJV).
Secondly, The implication is that there is work to be done down here! Jesus says to the disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” He’s talking, of course, about the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, 10 days later. The church is given an assignment, which is to be living witnesses to the good news of God’s love for the world revealed in Jesus. That witness has to go out to everyone on the planet. Get to work!
Finally, the question arises as to where exactly Jesus goes. I mean, the more cynical and literal among us might observe that, had Jesus gone into the sky at approximately 3 miles an hour, he would not yet have reached the orbit of the moon. The text says that “a cloud took him out of their sight.” Now, there are places in the New Testament where the church is referred to as “a cloud of witnesses.” I am wondering if Luke is telling us that Jesus’ mortal, visible form kind of gets dissolved into the gathering of his disciples as they go forward in continuing mission in his name. Then they ruminate on this for over a week and then his Presence is activated by the Spirit, and the church explodes in missionary activity.
The angels’ last word to them is to say that Jesus will come in the same way as they saw him go into heaven. Can this mean that the Lord will eventually reappear out of the community, the cloud, and be somehow directly visible once again?
In the meantime, Jesus dwells “in heaven.” This does not of course mean at some coordinates in the atmosphere or outer space, but in a sense everywhere. Maybe Jesus becomes omnipresent in a way akin to how astrophysicists say that anything attaining the speed of light expands to fill the universe. As the Light of the World, perhaps we may think of Jesus ascending into all things. He becomes one with all, and immediate to all, but at the same time not as recognizable and distinct as he was during his earthly, mortal existence. We know him now not as a distinct and separate person, but as the One in whom we trust, whose teachings we obey, validated and inspired by the Holy Spirit.
While present to us in this subtle form, the Lord does make his presence more directly felt in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, in prayer, and in the gathering in other ways. We carry out his mission of compassion, healing, forgiveness, and hope, confident that he does emerge again into a more directly sensory form, in the end, when we will see him face to face.
In other words, the Ascension does not mean that Jesus goes away and is now distant from us, and we carry on in his absence, awaiting his return. I find it more fruitful to imagine the Ascension to describe the way Jesus — God’s love — is invisibly present in all things, with it being the job of those who trust in him to show this presence in their actions. He has not abandoned us; but now he is closer to us than we are to ourselves.
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