Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

What do you imagine the disciples saw when the Lord ascended into heaven? Do you imagine the risen Jesus, standing on the Mount of Olives, surrounded by his disciples, his hair and flowing white garments blowing in the breeze? Perhaps then, when he’s finished speaking to them, he steps up on an invisible divine elevator that lifts him up into the clouds where they can’t see him anymore? Perhaps. But perhaps not.

I hope, after listening to me for so many weeks, you’re getting the idea that the gospels are neither documentaries nor screenplays. They are faith documents that struggle to use human language and imagery to express the inexpressible and convey a personal mystical experience from an eyewitness to a believer – like you and me – who is hungry to share that experience. The language of history and science cannot convey such an experience. Only the language of poetry can contain its seeds.

What then are the gospel writers trying to say to us? What are they wanting us to experience? Their meaning is not easy for us to discern. They were writing to men and women who had been steeped from birth in the Jewish Scriptures and the teachings of the rabbis. They could recognize the source of even the most obscure of passages. They knew them by heart and understood them.

The most popular of these passages were those referring to the coming anointed king – the Messiah, the Christ – who would fulfill God’s promise of freedom to his people. The passages we read today from the conclusion of Mark’s gospel and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles are dependent on those passages. They proclaim in no uncertain terms the identity of Jesus as that Messiah. Let’s see how that was done.

The oldest books of the Hebrew Bible are the books of Samuel and Kings. Near the beginning of the Second Book of Kings, we find this text concerning the passing of the prophetic mantle from the great prophet, Elijah, to his disciple, the prophet Elisha.

“As they walked conversing, a flaming chariot and flaming horses came between them and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.”

For the ancients, the earth was flat and therefore heaven – the throne of God – was located above the firmament of the sky. The Hebrews took two lessons from this passage: 1) that Elijah did not die but was taken up alive to be with God; and 2) that Elijah would return again, sent from the throne of God to herald the coming of the Messiah. That’s why, even today, a place is set at every Passover Seder table for the prophet Elijah.

The Messiah – the anointed king – was understood to be enthroned in God’s kingdom and empowered by him to rule the earth. Listen to the opening verses of Psalm 110.

Yahweh said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand
            till I make your enemies your footstool.”
The scepter of your power Yahweh will stretch forth from Zion:
            “Rule in the midst of your enemies.
Yours is princely power in the day of your birth in splendor;
            before the daystar, like the dew, I have begotten you.

All these images in this psalm speak of a messianic King who will not only rule over the people of Israel, but even his enemies. Are you beginning to see what the people of Jesus’s time understood by these passages?

There is one more text from the Hebrew Scriptures that we need to examine. This one comes from the Book of the Prophet Daniel. It is apocalyptic: that is, highly symbolic and mystical.

Were the images from this passage seared into the minds and hearts of the people of Jesus’s time? Judge for yourself. Here’s Saint Mark’s account of Jesus’s trial before the Sanhedrin.

His claim to be the apocalyptic Son of Man from the prophet Daniel was the single piece of evidence necessary to convict Jesus of blasphemy and condemn him to death.

Now, the ending of the gospels – the story of the Son of Man among us in the flesh – and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles – the story of the Son of God present among us in the Church – pivot around this one central point: the resurrected Christ entering into his glory. The image of Jesus ascending into heaven to take his place at the right hand of the Father is nothing less than the Coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead – only in reverse. The purpose of these descriptions was to make clear to all those familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah, just as he claimed to be before the Sanhedrin.

What the disciples actually experienced in the flesh when they could no longer see the body of the risen Jesus we’ll never know. What they understood is very clear: that Jesus, eternally begotten of the Father took flesh among us and, by surrendering himself to the forces born of the worst of human instincts, he conquered them and now lives in power and glory within the community of believers: his Church.

So, set aside the notion of the divine elevator. Heaven is not above us, but within us. Today we celebrate that Jesus has ascended to take his rightful place in glory at the right hand of the Father, enthroned in our hearts and minds and bodies forever.