May 17: “He Ascended Into Heaven” - Exploring the Ascension of Jesus

Sermon for the 7th Sunday of Easter

Preached at Trinity-Grace United Church, Vancouver BC

by the Rev. Sandra Nixon

Welcome to the 7th Sunday after Easter. Why are we counting “Sundays after Easter, you might ask? Because in the yearly rhythm of the church, Easter isn’t just a single celebration day — it’s a whole season. 

In the tradition of the church, Eastertide lasts forty days, echoing other significant “forty” periods in scripture: the forty days of the flood, Israel’s forty years in the wilderness, Jesus’ forty days in the desert.

In the Bible, forty often signals a time of transition, transformation, and preparation.

And so throughout these weeks of Easter, we’ve been following the stories of the risen Christ appearing to his followers — preparing them for what comes next.

+

In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene becomes the first witness to the risen Christ. She’s in the garden outside the tomb and she’s crying. She and the other women had gone to the tomb and had found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty.  Then she sees a man and after he calls her by name, she realizes it’s Jesus. And her grief transforms into joy. 

The Sunday after Easter we heard Luke’s story of the Road to Emmaus: two grieving disciples walking away from Jerusalem, trying to make sense of everything that had happened.  A stranger joins them on the road, listens to them, opens the scriptures to them — and only later, in the breaking of bread, do they recognize that it is Jesus himself.

 Once again, grief and bewilderment turn to elation and hope.

Then the two disciples return to Jerusalem to tell the others that they have seen Jesus, risen, and it’s when they are all gathered together that Jesus then suddenly appears among them. And as they see and hear and touch him, watch him eat some fish - you see their grief and disbelief gradually turn to joy.

+

In John’s gospel, Jesus appears to the disciples behind locked doors, breathes peace upon them, and later appears again for Thomas, who struggles to believe until he sees and touches Jesus for himself. Later still, Jesus appears by the lakeshore, cooking breakfast for the disciples and gently restoring Peter after his earlier denial of Jesus after his arrest.

Then there’s this whole farewell discourse that spans several chapters as Jesus tries to teach the disciples what they are to do and be in the world once he is gone. And a lot of that has to do with love - he talks about abiding in his love, and having love for each other, and he assures them they are loved.

That section in particular is full of things you tell people when you know you have to say goodbye, and you want to reassure them that everything is going to be ok. It’s why it’s called the “farewell discourse” - because this is the thing: in order for his followers to receive the spirit, Jesus has to leave them. 

+

Back to Luke’s story: Right after Jesus appears to the group and eats the fish they offer him, Luke tells us, then Jesus “opens their minds to understand the scriptures” (v.45) about how “the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations…”

That’s the first part of the reading we heard today. It takes place right after the Road to Emmaus encounter - later that same day. And then Jesus tells them: "And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (v.49)

This is the promise of the Holy Spirit. 

(Earlier in Luke’s gospel, during the Last Supper, Jesus tells the disciples that after his suffering they will be “clothed with power from on high” — another early hint of the coming Spirit.)

Then Jesus leads the disciples out to Bethany, a small village just east of Jerusalem, on the far side of the Mount of Olives.

He holds up his hands in blessing and, Luke says, as he’s doing that he also starts kind of backing away from them (the text says “he withdrew from them” - while still blessing them) and then, just like that, he’s “carried up to heaven”.

There are no details given, so we have to draw our own mental image.

And here’s the thing: There’s no time for Jesus’ followers to grieve or anticipate losing him again, since, according to Luke, this all happens - Jesus reappearing and then leaving again/being taken up into heaven - all in the space of an evening.

+

So… But there is a special day just before Pentecost - not a special Sunday. It’s called the Day of Ascension. It doesn’t always get a lot of attention. Ascension Day is celebrated forty days after Easter, which means it almost always falls on a Thursday rather than a Sunday.

+

But as we trace the significant events in the story of Jesus and the life of the early believers/church, it seems odd that we might end up skipping over this event of the risen Jesus now leaving his disciples and going up to be with God in heaven. 

And yes, I say “up’ for a reason, because in the pre-modern cosmology of the early church, at least in the Greco-Roman influenced world - heaven was in fact “up”. There was first of all, a “dome”  which separated Earth from heaven, and separated the waters and kept the waters from crashing in and bringing chaos back to the world. And then there was God - where God - or the gods - resided - out and “up there” beyond the dome. 

We see examples of this understanding throughout scripture, beginning with the first creation story in the Book of Genesis.

+

So - in Luke’s gospel, Jesus’ resurrection and ascension happen on the same day. And then Jesus’ followers wait, as instructed, in Jerusalem, for the holy spirit to come to them.

John’s gospel handles the ascension differently. Rather than describing a dramatic departure into heaven, John presents resurrection, glorification, and return to the Father as part of one continuous movement. Jesus speaks repeatedly about “going to the Father,” and Mary Magdalene is told, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”

If you’re wondering about Matthew and Mark - Matthew’s gospel, interestingly, contains no explicit ascension scene at all. Instead, the risen Christ commissions the disciples on a mountain and promises, “I am with you always.”

And the original ending of Mark’s gospel likely ended abruptly at the empty tomb, though later manuscripts add a brief ascension reference.

But there is one more version of this story - it’s in the Book of Acts - the Acts of the Apostles - which is also thought to have been written by Luke.  

In Acts, we’re told that Jesus is with the disciples for forty days before “he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” (1:9). 

Which is weird, that if Luke wrote both his gospel and what’s now know as the Book of Acts,  why he would offer two different timelines for Jesus’ ascension. 

I am going to suggest we not worry about it too much since the ascension reference in Luke’s gospel does come with a little note that says: “Other ancient authorities lack and was carried up into heaven”. Which is literally the entire mention of the ascension in Luke.

And if it was a later addition, then the original text from Luke simply said “He was blessing them, then withdrew from them. Then they returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” And there’s no discrepancy. 

So the bottom line is that Jesus’ ascension is a thing - a significant thing.  it’s mentioned in at least two gospel accounts and in the Book of Acts, and it’s a precursor to the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit.

+

The early church obviously gave the ascension weight, since it is mentioned in both of the early historic creeds, stilled used to this day by the Roman Catholic church and most western reformed and protestant denominations, including the UCC. 

Both The Apostles Creed (2nd-8th c) and the Nicene Creed (4th c) contain the same line: 

“He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”

Interestingly, when we get to the United Church’s New Creed from 1968, the ascension disappears entirely.

We are called to be the Church:
    to celebrate God’s presence,
    to live with respect in Creation,
    to love and serve others,
    to seek justice and resist evil,
    to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,
       our judge and our hope.

-A New Creed, United Church of Canda (1968)

Or how about the Song of Faith?

Here’s an excerpt from the christology section…

The Risen Christ lives today,

present to us and the source of our hope.

In response to who Jesus was

and to all he did and taught,

to his life, death, and resurrection,

and to his continuing presence with us through the Spirit,

we celebrate him as

the Word made flesh…

We sing of a life beyond life..

a new heaven and a new earth,

the end of sorrow, pain, and tears,

Christ’s return and life with God,

the making new of all things.

You’ve got resurrection, you’ve got incarnation, you’ve even got the return of Christ in there - but again, nothing about the ascension!

+

Here’s something else: 

In the stories of the superheroes of Greek mythology (which the New Testament authors would have been well aware of), always they ascended into heaven to be deified. 

So when the gospel writers speak of Jesus ascending, they are speaking within that worldview.

Which raises an important question for us post-moderns:

What, beyond the ancient worldview, are these stories trying to convey?

+

There are some contemporary biblical scholars who have brought their theological imagination to bear on the idea of the ascension in intriguing ways.

For example, Marcus Borg wrote a whole essay on Jesus’ ascension and in it he argues that modern people don’t need to read the Ascension literally as Jesus physically travelling upward into a three-tiered universe. 

Instead, he says, we can understand the Ascension as symbolic and theological language expressing the spiritual reality that Jesus is now fully “with God” and at the same time, no longer confined by time and space, he has become what Matthew Fox and others describe as “the cosmic Christ”- not departed from the world but rather present in a transformed, “mystically present” way within the world - a present, living reality diffused through Spirit, relationship, and community.

Most of the Greek superheroes ascended to the Gods due to their strength. And Roman emperors are often thought to be Gods by virtue of their dominance - their conquests in battle.  So in a sense, proclaiming Jesus as ascended into heaven also subverts this.

It’s pretty dramatic to say that an itinerant preacher with no status, who preached love and non-violence and was put to death by the state as a criminal, ascended to heaven. Is the son of God. Reigns with God.

John Dominic Crossan - another scholar suggests that “Jesus’ ascension isn’t about evacuation from earth”. It is about God’s vindication of Jesus’ way of justice and communal transformation.

So - could there be room for a mreo explicit reference to the ascension in our faith statements?

Because these stories of Jesus “ascending” - when we look at them in their context, through the worldview and experiences of the writers - contain a piece of good news that shouldn’t be forgotten:

The way of Jesus is the way of God. 

The power revealed in Jesus is the power of God.

And the presence of Jesus - the presence of enduring, faithful self-giving, life renewing and transforming love - did not vanish from the world - it changed form, no longer confined to one body or one place or one moment in history.

Rather, Christ is now present to us through Spirit, community, and the ongoing work of love and justice in the world.

Thanks be to God for this very good news.

Amen.