“After Jesus said these things, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going away and as they were staring toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood next to them. They said, “Galileans, why are you standing here, looking toward heaven?” (Acts 1:9-11a)Today is the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some communities are still able to observe this holy day with the attention and reverence it deserves. We are told in Acts of the Apostles that the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples at various times for 40 days, and then he was taken from this earth, which begs the question: where did he go?
In the Gospel of Mark, we are told that Jesus was “lifted up into heaven and sat down on the right side of God.” Luke describes the Ascension twice, in his Gospel and at the beginning of Acts. And in John’s Gospel, Jesus tells Mary Magdalene not to hold on to him in her joy, because he must still ascend to his Father and our Father. Interestingly, Matthew doesn’t mention the Ascension at all.
Luke and Mark both pain the picture of Jesus being lifted up into the sky. And I don’t doubt that the Ascension appeared that way to the disciples, at least until “a cloud took him out of their sight.” Without telescopes and the knowledge they give us today of the space above us, people reasonably assumed that Jesus ascended to a place somewhere in the sky, or perhaps among the many lights in the night sky.
Today, however, we can reasonably assume that “Heaven” is not located in a particular place between the planets of Mars and Jupiter. Indeed, we really don’t want it that way. If Heaven is only in a particular place, and if God the Father and the Son are located in that particular place, then they are not in any other place. They look upon us from some distant place. They can see us, but we can’t see them. And if they’re in that distant place, then how can they touch us, or help us?
At some point, Jesus passed from the world of place and time, where he could be seen by our eyes, to a “place” that really isn’t a “place” in the way that we understand “place.” God, the creator of all things, is beyond all things, and cannot be contained within our limited powers of observation. But that does not mean that Jesus is now so far beyond us that he is at an infinite distance from us.
In fact, he is as close to us as the trillions of cells in our body. Look at Salvador Dali’s painting of the Ascension. What is that yellow thing with the bumps that Jesus seems to be ascending into? It’s Dali’s conception of an atom, one of the smallest things in all creation. Jesus Christ the incarnate God ascends away from this created world so that the same Jesus Christ may come back and be with us in all things.
In the words of the collect for the Ascension, “our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things.” There is no place where Jesus “is” today, because he is everywhere. He is not far away from us. He is with us in every cell of our bodies, and he is with us in the depths of our soul. And his Spirit is coming. Don’t keep staring up into the sky. Get ready.
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