The great ascent

13 May 2010


Great occasions often bring out the best in us. Brides look adorable, their flower girls beatific; those receiving their First Communion could be angels! And so they should. The planning, the expectations, the promises, the anticipation, the build up, are followed by the event, the culmination, the celebration!

The afterglow is sometimes followed by the letdown. While the celebration was all that was expected, once the adrenalin pulls back, it can be hard to maintain the enthusiasm.

Fortunately we are all born with a sense of the ‘big picture’. It’s not all about now. Time is of the essence, seeing things through to the end.

Imagine you are a disciple. It has been 40 days since Jesus rose from the dead. Having taken you to the outskirts of Bethany (Luke 24:46 – 53), he raises his hands and blesses you, and is ‘carried up to heaven’. You have already experienced the shocking terror and deep disappointment of Jesus’ passion and death. You have been surprised and overjoyed by his resurrection, and walked with him in wonder as he spent these past few weeks with you. Now he has gone. According to Luke you are filled with a desire to give praise to God and then make your way back to Jerusalem.

Given that the notions we have about the resurrection are sometimes skewed about exactly what resurrection means, so we can also be challenged by the ascension. The idea of heaven ‘up there’ can be put down to an extraordinarily limited understanding of the cosmos. How does this transition from resurrected body to ascended divinity take place? And most importantly, and very un-theologically, is what really was on the minds of the disciples, could they realistically accept that Jesus would now disappear forever from the their midst, could they have rationalised a meaning to it during and so soon after the event itself?

Certainly ancient holy men were taken up into heaven as a sign of divine approval – but for Jesus writers ancient and modern would claim this ascension as a vindication of Jesus’ triumph over his enemies, for only by ascending (going up) can he take up his seat at this Father’s right hand. For them in this event Jesus becomes eternally present, no longer physically, but surprisingly now forever present in the world. Surely this cannot have been in the mind of those faithful, if occasionally erring, disciples as they gazed into space – no time to ask, ‘Where are you going?” “When you come back?” Jesus ascension is final. That fully human, ‘embodied’ Jesus is no longer present.

But if this is the letdown, we also know that two things are established in scripture – one: that he will send his comforter, the Holy Spirit to guide and nurture us, and two: that he will come again (at the end of time, the parousia) when we will share in his divinity.

The challenge we all face is being able to pick ourselves up and move forward – resilience – in our modern vernacular, just like those first disciples. We must maintain that awareness that helps us keep in touch with future, with our hopes and dreams. The miracle of the ascension is, of course, is that Jesus is right here, right now – but that we can anticipate the true fullness of life in his eternal presence.