June 5, 2011
Ascension Sunday, Year A
Lessons:
Acts 1:1-11
Psalm 47
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53
Today is Ascension Sunday the last Sunday of the Easter season. The Ascension is a difficult topic to understand much less try to share Reflections on it.
The only New Testament writer to record the Ascension is Luke, and he tells the story at the end of his first book, the Gospel of Luke, and at the beginning of his second book, Acts. The Gospel according to Mark refers to the Ascension, IF you accept that the longer version of the ending of Mark is part of his original account and not a later added addition, as most biblical scholars believe. In that later version, Mark as we now have it, simply says: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” [Mark16:19] Luke is just as terse. In his Gospel he writes: “While he was blessing them (the disciples), he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”[Luke 24:51] And in the Book of Acts, he says: “When he had said this, as they (the disciples) were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” [Acts 1:9] John’s Gospel tells of the Risen Jesus speaking of his own ascension when he tells Mary in the garden near the tomb where he had been lain, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” [John 20:17] So in John, it is a reference made by Jesus on Easter, the day of his Resurrection. In Mark – perhaps - and especially in Luke, the eleven remaining disciples witness Jesus’ going – off into the wild blue yonder – up to heaven, carried on a cloud.
These accounts are part of our difficulty. They come from a different culture from almost two millennia ago. At the same time, today we still use the same kind of language that makes this story so difficult for us. So I’ve spent some time trying to deal with these accounts in a way that might make some sense.
Way back when I was in seminary at Wesley Theological, people had problems with the hymn we just sang. We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations was written in 1896 by H. Ernest Nichol, an English evangelist, missionary and hymn writer. But even back in the mid to late 1960s, at Wesley Seminary, it was considered politically incorrect, although we were not yet into using that particular term. Instead we were just told it was “theologically unsound.” One of our professors was among the hundreds of missionaries expelled from Communist China in 1954 because the newly established Communist party did not want their culture to continue to be westernized. He would often speak of what he called “the great sin of westernization” – and he often referred to Ernest Nichol’s hymn as an example of the mindset that corrupted the missionary movement, confusing teaching our western cultural ways with teaching about God’s love for all humankind.
I read an account this past week written by a pastor in South Africa. He wrote of the “theological conundrum” that missionaries faced when they came to Africa – and the difficulty we face as we confront the accounts of the Ascension. To get at the point he was making, I’d like to show you some slides of Christian artwork that depict the Ascension of Jesus. [SHOW SLIDES]
So - what is the one thing that is the same in all these pictures? [COMMENTS]
Jesus is ascending – UP! Heaven is UP! We still speak of it that way. We heard Nikita Khrushchev quote the first Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as saying, “I flew into space, but didn’t see any god there.” We laughed among ourselves at the naiveté of this statement as a proof for the non-existence of God. And yet we still speak of going up to heaven. Or Jesus “ascending” to heaven to sit beside God’s throne. And we wonder why secular people snicker – or maybe outright belly laugh - at our own naiveté.
African Pastor, Peter Woods, says that several indigenous African peoples believe that God, whom they call “The Biggest One” or “The Way Opener” lived in the ground. Thus, caves and holes were considered sacred places that the people adorned with cave paintings and illuminated with fires.
Even to this day, Africans honor this old belief in some of their rituals.
But European and American missionaries taught that God lived in the sky, and that there was a place called hell deep in the earth – a concept that was totally foreign to the Africans. In their preaching, the missionaries turned the psyche of the Africans around from the God of the deep to the God of the sky – and by doing so they created a deep wound in the soul of a people who were already, by their very nature, profoundly theistic.
What the missionaries didn’t have the insight to examine in their time was how they, as Westerners, had come to believe in the God of the sky. Their thinking came from the very primitive belief that the earth was a flat disk standing on pillars in the midst of water. Above the earth was a dome that held back chaos and destruction. On a flat earth, it was easy to point to where God lived. God lived up beyond the dome. In fact, God was even believed to be part of that dome, holding back the chaos that seemed so close in that early world. Or someone of this middle-eastern cosmology mindset, it was easy to understand Jesus’ resurrection and re-assimilation into God as having “ascended” – gone back UP to God. Back beyond the dome. But in 2011, it is not so easy to think or speak in those terms.
Coming with this middle-eastern cosmology to the events of Jesus’ death, resurrection and re-assimilation into God, it was easy to speak of Jesus as having “ascended” back to God. Back beyond the dome.
1 But do we really believe that? Literally believe that?
Recently, grandson Reese ( Second Grade) casually asked me about how we knew the North Pole was up and the South Pole was down. It made no sense to him. How could there be an up or down in space? he wanted to know. He’s just finishing second grade, by the way.
On the front of your bulletin I quoted William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-1944. He wrote: “The Ascension of Christ is his liberation from all restrictions of time and space. It does not represent his removal from earth, but his constant presence everywhere on earth.”2
In agreement with William Temple is Marcus Borg, a contemporary theologian, who wrote: “The Luke-Acts narrative isn’t a ‘beam me up’ story. Rather, it conveys Jesus’ lordship and freedom from space-time limitations.”3
Peter Woods raises an interesting question in his article about African spirituality. He asks, “What if Africans are correct and Jesus came from God who lives in the earth? He would then have descended on this Feast day, back into the earth from which he came. I wonder how that simple change of orientation would have changed our world history? What if the Africans had sent missionaries with this message to Europe and her industrialized siblings instead of the other way around? Would the earth be groaning as she is now? Would we have raped and pillaged the abode of God as we have, all the while believing that God was “up there” blessing our “taming and subduing” of our island home in space?”4
Woods seems to be reflecting the thoughts of eco-theologian, Sallie McFague, who suggests that if we view the earth (indeed, the whole universe) as the Body of God, then we will be live our lives as more ecologically responsible beings. McFague is also know as a metaphorical theologian – and it seems to me that our real “theological conundrum” or problem is how we put into language things that language cannot possibly describe adequately.
That’s why I like what Marcia Morrissey has to say about the Ascension. “Jesus may have ascended, but the mission is down here, where you are and suited to your skills, your gifts and even your limitations. The mission is your responsibility to all around you.”5
I’d like to end these Reflections by sharing a short video with you produced by the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and the United Methodist Women.6 It speaks of our mission as being with one another – the people and situation all around us.
EndNotes
5Morrissey, Marcia, Source unknown. Quoted on Worship-WRCL-List
6 Ministry With, produced by the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and the United Methodist Women. Posted on Facebook by the Rev. Brigid Farrell, District Superintendent, VT District, NEC.
