INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year C - ASCENSION OF THE LORD

ACTS 1:1-11. The author of the Acts of the Apostles, traditionally believed to have been Luke, intended his work to be the completion of the story he had to tell. The main character, however, was not Jesus but the Holy Spirit. In order for the narrative to continue, the hero of the gospel had to leave the scene.

Not fully understanding the messianic message, the disciples wanted to know what lay ahead. Jesus had to repeat his counsel that the future was known only to God. Their role was to wait for gift of the Spirit and to be witnesses to what they had seen and heard while he had been with them. They stand amazed as the risen Christ ascends to the clouds symbolizing his diivine sovereignty.

PSALM 47 or PSALM 93. Both of these psalms came from a small collection celebrating the sovereignty of God. They were probably used at the annual celebration of the enthronement of God as Israel’s true monarch.

EPHESIANS 1:15-23. This is the heart of a typical Hebrew berakah, or celebratory prayer of praise and thanksgiving. Here Paul, or some other author writing in his name, celebrates the sovereignty of God represented by the redemptive work of Christ.

LUKE 24:44-53. Jesus’ final appearance to his disciples included a slightly different account of the ascension. Before leaving, he taught them to interpret his messianic mission, for which he now commissioned them, in relation to the Hebrew scriptures. Before beginning their witness, they were to await the gift of the Spirit.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

ACTS 1:1-11.    As the first paragraph points out, the author of the Acts of

Apostles intended his work to be the completion of the story he had to tell. The main character, however, was not Jesus of Nazareth, as in the Gospel of Luke, but the Holy Spirit. In order for the narrative to continue, the hero of the gospel had to leave the scene.

It should be noted, however, that the details in this passage differ from those in the concluding paragraph of the gospel. In the latter instance, the departure took place immediately after Jesus’ final appearance. In this instance, there have been many appearances over a period of forty days. According to this narrative, the apostles had to wait several more days before being baptized by the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ instructions to wait in Jerusalem until they received the Spirit provided the necessary linkage between the two versions.

Ever wishing to know what lay ahead and still thinking in earthly terms, the disciples asked if this was the time for the restoration of the Israel’s kingdom. The messianic message had still not fully dawned on them. So Jesus had to repeat his counsel that the future was known only to God. Their role was to receive the Spirit and to be witnesses to what they had seen and heard while he had been with them.

In vss. 7-8, Jesus further stated the inclusive, universal nature of their mission. As Galileans, most of the apostles would have recognized this when he named Samaria. But the hyperbole “to the ends of the earth” would have been stretching their minds to a considerable extent. Are we fully aware even yet of what that commission means? Does it mean merely telling of Jesus and preaching the gospel in distant lands? That was the evangelical goal at the beginning of the 20th century when the slogan (“winning the world for Christ in this century”) was bruited throughout North America. We definitely failed to do that, didn’t we? So what does the mission look like now that our missionary evangelism, widely condemned as religious imperialism, has met a resurgence of other traditions of faith?

As in these opening paragraphs of Acts, this is no time for standing gazing at the clouds. We have work to do between the ascension of Christ and his promised return. Of this we can be certain, this incident is all the assurance we need that Jesus Christ is sovereign Lord over all.

PSALM 47.  This psalm is often included with Pss. 93, and 96-98 as Psalms of Yahweh’s Enthronement. Just as in the Babylonian liturgy, the god Marduk was installed to exercise dominion over the nations at the beginning of the new year, so also post-exilic Israel adopted a similar liturgical celebration for the new year’s festival.

The psalmist celebrates the sovereignty of Yahweh over all nations, but supremely over Israel whom Yahweh loves. The opening verse summons all peoples to join Israel in rejoicing. This has been interpreted as a triumphal song of victory over the Canaanite gods whom Yahweh displaced after the conquest of the land by the Israelites. The supreme Canaanite god, Ras Shamra, also received the distinction of being called the Most High. The term quickly became a significant designation for Yahweh in the Israelite ideology.

In vs. 5-7, the image of Yahweh “going up” amid a fanfare of trumpets described a procession of Yahweh as represented by the monarch amid enthusiastic applause of the multitude. The pageantry of the coronation of the British monarchy follows a very similar pattern. The monarchs and heads of state of the world’s many nations gathered when Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953. More recently, we have seen heads of many states gather for the funerals of national figures like King Hussein of Jordan, Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Presidents of the United States of America.

The last image of vs. 9, the shields of the earth, symbolizes the role of monarchs as the protectors of their people. In like manner, the psalmist claims that those shields for Yahweh, Sovereign above all others.

PSALM 93. (Alternate)  This psalm belongs to the same group of enthronement psalms identified by the early 20th century German scholar Mowinckle. The idea of the kingship attributed to the chief god had a long and well established history in other near Eastern traditions. The New Year festival of enthronement provided a necessary reiteration of this myth. Israel adopted this myth early in its religious history, hence the references to creation in vss. 2-4. The concept came to the fore in the post-exilic period when the human monarchy no longer existed. This psalm reflects both periods. In vs. 5, the reconstructed temple of Yahweh and the Torah displaced the human monarch as the symbolic representative of Yahweh(s sovereignty.

EPHESIANS 1:15 23.   According to one scholar, John C. Kirby, the first three chapters of the letter take the form of a typical Hebrew berakah, or celebratory prayer of praise and thanksgiving. This passage forms the heart of that prayer.   Here Paul, or some other author writing in his name, celebrates the sovereignty of God represented by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Some of the psalms follow the same pattern and contain the same basic ingredients: God as creator and deliverer of Israel. (Cf. Ps. 105) Similar prayers have also been found in the Dead Sea scrolls from Qumran written in the 1st century CE with which Paul may well have been familiar. (Ephesians: Baptism and Pentecost. McGill University Press,1968)

Primarily, the faith of the apostle and the Ephesians in the absolute sovereignty of Christ finds expression in this prayer. On the other hand, there is a narrative aspect to the passage. It is addressed not to God, but to the recipient community. As Kirby pointed out, what may have begun as a liturgy and a sermon for baptismal candidates at Pentecost was later re-written as a formal letter in somewhat traditional style. This would account for the narrative of vss. 15-16 where the apostle speaks directly to his intended audience. The succeeding verses of the passage give the content of his prayer for them lifting up his essential message of absolute divine sovereignty exercised through Christ.

Many scholars have noted the similarities between this letter and the Letter to the Colossians. In Colossians 1:4 an almost identical phrase to the phrase in vs. 15 appears: “your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.” Commenting on the meaning but not the correlation of the two passages, Eduard Schweizer wrote that this can only mean that faith must be lived out as love in the same way that Jesus lived and died. This characteristic distinguishes the church community from its secular environment. “Knowledge of Christ is characterized so emphatically as something that must be lived out in an ethical way.... Christ is the place in which the community lives, the atmosphere in which it thrives, and which does indeed permeate it.” (Schweizer, Eduard. The Letter to the Colossians: A Commentary. Augsburg, 1982)

The special gift Paul prayed these Christians would receive through their faith and the love they embody is the wisdom and revelation of God, a knowledge of God, the source of all life and truth. Significantly, the Greek text uses the word sophia rather  than gnosis. This distinguished the true Christian revelation from the Gnostic mysteries that so plagued the church during the 2^nd century CE. Yet the apostle also claimed that an “enlightenment” does occur, but in the heart, not the intellect. The knowledge received comes in the form of a hope and an awareness of the future inheritance to which God’s power destined the believers. This power was evident in the resurrection and ascension of Christ to the right hand of God - i.e. to the place of divine sovereignty.  Being now in Christ, as his body, Christians were assured of sharing in the same inheritance as their Lord and Saviour.

The power of faith is not only oriented to the distant future or even to life beyond death for each one of us. The gift is also for living in the present. It is as if the future had already happened. In Christ, the apostle was saying, it had already happened for those who have been baptized. In a very elaborate way, he reiterated exactly what baptism symbolized for him: to die and be buried with Christ then raised with Christ to live entirely committed in love for God and for others.

LUKE 24:44 - 53. In this passage, Luke tells us that as he took his final leave of the disciples, Jesus did several things. He confirmed what the Hebrew scriptures had prophesied about him. He taught them to interpret those scriptures in reference to his messianic mission of revealing God’s love for all humanity. He then commissioned them to undertake this same mission in his name. He bid them wait in Jerusalem until they had been empowered for their mission. Finally, he gave them his blessing. While waiting, the disciples engaged in their traditional worship in the temple (vs. 53).

It is obvious that as late as the 80s CE when Luke’s Gospel was written, Christians  still regarded themselves as a part of historic Israel. On the other hand, they had no scriptures other than those with which they were familiar. So it was natural that they should look to the sacred literature of Judaism, whether in Hebrew or more probably in Greek, for a foreshadowing of what they had witnessed and were now commissioned to spread throughout the world. Not only the words of Jesus of Nazareth whom they now called the Messiah/Christ , but the wisdom of the ancient writings of the Torah, prophets of Israel, the Psalms and other writings were to guide them in their witness.

The ascension received was not fully described in the brief sentence at the end in this account. Jesus made no more than a quiet exit with a prayer of blessing. Did Luke already have in mind the sequel to his narrative and keep the more dramatic departure for that story? Professor George Caird noted that this quiet leaving has a close resemblance to the account in John 20:19-29. Some manuscripts of Luke were even amplified by interpolations from John. The stress on witness and the command to remain in Jerusalem provide a significant link to the more expanded version in the early chapters of Acts. The apostolic witness remained centred in Jerusalem until the Sanhedrin undertook a severe persecution after the martyrdom of Stephen.

Note also the absence of any mention in this passing of the Spirit to the apostles. For the early church, the Spirit was not a doctrine or a person as the later Trinitarian creeds stated, but to quote Caird “an access to power to be received.” (cf. Acts 19:2, 1 Thess. 1:5,  Heb. 2:4) In effect, Luke’s narrative ended with Jesus having departed and the disciples worshipping daily in the temple, the same place where it began in 1:5.

ADDITIONAL PREACHING POINTS.

ACTS 1:1-11; PSALMS 47 & 93; EPHESIANS 15-23; LUKE 24:44-53.   In one way or another each of these readings refers to heaven. But what is heaven for us today?

We need to remember that Jewish thought was not analytic and rational, as has been Western Christian thought since the Enlightenment. They used imaginative storytelling as their interpretive instrument. We might well call them creative right brain people, not left brain intellectuals. Thus their stories were intuitive and not always as explicit as we might wish, leaving us with numerous questions. For instance, how did they conceived “heaven” in Acts 1:1-11? Or did they conceive it at all, other than to imagine that Jesus “was taken up” (analémphté. from analambanein, repeated twice (vss. 1, 11) and hinted at a third time (vs. 9). The Greek word for heaven, ouranos, is not in the original text although it appears in most English versions.

In the two Psalms, God is perceived as an imperial potentate seated on a high throne. That metaphor was drawn from the most powerful political personage known in ancient times. The metaphor expressed a sense of infinite power, something which Israel lacked during the greater part of its history. Was that why King David was so greatly celebrated in their religious and political history?

Once again in the passage from Ephesians, heaven is alluded in typical Jewish manner. There we also find the same OT metaphor of Jesus enthroned at God’s right hand, but extended almost to infinity: “far above all government and authority, all power and dominion, and any title of authority that can be named, not only in this age but in the age to come.” (Oxford. NEB 1970) In short, hyperbole was used to define what lies beyond human experience and consciousness.

From modern astronomy and space research we know that heaven is not “up there.” The Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, “the first man in space,” is attributed with saying that “he looked and looked but did not see God.” To which someone replied, “If you did not see him on earth, how could you see him in space?” Nor would he have seen heaven, as John envisioned in Revelation 19-20.

If heaven does not have a geographical location or a physical reality, what then is “heaven” for us today? Is it just an imaginative metaphor for the dwelling place of God and now of Christ? Or is it just a pious hope currently being trashed by scripturally ignorant atheists like Dawkins et al?

Heinz Conzelmann in his The Theology of St. Luke (Fortress Press 1960) stated that Acts 1:11 suggests that the present is the time between God’s two advents seen as acts of salvation in Jesus Christ, the Incarnation and the Parousia.. He further claims that “the present is a time for hope, not psychological doubt, for it possesses the Spirit.... The present age is for Luke still a secular one, but it is possible to withstand the world. It is because Christian hope is based in redemptive history that the expectation of the temporal end of the world is not merely a traditional appendage, but an essential part of the hope.”

This insight comes from both Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:2, 4, & 9. In each instance, when Jesus took leave of the disciples he reassured them that they would receive the Spirit. That came on the Day of Pentecost. The Ascension to heaven took place ten days earlier marking the exaltation of Jesus following his humiliation on the cross. It was on this story of the Ascension that the Christian concept of transcendence and the hope of experiencing a better future was based. In Luke’s narrative, Pentecost would not have been possible, without the Ascension. Nor would the Christian life and history of the Church in this world, however ambiguous, have been possible. Our transcendent faith that God always has been, is still, and always will be in control of the universe is proclaimed in the Ascension narrative.

But hope, like transcendence, is an aspect of human consciousness. Is heaven, then, no more than the universal consciousness that lifts our muddled meanderings from birth to death to a spiritual state where we really experience eternal life? To put it In the words of Bishop John Shelby Spong: “The goal of all religion is not to prepare us to enter the next life; it is a call to live now, to love now, to be now and in that way to taste what it means to be a part of a life that is eternal, a love that is barrier-free and the being of a fully self-conscious humanity.”

Spong goes on to identify three issues that everyone who thinks about heaven and/or eternal life must face: 1) Does this vision free us to trust the journey through the vicissitudes and tragedies of life? 2) Is it sufficiently personal as to be real as people demand? And 3) will we know our loved ones? He answers the first two very positively , although not in the traditional vocabulary. Regarding the third he is more equivocal: “If any of us is to share in the eternity of God, these lives that are so deeply a part of who we are must also share in that eternity with us. That is quite enough for me.” (Eternal Life: A New Vision. HarperOne, 2009. 204; 207-209)

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