The mysterious ascension of Jesus

If you're an orderly-minded person, you should just go find something else to read.

This Thursday is for many Christians the Feast of Ascension which commemorates the Jesus' return to heaven after his resurrection and is celebrated 40 days after Easter. I have never celebrated the Ascension; I've never heard a sermon on it that I remember (although I did have a pastor who loved Acts, so he may have covered it at one point); I basically have never thought about it.

But this year, I noticed, and I'm trying to rectify the issue.

First off, in proportion to the space given to Jesus' sermons and actions, the description of his return to heaven takes up very little space. In fact, if you will indulge me, I'll provide all the scripture describing the event*:

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God. ~Luke 24:50-53

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”~Acts 1:9-11

So this week, I read NT Wright's chapter in Surprised by Hope on the Ascension and Dallas Willard's chapter in The Spirit of the Disciplines, "Salvation is a Life". Both of these guys talked about stuff I had never contemplated, but I'll just present one theme that came through in both author's writing: Jesus had a human body after resurrection that was taken to heaven.

The body had wound marks from the nails. It could eat food. (Luke 24:40-43) This enfleshed being, not some dissolved spirit, was taken to heaven which isn't literally up but is actually elsewhere and near at the same time. Or so they say. It seems wonderful and totally sci-fi at the same time.

So where does that leave us? Well, for one thing, however, heaven and earth are organized and related, if I thought I understood it, I certainly don't now. Jesus, as a physical human, is somewhere in heaven, a nonphysical reality. Do his lungs still need oxygenl? Go to the bathroom?

For another thing, Jesus is not with us, but he did send the Holy Spirit. And that was for our good (John 16:7). And Jesus promises to come back (John 14:3, 18, 28). So in the Holy Spirit, God is with us, but God the Son is not, but he will come back. Clear as mud? I don't know what to do with this, but at the least, this points to the idea that my life and history are not complete. There will be a time of deeper union and intimacy between Jesus and individuals, his bride the church, and earth itself.

Finally, and perhaps most tangibly, the resurrected and ascended body of Christ shows us that the whole life of Jesus could not be stopped by death and so in Christ, our whole, embodied lives are saved. On the other side of death, Jesus had the body that he had lived in to walk and talk, eat and sleep, laugh and cry. It's from there that we get the encouragement that "...whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. (I Corinthians 10:31)"  Our very bodies and all that we do in them, hugging, hitting, holding, hiding, these things Jesus died to save. So that our hugging, hitting, holding, and hiding would become actions embued with and transformed by our loving God.

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*This is not to say that there aren't suggestions in the Old Testament of something of this sort. Nor is it to say that Jesus wasn't talking about this in John 14-17 (although the disciples certainly didn't get it). Nor is it to say that the rest of the New Testament doesn't touch on the implications of this, but as far as the Gospels go, there's not a lot.

Excellence and the Jesus life

I went to college on a scholarship and hanging around other scholarship kids and advisers, I got the sense that we were supposed to win awards and make discoveries and start businesses that were newsworthy. At the same time, I thought people touted as role models of success were obsessed with whatever it took to get there, their personal lives were in shambles, and along the way their ethics were questionable.

It didn't seem like following Jesus and being famously successful were compatible. But it also seemed ridiculous to think that following Christ was a commitment to mediocrity and lameness. I was pretty confused.

Recently, I've been working through Dallas Willard's thoughts on becoming formed in Christ, and while it's really dense material, I'm coming to see that part of what he's advocating is what I call "process over product", a theme I've reflected on often.

I was first introduced to this idea years ago. At that time, I was digesting the idea that defining my relationship with people by whether they made an active profession of faith in Christ was, well, a bad idea--overly product-oriented. Instead, maybe I should be a real friend invested that person's in-and-outs of life--more process-oriented.

This time around I'm digesting the idea that holiness is not an end point (product). Instead, it's the byproduct of life animated by Jesus' life (process). So what I aim for isn't doing holy things, what I aim for is cooperating with God taking over all aspects of my life.  

Willard talks about how salvation isn't about a future ticket to heaven instead of hell, instead our life, our present life, is saved. This made me think about Colossians 2:13 which says, "When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! (The Message)" God through the death AND resurrection of Jesus fills our sin-dead lives with real life.

So when I think about excellence, I'm beginning to think I have been looking at things backwards. Yes, if the goal is public recognition for being awesome, it's easy to lose sight of Jesus along the way. But if the goal is living my life in the Jesus way, or more conventionally, following Jesus, then being publicly recognized for being awesome might be a result. But if it doesn't happen, I think a life lived in the Jesus way isn't going to care that much.

How to eat and elephant (2): Pray for a miracle

I recently talked to a friend about his experience moving to live among the urban poor. And he said, "When I got here, the [veteran minister] said, 'It's two steps forward, three steps back, and you pray for a miracle.' and I thought that was a bit cynical. But the longer I'm here, more more I see that it is two steps forward, three steps back and you pray for a miracle. But you know what? Miracles happen."

When Moses was born, Pharaoh had ordered all the young Hebrew babies to be killed. Well, his mother didn't obey that order. Instead she hid him for three months. And then she put him in a basket on a river. A pastor once commented that we needed to heed Moses' mother's example and ask God to show us what was our part and when it was time to leave things to God.

So a few weeks ago, I wrote about how to eat an elephant and said, "One bite at a time." As I've been thinking about that, I think that's only half the answer. All we are able to do is one bite at a time. So that's what we offer to the process. But to be honest, we can't finish the elephant before it rots or we explode. So we need a miracle. Thankfully, God is in the business of miracles.

What's it like to live "one bite at a time, expecting miracles"? Well, I can't speak from a lot of personal experience, but this seems to be a freeing way to live--doing what we are able, in a measured way, then leaving the rest to the miracle-working God.

We've had a couple things come up in our lives recently that have thrown me on the hamster wheel of anxiety. There are many questions about future outcomes, most of which we have no direct control over, no matter how much we wish differently. There are a few things we can do faithfully, our one-bite-at-a-times, but the rest is up to God and well out of our hands.

I wonder if needing to remember that God works miracles is why the Old Testament stories repeatedly include reminders of God's miraculous deliverance of the Isrealites from Egypt. Maybe I'm not the only one that forgets that impossible miracles are not impossible for God. The ten plagues? The parting of the Red Sea? Manna from heaven? Water from a rock? Hugely impossible things for the Isrealites, they could never conjure those happenings, but God could and did, out of his power, out of his love.

So how do you eat an elephant? One bite at the time and pray for a miracle.