Tuesday
Tuesday
The Ascension of Jesus
After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
Acts 1:9
There is widespread skepticism whether the ascension of Jesus was a literal, historical event. Surely, critics say, it belongs to a prescientific cosmology in which heaven was regarded as “up there,” so that Jesus had to be “taken up” in order to get there. Must we not therefore demythologize the ascension? Then we can retain the truth that Jesus went to the Father, while at the same time stripping it of its primitive mythological clothing.
But there are two main reasons why we should reject this attempt to discredit the ascension as a literal event. Firstly, as we noted last Sunday, Luke relies heavily on the testimony of eyewitnesses. He does so here. Jesus was taken up “before their very eyes” until a cloud hid him “from their sight.” As they were “looking intently” into the sky, the two angels spoke of their having “seen” him go into heaven (v. 10). Five times in this very brief account Luke stressed that the ascension took place visibly and was verified by eyewitnesses.
Secondly, the visible ascension had a readily intelligible purpose. It is not that Jesus needed to take a journey in space. It is silly to represent him as the first cosmonaut. No, in the transition from his earthly to his heavenly state, he could perfectly well have vanished, as on other occasions, and gone to the Father secretly and invisibly. The reason for a public and visible ascension is surely that he wanted the disciples to know that he had gone for good. During the forty days, he had kept appearing, disappearing, and reappearing. But now this interim period was over. This time his departure was final. So they were not to wait around for his next resurrection appearance. Instead, they were to wait for someone else, the Holy Spirit.
There was something fundamentally anomalous about their gazing up into the sky when they had been commissioned to go to the ends of the earth. It was the earth, not the sky, that was to be their preoccupation. Their calling was to be witnesses, not stargazers.
For further reading: Acts 1:9–12