Daily Bread

In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This’, he said, ‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’

So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’

Whoop! It's Ascension Day. Actually, not sure why I'm whooping as today I am helping lead a 6am sunrise worship which is about a 30 minute drive away which means I have to be up at 5am!! On the plus side there will be coffee!

I find the Ascension accounts in the Bible — the one in Luke and the one in Acts — a bit odd. Jesus didn't have to float up into the sky and be hidden by a cloud to enter heaven, he could have simply dematerialised, but it seems, from the accounts of his resurrection, that materialisation and dematerialisation were two aspects of the newly created order. Remember how the resurrected Jesus could seemingly appear and disappear? Therefore, to symbolise that Jesus was not simply moving about in creation but transferring from the created order into the spiritual order, the symbolic way was for him to be bodily lifted into the sky — after all, heaven was symbolically associated with the 'higher realms' of our material world.

The account in Acts is also humorous and I can visualise the disciples all peering up into the sky when these two men in white robes appear and assure the disciples that Jesus was coming back. The white robes probably signify that the men were messengers from God, and to communicate that they were not just regular human beings.

In the same way that Jesus transferred from the earthy realm to the heavenly realm, the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of Jesus — then transferred from the heavenly realm to the earthly realm, but whereas Jesus was one physical, incarnated, and resurrected body and could only be present in one place and at one time, the Spirit could be omnipresent in every believer.

As we'll come to see at Pentecost, when we celebrate the baptism of the Spirit in power, the Spirit wasn't going to be limited by time and space, and the tongues of fire resting on each disciple would be a visual symbolic of the Spirit's multi-presence.

To celebrate Ascension is a bit like celebrating at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games. It is a way of marking the end of one chapter before a new chapter begins. The Ascension of Jesus was the final chapter in the story of the incarnation, and Pentecost was the opening chapter of our involvement in the ongoing mission of Jesus in the world, or as we call it, the Church, where every believer could be home to the very presence of God.

Each year, season by season, we re-tell the whole story of Jesus. Today, Easter ends and the shortest season of Ascenstiontide begins — a time to take a short breath before we begin the season of Pentecost. Today, we celebrate the complete mission of Jesus in the world, and the real adventure — our adventure — is about to begin.

Holy God
Thank you that Jesus conquered sin and death
and that through his resurrected body
he demonstrated a new order of creation
— one in which we too will one day follow.
On this Ascension Day
I celebrate the final chapter
in the story of the incarnation.
Help me rejoice in knowing
that all was finished and completed,
and gain a sense of the anticipation
and excitement that was to follow
when your Spirit would come
and fill every believer, including me.