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.

Beauty revealing truth

For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said: "Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true". The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer's inspiration. ~from an essay by then Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI)

I don't have a lot to say this week other than to note that the sliver of the Christian culture that I live in is very weak on beauty. The essay linked above discusses the Beauty and Truth in Jesus with more detail and delicacy than I can, so I encourage the brave to read it slowly.

But I will make the follow comments. I understand my role and my community to be a missional outpost. This means that we live on the far edge of a boundary, let's call it the edge of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the World (this may be too high falutin' but it'll work for now). So we call out to and receive the weary and worn, we triage them with the truth of God and send them on in, deeper into the kingdom, further in where they can settle into the kingdom life and kingdom rest.

It's the edge-ness that I want to draw attention to. If we are what we say we are, "evangelical" or "missionaries to our zipcode" or "attractional" or whatever, why aren't we more devoted to beauty? Isn't beauty by definition attractive?

I spent 6 months studying in St. Petersburg, Russia. This is a city that was called the Venice of the north. The Hermitage Museum houses art on par with the Louvre in France. The Russian choirs, ballets, and operas were frequent and magnificent. When I rewind through my memories, I had some of my most intense experiences of beauty there--stumbling into choir practice at the Smolny Cathedral, catching sunset in Tavrichesky Garden, that aria in La Traviata. These left me with the deepest sting of loneliness. I was in St. Petersburg alone, I experienced these on my own. But it felt like such things should be shared.

What is truly beautiful draws us out of ourselves, Ratzinger says that it "reawaken[s] a longing for the Ineffable, readiness for sacrifice, the abandonment of self" and contrasts this with false beauty which "stirs up the desire, the will for power, possession and pleasure."

As it happens, I enjoy and value beauty for the missional outpost, but I don't know how to comes to be. But I daresay it's a question worth wrestling with.

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Image of Smolny Cathedral

Beauty in tears: Suffering redeemed

I've put off writing this final post on suffering. First of all, somehow all this has been emotionally exhausting. But secondly, we have a tendency to want to jump to the potential good that can be found in suffering. This is for obvious reasons--suffering is uncomfortable--but we miss out on acknowledging that we live in a world that is profoundly broken. But not hopelessly so.

Though suffering is the result of sin, just as Jesus conquered death, He can redeem our suffering.

Lately, I've been thinking that if I could tell people three things I would say:

• You are a beloved child of God.
• You can trust Jesus.
• Say yes to Jesus in big ways and small ways, day after day. 

As I think about finding beauty in our tears, about Jesus being bigger than sin and bigger than the suffering that comes from it, I think these three things redeem our pain powerfully.

You are a beloved child of God. 
Our tendency is to live in every identity but this one. We want to be known for what we have a accomplished, or who we know, or how we look, or how other people think of us. But in our suffering, as we encounter our own powerlessness, we can learn "to release our hold on worldly hopes and put our 'hope in God'."

When we embrace our identity in our belovedness as children of God (Galatians 3:26), then we can live in the tenderness of a Father who is present with us in our pain, who grieves with us, who holds us tenderly. And this Father is so powerful and loving that He can take the ugliness of suffering and use it mature us, to heal us, by "heal[ing] our hearts of self-reliance, misplaced security, fears, and complacence." In this we learn the next truth.

You can trust Jesus.
Reynoso writes in her essay that after the tragic death of her daughter, she understood better why people self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. Pain demands an answer. She says it "drives us to run either to God or away from Him." In God's love and power, we can trust Jesus. When we have the power and perspective, we can trust him with our pains in general. When we have fallen and are overwhelmed, we can trust him with our next breath, the one too painful to inhale.

The claim about Jesus is that "all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16-17). Jesus holds everything together, the world we live in, the lives we live, the breaths we take. You can trust Jesus.

So say yes to Jesus in big ways and small ways, day after day.
Saying yes to Jesus is a good idea even if we're not suffering, but it is crucial when we are blinded by our tears. When we choose Jesus' way, we learn "humble submission in pain and sacrifice"--what Jesus chose in going to the cross-- is where God can work most powerfully and gloriously.

Yes to Jesus and no to ourselves is hard. We think we understand ourselves; we know we do not fully understand Jesus. We struggle to trust Him; we struggle to believe that we are His beloved. Fortunately, we don't even have to successfully struggle.

Paul talks about his struggle this way:

I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  (2 Corinthians 12: 8-9)

We have enough. In Jesus, we have enough, we are given enough to trust, to say yes. We don't have to be strong. It's not about being pretty, successful, or with it. God's grace is sufficient. Our weakness gets in the way of nothing. In fact, it appears to be necessary. "Suffering showcases the work of God in our lives, allowing God to reveal Himself through weakness and great need."

Beloved child of God, hold on to Jesus. As he did for Israel, he does for us. He will "comfort all who mourn...[and give] a crown of beauty instead of ashes."

Quotes from Reynoso, "Formed through suffering" in The Kingdom Life.

Choosing compassion: Suffering with others

Reynoso ("Formed through suffering" in The Kingdom Life) repeatedly talks about how while suffering can be redeemed by God, it is not something we ask for, except for in one instance: we are called to bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2).

Now this seems like a choice; I could choose not to enter into another person's suffering, I could look away. But in I Corinthians 12, Paul writes about the community of believers being the many parts of one body. And "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it...(vs 26)." Looking away doesn't mean I escape the effects.

And Jesus did not look away. Mark 6:34 says, "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things." He arrived, he saw, he had compassion. The Latin roots of the word compassion mean to suffer with or to suffer together.

Here are some thoughts on having Jesus' compassion:

Presence
Jesus sees the crowd, he is moved by them, and then he walks among them.

Just as knowing that God is near us and not indifferent to us is a consolation to us in our times of suffering, we need to choose to enter the suffering of others with our presence. I think we shirk this role because it seems like not doing anything. It's just being around. It's being around without a chore to complete, without the right words to say, without anything but being there. It'll probably be awkward, but that's ok.

Provision
While he is with the crowd, Jesus teaches them. That's what his compassion moves him to. With our limited abilities, I think we have a limited capacity to provide tangible help in suffering, but we still can try and should respond to opportunities to do so. In fact Paul's encouragement is to "...not become weary in doing good...as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers (Galatians 6:9-10)."

When we are able to push back against the suffering of others, we are participating with God in bringing goodness to the world and extending the reign and rule of God's kingdom.

Sometimes this means a material response, food, shelter, clothing, etc. Sometimes this means using our influence or knowledge. Middle-class Americans have tremendously more influence and knowledge and most people across the globe. Sometimes it's an act of service, picking up medication, volunteering childcare, fixing a broken toilet.

Prayer
Jesus got so into teaching the crowd that they were together through several meal times and in the middle of nowhere (Mark 6:35). They had a spiritual need, and now the crowd had a physical need, they were hungry. This is the five loaves and two fish story. I think we always tend to focus on how this small amount of food miraculously feeds five thousand. We miss the part where Jesus holds on to not enough food, looks up to heaven and gives thanks (vs 41).

In suffering with others, we pray. We pray with what we know is not enough. We trust the Holy Spirit to perfect the prayers we cannot form (Romans 8:26-27).

Perseverance
Suffering people frequently suck. They make choices that hurt themselves or others more. They say awkward things or don't say anything at all. They can be ungrateful. And even if they suffer in a saintly way, sometimes the suffering just keeps on coming and it doesn't end soon, or soon enough.

Welp, as members of one body there's no get-out-of-jail-free card. In fact, in John 17, Jesus says that our oneness, unity, ability to be one body, is evidence to the world of the love of Jesus (see John 17:20-23, The Message).

We must continue to be present for one another, to provide for one another, to pray for one another. We press on even when the miracle healing doesn't come, or the promised "better" doesn't arrive, especially then because our God is a God who perseveres, who does not wait for us to be pretty before he comes to us and loves us.

As we celebrate Easter, we celebrate a risen King, who came to earth as a baby and was here with humanity on earth, experienced the joys and discomforts of our lives while living in perfect unity with God the Father. He died on the cross, was buried, and on the third day beat death and rises again. The perfect, Creator God of the universe fully suffered humanity's death sentence. In doing so, death lost its sting. In Jesus, there is life. We can choose to follow him as our King, a King who knows our every pain, our every heartache, a King who promises us rest.

Alleluia! He is risen!

 

Suffering: Taking up our cross

And [Jesus] said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. ~Luke 9:23

We're wrapping up Good Friday when we remember Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary where he was nailed to it and upon which he died though he was innocent in every way. So it is fitting that we consider the sufferings that come from taking up our own cross as we obey and imitate Christ.

For the past several posts, I have not addressed the sufferings that come from our choices. Sometimes, as mentioned here talking about the roots of suffering, we make sinful choices which have consequences. But sometimes we make the right choice, and there's pain. We choose Jesus over our own way and instead of glory there is suffering. That's a really bitter pill to swallow.

I remember at one point in my singleness being super mad at God. "I'm doing my best to live in a way that pleases you, God, and I'm out of my mind lonely." Others in following Jesus suffer small indignities and large. Some are looked down on, seen as foolish, aren't hired, aren't promoted, get reassigned. Others lose friends, lose livelihoods, lose their freedom, lose their life. And it's not fair, and it's no surprise. Such is what we are promised as followers. Love cost Christ his life. We are called to love, and it will require no less of us. And that's frankly scary.

Reynoso ("Formed through suffering" in The Kingdom Life) has this encouragement:

Because we know that obeying God and living by kingdom values will cause us to pay a price, sometimes we choose to avoid suffering and settle for less than God has intended for us. In doing so, we miss out on experiencing the powerful reality of Paul's words, "that I may know Him...and the fellowship of His sufferings" (Philippians 3:10, NASB).

In the garden of Eden, we see a perfect relationship between God and Adam and Eve. One of the main threads of the whole Bible is God's work through history to bring reconciliation between himself and his people, to make the relationship whole. On this side of heaven, while we still live in the fallout of sin, everything that brings us nearer to God has a sweetness to it. So sharing in the suffering of Christ has a promised sweetness in the midst of the pain.