Thought for the Week

 

Thursday 21 May – Ascension Day

and

Sunday 24 May – Sunday after Ascension Day

 

 

Collect Ascension Day:

Grant, we pray, almighty God,

that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ

to have ascended into the heavens,

so we in heart and mind may also ascend

and with Him continually dwell;

for He is alive and reigns with You

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 

Readings Ascension Day:

Daniel 7, 9 – 14  or Ephesians 1, 15 – end

 

Psalm 47  

 

Acts 1, 1 – 11

 

Luke 24, 44 – end                          

 

 

Collect Sunday after Ascension Day:

O God the King of glory,

You have exalted your Son Jesus Christ

with great triumph to your Kingdom in heaven;

we beseech You, leave us not comfortless,

but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us

and exalt us to the place where our Saviour Christ is gone before;

for He is alive and reigns with You

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

 

Readings Sunday after Ascension Day:

1 John 5, 9 – 13  or Ezekiel 36, 24 – 28

 

Psalm 1

 

Acts 1, 15 – 17 & 21 – end

 

John 17, 6 – 19

 

There is a degree of fuzziness about the details of the Ascension.  Most scholars agree that Mark’s Gospel, the earliest, stops at Chapter 16, verse 8, and that the ten verses after that are a later addition.  If that is the case, then Mark makes no mention of the Ascension.  If we do accept the longer ending, then Jesus seems to ascend into Heaven from the room in Jerusalem where the eleven had been eating. 

 

Likewise, Matthew does not mention the Ascension, and sets Jesus’ farewell to the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee.  The writer of the fourth Gospel also mentions no Ascension, but he places the farewell on the shore of Lake Tiberias, also called the Sea of Galilee, and lists either seven or eight disciples as present, not eleven. 

 

Luke on the other hand, gives us two accounts of the Ascension, one at the end of his Gospel and the other at the beginning of Acts. In the Gospel, Jesus leads the eleven and the others who were with them to Bethany, some 2 miles from Jerusalem, on the slopes of the Mount of Olives.  It is there that the Ascension takes place.  In Acts, Luke tells us that the Ascension happens “a Sabbath day’s walk from Jerusalem,” which is about ¾ of a mile.  Again, he records Jesus telling the disciples to remain in Jerusalem, and it is unclear how they came to have left the city.  In Acts, Luke suggests that only the eleven were present.  Only in Acts does Luke mention the two angels, perhaps the same two whom he mentions at the resurrection in his Gospel.      

 

So, we have five possible places:  the room in Jerusalem, a mountain in Galilee, Bethany, the slopes of the Mount of Olives, and within a Sabbath day’s walk of Jerusalem and on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.  We have eleven or seven disciples present, and two angels or no angels.

 

Now it should not be surprising that there is a level of confusion.  Human memory is notoriously unreliable, and the disciples had been through a really difficult and shocking time.  Besides, all of these places and people, and even the angels, play an important part in the story of what happened after the Resurrection.  Scientists tell us that sometimes light behaves like a particle, and sometimes like a wave.  It cannot be both, but you cannot understand light unless you understand it to be a particle, and a wave.  Each of the ways in which the Ascension is recorded contributes something to our understanding of what is going on, and we must study all of them to enter into the Mystery of it more deeply.  As so often with biblical accounts, there is truth in all of them. 

 

Despite the richness of the records of it, perhaps subconsciously, we tend to misunderstand the nature of the incarnation.  It is easy for us to enter into the idea of God’s Son born of Mary, lying in a manger, because there was no room for the family at the inn, during a time of dislocation imposed by the foreign occupation forces.  We can rejoice with the angels, wonder with the shepherds and offer gifts with the Kings.  We can keep, in the imagination of our hearts, images of Jesus the teacher, healer and miracle working, caring for the ordinary people of Galilee.  We can understand the parables that Jesus told, and the parables He lived out, like the foot-washing, and the last supper.  We can empathise with the betrayal, the sham trial, and the brutal execution of our Lord and Saviour.  These are all parts of being human; all these things find ready echoes in our own human experience, and have done for the last two thousand years.

 

Of course we believe in God too.  We share with Jews, Muslims and Ba’hai, belief in the one God.  We can marvel at, and be lifted up by, the language of the beginning of the fourth Gospel, “The Word made flesh”.  We may think of God more as the still small voice of Elijah’s vision, or perhaps more as first cause or ultimate reality, rather than the avuncular figure walking and chatting with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the evening, or the three people having lunch with Father Abraham under the oaks of Mamre, with Sara laughing in the kitchen behind, but we still know, love and trust God the Father.

 

But the problem for us is remembering who it is who is incarnate.  The Mystery of the Ascension is one of those places where both these strands, the human and the divine, come together.  Others are the Baptism of Jesus and the Transfiguration, but today, we are concentrating on the Ascension.

 

The question “Who is this?” is asked several times in the Gospels.  Right at the start of Jesus’ public ministry, He throws out a demon in Capernaum, and the people ask, “Who is this that even the evil spirits obey Him?”  A little later, Jesus stills the storm, and the disciples ask, “Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him?”  Finally, at his trial, Caiaphas, the high Priest, (or in the fourth Gospel version, Annas, the High Priest’s father-in-law) asks Him, “Are you the Messiah?”.  Pontius Pilate asks the same thing, but from a secular point of view; “Are you the King of the Jews?” and “Where do you come from?” 

 

Perhaps we remember that Jesus is divine in a theoretical sort of way, but the Ascension brings the reality of his divinity into sharp focus for us.  The very same Jesus, whom the disciples knew personally and loved and followed, is the one who ascends into heaven before their very eyes.  

 

From the dawn of human history, in the Bible, as in human experience generally, people are only given tiny glimpses of God, tiny insights into his nature.  It’s not that God is stingy, but that people can’t take too much reality.  We are only frail vessels, and in Him is the whole power of creation, both seen and unseen, so it should not be a surprise that we cannot bear very much of his divine and ultimate reality.  

 

Every time that such a tiny glimpse is given, it is always followed immediately by a call to action or service.  Think of Father Abraham, given the insight that God is one, and immediately called to journey on from Haran, where his father, a Chaldean, had settled, to a land that God would show him.  Or, think of Moses, encountering God at the burning bush, and being given the commission to lead God’s people out of slavery in Egypt, to freedom in the Promised Land.  Here at the Ascension, we find the same thing happening.  The disciples are given a wonderful insight into the nature of Jesus, Who He really is, and straight away, there are two rather impatient angels telling them that Jesus will come back in the same way that he has gone.  Or in effect to go and get on with it!

 

So, they hurry back to Jerusalem, where Jesus had told them earlier in the days of his post-resurrection appearances to stay until they had been baptised in the Holy Spirit.  And that is what happened at Pentecost. 

 

Till then, the Angels’ message to the disciples is not a bad message for us.  You have spent the liturgical year so far since Advent Sunday, hearing the story of the life of Jesus.  He has gone up into heaven, so now it’s over to you.  Go and love people, as He has loved you, so that his Kingdom will come in your lives, and in those around you.

 

Father Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude

 

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