Ascension
Acts 1:6-14
If you ask people to list the highlights of the Christian Year, my guess is that most Protestants, anyway, would not have Ascension high on the list, or even on the list at all. In fact, in 26 years of preaching, I think I've only preached one or two sermons on the topic.
It all seems so airy-fairy, like bad religious art with a white-robed Jesus floating up barefoot through the clouds into glory. Is it just Luke's way of trying to explain the very valid question that goes something like this: If Jesus rose from the dead in the flesh, then why is he not around today?!
It is a conundrum. If the Resurrection is so important, why didn't Jesus stick around. At the risk of inciting folk to label me a heretic (a la Carly Smithson who apparently got voted off American Idol for choosing to sing the title song from Jesus Christ Superstar and so vexed the conservative Christian Idol voters in one of the most bizarre popular culture events I've seen in a while), I would ask with Judas in Superstar why Jesus didn't really make a big splash post-Resurrection in order to completely convince people he was divine and therefore get a whole lot more convinced folk to follow God's way?
The text in Acts that tells Luke's second version of this (see the end of Luke's gospel for the first version) does make fairly clear Jesus' reasoning on this one. The enfleshed Jesus has limitations: he can only be in one place at one time. If he goes and the new earthly form of the presence of God is in Spirit, a Spirit that will move in and through people in many places and across time, then the word and work of God has legs, so to speak. The legs of the disciples, and our legs now.
But there is more to it than that. The issue of what the power of the Spirit, the continuing power and divine authority of Jesus, now dwelling in what would become the church, the issue of what that power is to be used for is also addressed here. The disciples asked Jesus if now was the time that the great political revolution would start, the one that would restore Israel to its historic greatness. Even after all this time with Jesus, the disciples are still looking back for their vision and not ahead. Jesus actually ignores the question because he has all along been talking about power not limited to kings and queens and empires. Will they get it post-Pentecost?
Will we?
If you ask people to list the highlights of the Christian Year, my guess is that most Protestants, anyway, would not have Ascension high on the list, or even on the list at all. In fact, in 26 years of preaching, I think I've only preached one or two sermons on the topic.
It all seems so airy-fairy, like bad religious art with a white-robed Jesus floating up barefoot through the clouds into glory. Is it just Luke's way of trying to explain the very valid question that goes something like this: If Jesus rose from the dead in the flesh, then why is he not around today?!
It is a conundrum. If the Resurrection is so important, why didn't Jesus stick around. At the risk of inciting folk to label me a heretic (a la Carly Smithson who apparently got voted off American Idol for choosing to sing the title song from Jesus Christ Superstar and so vexed the conservative Christian Idol voters in one of the most bizarre popular culture events I've seen in a while), I would ask with Judas in Superstar why Jesus didn't really make a big splash post-Resurrection in order to completely convince people he was divine and therefore get a whole lot more convinced folk to follow God's way?
The text in Acts that tells Luke's second version of this (see the end of Luke's gospel for the first version) does make fairly clear Jesus' reasoning on this one. The enfleshed Jesus has limitations: he can only be in one place at one time. If he goes and the new earthly form of the presence of God is in Spirit, a Spirit that will move in and through people in many places and across time, then the word and work of God has legs, so to speak. The legs of the disciples, and our legs now.
But there is more to it than that. The issue of what the power of the Spirit, the continuing power and divine authority of Jesus, now dwelling in what would become the church, the issue of what that power is to be used for is also addressed here. The disciples asked Jesus if now was the time that the great political revolution would start, the one that would restore Israel to its historic greatness. Even after all this time with Jesus, the disciples are still looking back for their vision and not ahead. Jesus actually ignores the question because he has all along been talking about power not limited to kings and queens and empires. Will they get it post-Pentecost?
Will we?
posted by shelly @ 9:58 AM
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