Does Christ’s Ascension touch me?

21st May 2023

[Acts 1:1-11, Matthew 28:16-20]

The ending of Jesus life is described differently by the gospel writers Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. But they all say that on Easter morning, women found his tomb empty. If those writers were “making it up”, to glorify their dead leader and boost their new community, they would have hardly chosen illiterate women as their main witnesses. Women’s evidence could not even be accepted in court. The stories of Easter morning differ in detail, but contain a convincing core of truth.

The stories of Jesus’ departure differ even more widely. Luke says it happened just outside Jerusalem, forty days after the resurrection. Matthew puts the event 120 kilometres away, in Galilee, and seemingly much sooner. John doesn’t describe Jesus’ ascension at all, but where Luke says the disciples received God’s Holy Spirit fifty days later, at Pentecost, John says that Jesus breathed his Spirit into them on Easter night!

These conflicting descriptions of the Ascension tell us a lot about gospel stories. When the gospels are describing events beyond the physical, they do not give details that are “literally true”. That would be impossible. No one saw Jesus’ resurrection, nor his ascension. These were transcendent events. They happened in some other dimension, on the border of our time-and-space world. Jesus did not “go up” like a moon rocket, to some place called heaven. He, God-become-human, lived, suffered a terrible death and then passed through to an unknown dimension, of which we know little. But he, the Risen One, is still with us, more intimately than before.

St Augustine put it well when he said that the risen Christ is still on earth among us, and we are already in heaven with him. To the degree that we allow and invite it, God’s infinite self resides in us, changing and empowering our lives.

The most important part of the ascension stories in Luke and Matthew may be the instructions given to the disciples. In Luke’s account, angels rebuke the onlookers: “Why are you standing there, looking into the sky?” For us in 2023, this suggests that if we want to follow the risen Christ, God present in us, we should not look up at the sky, hoping for heaven, in the future. Jesus did not go there. We need to look around us, at the beautiful planet we have been given to live in. We are commissioned to bring about the Realm of God, the Reign of Love, here. Instead, collectively, we are destroying the earth. We are spreading plastics and poisons which are destroying species. More than half of the insects on which our crops and flowers rely, have now gone. By burning fossil fuels we are warming the planet and melting the ice-caps and glaciers. Hundreds of millions of people depend on rivers that are shrinking. Any or all of these may be nearing an irreversible tipping point. We must cut through the constant lies of those who deny this is happening.

In Matthew’s story of the ascension, Jesus told his followers: “Go and make disciples of all nations”. Did he mean to cajole or force them to become Christians? For what reason? Or did he mean to teach them how to love?

In our society, we have much to learn about that. This week, when First Nations commentator Stan Grant dared to remind us that the British crown was responsible for invading his country and destroying his people, many people savagely attacked him. In the same week, police officers tasered ninety-five year old Clare Nowland in her nursing home, knowing no better way than near-lethal violence to control fragile people. Nothing to do with me? Or do we have work to do? Do we use Christ’s presence within us to speak, act and pray about these local events, and others like them? Isn’t it our task to deepen the level of love in our society; to bring about the victory of love and forgiveness, the Reign of the Holy One?

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