Looking to Heaven

This Sunday we remember when Jesus went up, or ascended, into heaven. I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of celebrating that He was taken away.

If I were one of the disciples standing there watching Him go I doubt I’d be thinking ‘Good for Him! He’s going back to God! Great job!’ More likely, I think I’d be in some level of panic, though perhaps trying to look cool as a cucumber on the outside. I bet at least some of the disciples were thinking ‘How dare You leave us, Jesus!?! Take us with you! We haven’t had enough of You! We need You to teach us that stuff over again because we didn’t quite get it. We can’t do this without you! Remember, You’re God and we’re not.’

At my church we’re going to look at the account of the Ascension from both Luke and Acts. I find the contrast in the two versions of the story interesting, and even more interesting that both are attributed to Luke. Why the discrepancies? Why the difference in focus and timing?

In Acts, this event happens forty (that magical number meaning many) days after the Resurrection. The disciples have all sorts of questions for Jesus, alluding to their anxiety. They’re promised the Spirit’s power and told it’s on them to witness to God. There are two angels who appear after Jesus is gone who chide the disciples for being stuck in time, staring up at what they can no longer see. The angels tell them to get on with it and to anticipate His return (in so many words). The disciples’ journey back to Jerusalem bears the challenging task of replacing Judas Iscariot, the betrayer.

In Luke, it seems to still be the day of Resurrection, right after Jesus returns from Emmaus. He eats to prove that He is indeed alive again and offers peace to the disciples. He interprets scripture for them and tells them to be His witnesses. He blesses them, and they worship Him and then joyfully return to Jerusalem. In Luke, they’ve been at Bethany with Him, whereas in Acts it’s all about the Mount of Olives (to be fair, Bethany is within that area). So both the timing and circumstances of this miracle, of Jesus being somehow taken up into the sky, seem at odds here.

What does this mean? Why did Luke do this? You would think that the same witness writing about the same event wouldn’t have so many differences in the two accounts. They probably weren’t written all that many years apart, but likely at least 30 years after it happened. Our brains can get fuzzy over time, but I wonder if there is something more at play.

This warpy timing makes me think of Covid, which is nowhere near as long ago. How often, in talking to someone, I struggle to think when something happened over the last few years. Time was so fluid and the familiar things that marked it went out the window. The world the disciples were living in was similarly turned upside down. Was it last week or months ago?

And maybe the answer is that it was both. Maybe the act of Jesus rising after blessing didn’t just happen once for them but more than once. Maybe it was important to feel that it happened right after the Resurrection, and maybe it seemed it did, and yet it also happened after many appearances of Jesus and more direction as to what their role was and how the Spirit would empower them.

Maybe for us, much as we would like to hang on to a physical Jesus, we still capture all sorts of glimpses of Him and reassurances in the messiness of our lives. Maybe we need to experience that several times, and maybe the words of blessing we need to hear and the way we encounter Jesus need to be different each time because we are different. Maybe we’re tempted to look up at the sky too, as we consider all that has happened in the church and wonder where it’s all going and where our people have gone and what is next.

Someone in my congregation is palliative, and there is a sense of waiting and watching for him to be lifted up to be with Jesus. The family have been 24/7 with care for a while now and it’s both a difficult and liminal time. The end of suffering is coming but it needs to be journeyed through and a letting go needs to happen.

We all, like the disciples, are waiting for Jesus to return as He left. And we might be tempted to be stuck looking up and watching in case we miss Him. But we also might miss the Spirit coming and blessing and upholding us in the meantime. We may miss all the ways that blessing others as we hold onto hope will bless us. We may miss how empowered we have become by God’s gifting and grace.

Pentecost is coming and we aren’t alone. The Spirit will bring us a measure of the closeness we crave with Jesus. The community of the faithful will be His body for us. The challenges we face will remind us that we need Him and that God is still there for us. He is risen, He is risen indeed.