Texts: Acts 1.6-11 and Matthew 28.16-20
There’s an old story I like, about a country farmer and
his son who were staying, for the first time, in a hotel. They were astounded by all the modern
miracles they were seeing for the first time. The farmer watched an old woman
get into the lift, in the hotel lobby.
Then a few moments later, the doors swooshed open, and out came a
gorgeous young woman.
“Wow!” said the farmer to his son. “They have a machine for turning old women
into young ones! Go and get your mother,
son!”
I imagine that sense of awe and wonder was rather
similar to what the disciples felt on the day when Jesus ascended into
heaven. For them, it must have been even
more of a miracle than him rising from the dead – because this happened right
before their eyes. They are standing with
him, on a mountain-top outside Jerusalem.
According to Matthew’s account, he gives them what we call the Great
Commission – a command to take his message to the four corners of the world. Matthew doesn’t say what happened next – but, as
Luke tells it in the book of Acts, Jesus was ‘lifted up’ and ‘a cloud hid him
from their sight’. You can just imagine
them standing around, mouths open, looking at one another, then up to the sky,
and mouthing to each other ‘what just happened?!’
It’s a good question for us, too, as we encounter this
story in the 21st century.
What exactly did happen?
Interestingly, Matthew’s account contains no reference to Jesus
disappearing, let alone being taken up into heaven. Mark and John are both silent on the whole episode. It is only Luke who tells us this particular story. And even he changes the details.
Luke tells the story twice: first at the end of his gospel, Luke says
that having blessed his disciples, Jesus ‘withdrew from them’ and was carried
up into heaven. This sounds more like a
statement of belief. ‘Jesus withdrew’ is
a description of a teacher who gives his blessing, and then wanders off to be alone. One wonders if the reason Luke adds ‘and was
taken up into heaven’ is because the disciples didn’t see Jesus again. So he probably, must have, got taken into
heaven. Didn’t he?
This account, intriguingly, is at the heart of various
mythologies about Jesus’ continuing ministry on Earth. According to the Mormon faith, for example,
Jesus left his disciples, got in a boat, and sailed to America – where he
founded a new civilisation! There are
other legends too, of Jesus making his way to the Middle East, or even as far
as India. I have to say, clearly, that
there is no historical evidence for such stories. But they do persist in various dark corners
of the Internet, and indeed in the myths of the Mormon church!
Perhaps the uncertainty about what happened to Jesus
after he withdrew is the reason why Luke’s second
account of the same story, in the first chapter of Acts, is a much clearer,
unambiguous statement. One can imagine
Luke, between the end of his gospel, and the writing of the book of Acts,
thinking to himself “I’ve left that ending a bit open to interpretation, haven’t
I? Perhaps I’d better fill in a few more
details”.
So in the account from Acts, Luke is quite
specific. Jesus doesn’t ‘withdraw’, but
rather, he is lifted up, and a cloud hides him from his disciples’ sight. Of course, it is perfectly possible to describe
‘being hidden by a cloud’ as ‘withdrawing’ – but that is not, in fact, the clear
inference of Luke. He goes on to
emphasise his new version, by picturing the disciples standing around, stunned,
gazing into the sky – until two men in white (whom we assume to be angels)
arrive to explain what has just happened.
From our 21st century perspective, it has
to be admitted that this is all a bit fanciful, isn’t it? For one thing, we no longer believe (as Luke
would have) that heaven is ‘up there’, and hell is ‘down there’. That triple decker view of the universe,
common at the time of Jesus, with earth as sandwich filling between heaven and
hell – that view has been roundly discarded, along with the idea of a flat
earth having four corners.
In fact, 21st century science offers us
what I consider a far more intriguing idea – namely the concept of the
multiverse. According to the discoveries
of physics, it is theoretically possible for there to be multiple dimensions,
and multiple universes existing side by side. They are invisible to us, because
we were born into this universe. But the behaviour of certain sub-atomic
particles, which appear to wink in and out of our existence, suggest that there
may be a way to travel from one universe to another.
Perhaps heaven (and indeed hell) is such a place. Perhaps heaven is a realm that co-exists with
our reality – separated by physical laws we are only beginning to
understand. Perhaps this is what Jesus
meant when he said ‘the Kingdom of Heaven is among you’. Perhaps there are even moments when we are
capable, through faith, of peeking through the veil between this world and
heaven. There are places on earth which
humans have, for centuries, described as ‘thin places’ – places where the peace
and the beauty of heaven feel close enough to touch. And perhaps there are moments when heaven
touches earth, through the sub-atomic barrier – such as when Jesus met Moses
and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, or perhaps when angels appear,
dressed in white, to let us know what has happened? Or perhaps when, after diligent and constant
prayer or worship, we ourselves sense the presence of God?
All this is conjecture, of course. I’ve used the word ‘perhaps’ rather a lot! But I wanted to explore how it is possible to
read Scripture’s variable and in some cases competing accounts of a key event
in Jesus life, and still find a way to live with the mystery of what the
writers of Scripture have left us. The underlying truth that differing accounts
of this moment all point toward is this:
Jesus is no longer confined to a human body, with all its limitations of
time and space. His message, his love,
his presence (if you will) are available to all people – not just those who
manage to track him down to one physical place.
This is a narrative of expansion.
Jesus’s message, Jesus’s love, carried by his disciples, carried by you
and me, can be likened to a firework, fired into the sky, to burst out in a
blaze of glory and to shower the entire world.
As Jesus said in Matthew’s account – “Behold, I am with you always,
until the end of the age!”
And to that, we can certainly shout with joy, ‘Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!”
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