There’s a strange painting of the Ascension in the
Acts…Chapter 1…Verse 11. That’s where I want to concentrate
today as we remember Christ’s ascension. Verse 11 reads: “Why do
you stand looking up toward heaven?” It’s a good question but
isn’t that what we come to church to do?
Some churches don’t pause to remember the Ascension of Christ. Maybe
we’re in a rush to get to Pentecost. Or maybe we don’t remember the
Ascension because we sense what the German biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann
half a century ago had the audacity to say out loud: “This story is
clearly a myth, y’all!” (Well, he said it in German, of course,
which made it sound much more intelligent.) But this story obviously comes from
a pre-scientific time when heaven was up and hell was down because everyone
thought the earth was flat as a plate and the center of the universe. So when it
was time for Jesus to go to heaven, he went up into a cloud, because heaven and
God and the angels were all up there. It made perfect sense in the first
century, but not in the space age.
That’s a problem, Bultmann said, because we live in a scientific time. He
said we can’t expect intelligent people to live in two worlds … one
that depends on a modern scientific understanding of how things work … and
the other that speaks of heaven as up and hell as down, of rain falling when
“the windows of heaven” are opened or illnesses that are caused by
demons. We have to “de-mythologize” the Bible, Bultmann said, to
make it intelligible to modern people who understand the world in a very
different way.
Now, of course, Bultmann had his critics. There were those Luddites – we
still have them - those who worship the Bible and if the Bible and science
disagree believe we must follow the Bible! Of course, they don’t actually
practice what they preach, because while they may get angry about evolution
being taught in schools, they would never go to a mechanic who told that them
the knocking in their engine was a demon or to a doctor who told them their
child was sick because she had sinned.
And then there were other critics who kind of proved Bultmann’s point by
trying to have it both ways. They said, “Well, Jesus knew the people of
that day thought heaven was up so he went up to go along with their
expectations, so they would understand he was going to heaven. He literally
went “up” into the sky for their sake. Well maybe, but why didn’t
he just tell them the truth … that the earth isn’t a plate but a
ball … and that heaven is not up beyond the clouds, and that outer space
is a cold, empty void with incredible distances between the earth and stars? Or
didn’t he know?
Our way of understanding the world isn’t necessarily better; it’s
just different. But it is different. Some suggest that Bultmann’s point
was well taken. But, they said, we don’t need to de-mythologize the
Bible; we need to re-mythologize the Bible. That is, we have to translate the
Bible, not only into our own modern languages but into our own modern
understandings of the world. That’s exactly what the church has done with
each new generation, of course: make the Bible make sense for our day.
So how does this story of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven make sense for our
day? Once we let go of the question of what really happened and ask what does
this story really mean, two more important questions arise. If Jesus was raised
from the dead and came back from the tomb, why did he leave again? And, where
did Jesus go? Where is Jesus now?
The first question is not so hard to answer. Why did Jesus leave? When I was a
child, I was a klutz. (Some things you never grow out of!) It took me quite a while to learn to ride a
bicycle. Oh, I had training wheels. I rode on those until all my friends were
riding circles around me and asking, “How long, Mary Anne?” My dad
came to my rescue. First he took off the training wheels. Then for a little
while each day, he ran along beside me and held the back of the bike to steady
me. He kept me from tipping over just like the training wheels did … only
better because he was right there beside me to steady me. But do you know when
I actually learned to ride the bike? When he let go.
That’s also how I learned to make my own decisions. As long as others
were there, doing it all for me, I didn’t need to grow up. But when they
let go … when they made me do it on my own … I grew up. (Mostly.)
Why did Jesus leave? As long as he was physically here, the disciples had no
reason to grow up and do anything on their own. Jesus could do it all for them:
feed the hungry … heal the sick … help the poor … love the
wayward … care for the dying. Now, with Jesus beyond their sight, that
good work fell to his followers to do. He told them as much in those forty days
between the resurrection and the ascension. Their mission, he told them, was to
finish his mission. The gospels and Acts emphasize how he kept telling them
that throughout the forty days just before he disappeared from their sight.
What’s more, as long as Jesus was contained in a single body he was
limited to one small area, for one short time. Now, with the body of Jesus gone
and the Spirit of Jesus entering the bodies of all those who believed in him, he
could be everywhere, all at once, down through all time. Don’t you see?
It was necessary for the body of Christ to disappear so that the church might
become the body of Christ … his hands and heart … his mouth and
feet … his life and love … finishing his work in the world.
That also answers the second question: where did Jesus go? He is here. He is
you. He is me. He is us, the church. That’s what the angels told the
disciples when they were staring slack jawed at Jesus’ wiggling toes
disappearing into the cloud.
We have work to do. We have a commission to fulfill. From now on, we are the
body of Christ … we must proclaim the good news … we must drive out
the demons that hold people in their addicting clutches … we must embrace
all people with the merciful love of God. We ourselves now stand as an answer
to the question, just where did Jesus go?
If Christ is risen … if Jesus is alive …
if he loves all people … it will be because we rise … because we
are alive … because we love all people in his name. If our faith is real
it will be because we make it real because … the Christ in us is real
enough for us to actually live by the words we proclaim … like
“love your enemies” or “forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who have trespassed against us” or “not my will but
thine be done.” If the world is going to meet Jesus at all now, they will
have to meet Jesus in us.
Whatever actually happened on that hillside years ago, it must have been
frightening to the disciples, who surely felt abandoned again and left with the
awesome responsibility to do what only Jesus could do. After the horror of the
cross and the shock of the resurrection, they must have felt so empty and alone
and helpless and inept to be without him again. How could they keep going? No
wonder they were paralyzed, frozen in place, staring up at the sky wondering
what to do next. No wonder they needed a couple of angels to kick them in
the… well, to tap them on the shoulder and say, “Don’t just
stand there! Get to work, like he told you!” Maybe that’s what
we’re supposed to do even though Jesus isn’t physically with us and
we feel so inept and alone and frightened at times. We want to come to church
and stand around and hope God will do everything for us. We want to stand still
and look up at the sky in the hopes deliverance will come. But God sends a
messenger to say: “Don’t just stand there! Get busy! Be about the
mission he gave you. Go and tell. Go and care. Go and love. And – you are
not alone.”
The Rev. Barrie Bates tells the story of an Englishman who was taken to a
nursery school by his mother when he was a boy. Like every toddler, he was
anxious about being abandoned. But his mother leaned over, kissed him and said,
“Goodbye, my love. No one is leaving.” Every day she bid him
farewell with these words. “Goodbye my love. No one is leaving.” He
was too young to understand the paradox and he was comforted by her
reassurance, so he soon adjusted to his new surroundings and faced the
frightening unknowns with good courage. He grew up to be a successful adult,
but years later he was faced with the hard task of placing his mother in a
nursing home. She was elderly and frail and suffering with Alzheimer’s
Disease. She hardly recognized him, forgot to eat or take medications,
and could not take care of herself. The day he moved her from her home of many
years to new and frightening surroundings, he remembered another day years
before. He leaned down and kissed his mother and said, “Goodbye, my love;
no one is leaving,” words she recognized even if she could no longer
recognize him. Tears formed in he eyes and she squeezed his hand as she
repeated his reassurance herself: “Goodbye my love, no one is
leaving.”
When Jesus left us, he told us he would send his Spirit. He told us he would go
to prepare a place. He told us to finish his work. He told us he would come
back. At the same time he told us he would be with us to the ends of the earth
… to the end of the age. Goodbye, my love. No one is leaving. He is gone.
He is with us. We can’t just stand here. We’ve got to get busy!
Amen.
May we pray?
On this day when we remember how you left us, be with us, lord. Stay close
and help us to obey your words, to get busy, to do your work, to feed the
hungry, to heal the sick, to care for the dying, to love one another, and to
spread the good nes of your love for all people everywhere you send us. Send us
out today to be witnesses of these things. Then bring us back to celebrate
again, how you have gone ahead to prepare a place for us, how you are with us
in all that we do in your great and gracious name. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa