Readings
Acts
1:1-11
In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote
about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day
when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the
Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering
he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs,
appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about
the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to
leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.
‘This’, he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John
baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit
not many days from now.’
So when they had come together, they
asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the
kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the
times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But
you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and
to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were
watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly
two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee,
why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been
taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw
him go into heaven.’
Luke
24:44-end
Then Jesus said to them, ‘These are my
words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that
everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and
the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to
understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is
written, that 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, beginning from Jerusalem. You
are witnesses of these things. 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.’
Then he led them out as far as Bethany,
and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing
them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they
worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they
were continually in the temple blessing God.
God 'over there' or 'over here'?
My Dad is a
great traditionalist. He understands the need for new forms of
worship such as Messy Church, All-Age non-Eucharistic services and
the like, but they don't help him to worship. He's very happy for
them to be taking place, just so long as he doesn't have to be there!
When we've talked about this we recognise that the real conversation
that we're having here is about the different ways in which we
approach God.
Essentially there are two different
cultures at work. In his, somewhat more traditional model, he would
say that there is greater emphasis on reverence for Almighty God. He
finds that the language of the prayer book is helpful for him
precisely because it is not
the language of everyday. It is a special prayer language, reserved
only for conversing with God. Now
I have no problem with this per
se.
However, as a member of a different generation, I find that an
over-emphasis on reverence
also has a tendency to put a distance between God and me. God
is Almighty, so he's somewhere 'over there', dwelling in a place of
unapproachable light. Yet within that reverence I don't want God
just to be 'over there', I want him to be fully present 'over
here'. I want to know him as a friend and
mentor too; as the One who is at my side, present in all things, all
places and all times. So for me, too much of a concentration on
traditional language reinforces God's distance, not his presence.
It is the difference between those two
positions that Ascension Day challenges us to consider.
The reason for that is that Christ's
ascension poses us with a theological conundrum. Throughout Old
Testament Biblical history we have had a sense of God that is more in
tune with the more traditional model I've just outlined, that God is
somehow 'over there'. He is not quite 'here', he is elsewhere. The
technical word for this is 'transcendent'. What it means is that here is the
creation that God made, but God is outside his creation. God is more
than this creation. God is greater than this. God, somehow, is
elsewhere; 'beyond'. Now for reverence purposes this suits our
traditional language. When we say, 'thee' and 'thou' from a position
of kneeling it is to someone far greater than us who is separate from
us. God is great, and God is somewhere else.
But there is a negative side to this.
It is not just about reverence, it is also about absence, and in
religious terms absence does not make the heart grow fonder.
If God is 'there' and not 'here', then somehow 'here' feels like a
safer place to conduct our business. He can't see what we're getting
up to...
The perceived distance between us and
God allows us to feel more at ease with saying and doing what we like
when we're not at prayer. It also allows us more freedom with our
philosophy of God because if he's 'there' and not 'here', then how
can anyone know any real truth about him?
But then, according to the Christian
tradition, God changed the rules.
The one who was separate, outside,
above and beyond creation said, 'I will empty myself and step into
creation', in the nativity story that we enjoy with all ages at
Christmas. He says, 'To the people of earth I will no longer seem
separate. They will know that I am present.' The technical word for
this is 'immanent'. And so God, who was over 'there',
became instead the God who is over 'here', God-with-us; 'Emmanuel'.
And so, for thirty or so years, Transcendent God, God the Father,
gave us Immanent God, God the Son, and he was 'here' not 'there', a
part of us, not above and beyond us.
But now I want to let you into a
secret. God didn't really change the rules, it's just that he showed
us the reality in Christ. God has always been 'here' as well as
'there'. Acts 17:28, St Paul declares, “In him we live and move
and have our being.” And in his letter to the Colossians St.
Paul writes in 1:16-17, 'For by Him all things were created, both in
the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created
through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all
things hold together.'
So God has always been 'here' as well
as 'there'. God has always been immanent as well as transcendent.
It's just that we felt we could ignore him because we couldn't see
him. So instead of being immanently present
in his Spirit, indwelling all things, in Christ he became
immanently visible, touchable, holdable. God would no longer
allow us to ignore him and pretend he was somewhere else. God showed his hand. In Christ, God
says, “This is what I am actually like.”
So we stopped ignoring
him.
Instead we killed him to make him all transcendent again.
Phew.
Escape.
God-not-here,
...and we can go back to worshipping him at a
distance again, pretending he's not present in creation, making him
according to our image and no longer being challenged by his true
nature any more. Only God didn't stay dead. He rose
from the dead. God with us again. Except it didn't last very long.
Just forty days, and then comes the ascension, the event we celebrate
today, and God-with-us becomes God-not-with-us. He's returned to
heaven, leaving creation. Now he's transcendent God again.
So does
that mean we can go back to worshipping God from afar?
Is it safe to
come out now?
Has he gone?
No. Creation still has its being in
God, and we can still choose to ignore God. However, aside from the
story of Pentecost, which we'll come to in ten days time, the
Ascension actually accomplished something very profound.
In Jesus we have God-with-us. He was
fully divine in every sense but he was also fully human in every
sense. I know that's hard to get our heads around, but it is vital
we take it on board. Jesus got tired. Jesus became
irritable. When someone told a joke, Jesus laughed. When one of his
closest friends died, Jesus wept. And when they crucified him he
suffered pain, and he did all of those things as human and as divine.
When he died, God experienced death. Jesus, God and human, died.
And on the third day, Jesus, God and human, was raised from the dead.From the moment of his conception we
have a unique being, one whose nature is an inseparable,
intertwining of divine and human.
And here is the key point around
which all of this turns; that dual nature did not change when he
ascended into heaven.
Jesus did not shed his humanity and
leave it in a little heap, surplus to requirements. He took his
whole integrated, enmeshed, intertwined being into the presence of
God the Father. And that means that a rather interesting exchange
has taken place.
Jesus was 'God-with-us.' But now he is
'Us-with-God.'
Our shared human nature has been treated to
transcendence. And because, as St. Paul says, 'All things hold
together in him', so you can argue that he has carried all of
creation into the presence of the Father in himself. The created has
been incorporated into the divine.
So what then does that mean for us?
How does that translate into everyday life? I think theology is
pointless unless it accomplishes something in our lives that makes
better sense of how to live them, and to me it seems like an
intertwined presence, a reality that holds in two locations, here and
heaven, where they are joined by Christ, the Son of God who has lived
in both. We need, however, to learn the
stillness in our spirits to sense this. We often say in our
liturgies that we are 'In Christ', so if Christ, with out humanity,
is in the Father, then 'in Christ', so are we. Our prayers, made in
the name of Christ, are spoken in the presence of the Father through
him because of the ascension.
And
we
need
never again
doubt
whether God understands our pain when we pray because in the midst of
the Godhead stands Jesus, the One who we know
understands what it's like to be human, to undergo treachery, to
experience joy, simply to walk in flesh and blood. There is a bond between earth and heaven, with both held side-by-side
in Jesus, preparing for their final union and remaking.
The
ascension of Christ is not a stand-alone part of the Christian faith.
Instead it is but one essential
movement
in the great symphony of Christ's birth, life, death, resurrection
and ascension, leading to the second act which was ushered in by the
coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
It
is in
this second
act which we currently
reside. We
have been made present to God, and God to us through the events of
the first act. But this act, too, will draw to a close. Christ's
ascension has made this possible, and so we can look forward to the
reunion of heaven and earth. Remember
these words from the angels:
“...why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven”.
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