Ascension Day
Acts 1.1-11; Luke 24.44-end.
I’ve always taken a particular delight in Lord Palmerston’s last words. From his sick bed he said, “Die, my dear Doctor? That’s the last thing I intend to do.” Since first hearing those words in a quotation game in a student flat more years ago than I care to admit, I just haven’t been able to get them out of my head. Famous last words.
The Internet has reassured me that I’m not the only one with a fascination with these things. Nowadays there are umpteen sites offering a veritable feast of imaginative last words, such as:
"Don't worry, I read somewhere that bears mostly eat roots and berries."
"Why yes darling, I do think you look fat in that dress."
"Excuse me, I'm a tourist, and I'm lost."
"See? I told you the power's turned off."
"Either the wallpaper goes or I do."
"For my next trick I will escape from this flaming coffin while wearing a straight jacket and singing Eye Of The Tiger."
Famous last words, well, not quite!
And that’s just what we’ve got in Luke’s two accounts of the ascension. Famous last words that are both startlingly direct and perplexingly confusing. In Acts the ascension takes place after the risen Jesus has been appearing before the apostles for forty days; in Luke’s Gospel it takes place on the night of Easter Sunday. Are we to take these as two different events? I don’t think so. Even for Luke the ascension retains that mysterious, strange, almost disturbing element about it that’s so familiar to us looking at it with modern eyes. Luke wasn’t naïve in his portrayal of Jesus’ departure. Pre-scientific, as people say, as a kind of dismissive slur. No, he wants his readers to know that something radical has changed, and the two accounts give subtle and different insights, using a story.
In the gospel version the ascension is a ratification of what has gone before – all of it! Fulfilment, suffering, forgiveness. The Spirit is promised, something new is beginning from Jerusalem. It’s a kind of validation. Jesus blesses them, and they worship him. They are to stay, and stay with it.
In Acts the ascension is more a commissioning. You know that what went before is true. You have been witnesses, now you will be witnessing. That witnessing will be something quite new to them, and the Spirit will empower them in it. They are to go, and go with it.
For Luke, the ascension sums up the shift from “stay” to “go,” but not in a linear, one replaces the other kind of way. What they have seen of Jesus, his life and death and teaching, remains their foundation. They are to stay in worshipping him. But they are to go, in that the truth they have found in Jesus isn’t to be kept to themselves, nor indeed to those who share their outlook, their experiences, their history. This Jesus is much bigger than that, and their task is to make those new connections. They are to be a mission people – this Jesus truth is a universal truth, this God thing has to do with all of life, and all lives.
It’s hard for us to capture the terrifying jolt this must have been for these Galileans. They were at home in their little villages. They lived lives where they knew their neighbours, and their neighbours knew them – in fact knew their parents and their grandparent s too. Like the communities of north Staffs I knew a generation ago where someone might be called Ethel Manley as was, although she had been married for fifty years and always used her husband’s name. People could even say Ethel Manley as was, the daughter of Flo Jones as was. The connections of generations kept alive in conversation. People known to that depth. It was like that for Peter and the others. They were village people, and yet they are commissioned to “go.”
I’ve an aged Aunt now in her nineties. Amongst her scrap books I remember a postcard a relation of hers sent in 1910 to her mother to say she had safely arrived at the end of her journey. The girl had gone from Swindon to Wotton Basset, a journey I think of about six miles. Indeed this hundred years later Wotton Basset is all but part of Swindon. Nevertheless the journey in 1910 was for that girl an anxiety provoking and daring enterprise. Peter would have understood that.
Yet here is the daring commission of the Ascended Christ, “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Do you hear what is being said to these villagers, these country yokels? Christ is sending them to all the places they would have previously avoided.
To Jerusalem? The great city and the place where their beloved teacher was tortured and killed. Jerusalem, the place where the important, powerful people, held sway. Where their country manners stuck our like sore thumbs.
To Judea? That place that thought itself so much more important than the backwater from which they came? Judea where the real Jews lived because of the proximity to Jerusalem? Judea, where their rural accents made them laughing stocks. Who’d trust a Galilean?
To Samaria? Where those heretics live? Lucky to get out of that place with your life, they’re just despicable. And anyway they hate us, they won’t give us the time of day. They use the same name for things as us, but they mean something different.
To the ends of the earth? What does that mean? Rome, Spain, Gaul, heaven knows where. They’re all foreigners. What have we to do with them? Barbarians? Or they think us so? What have we got to do with them, or they with us? And any way I can’t understand what they say, and I don’t like what they eat!
God’s mission is to do with the whole of life and with all lives. That’s the Ascension commission according to Luke.
Where’s Judea for you? The territory you know but don’t know that Christ is calling you to? Where’s Samaria, the place of encounter with those of whom you are suspicious or even frightened? Who challenge you at the depth of your most heartfelt understandings? Where’s Jerusalem for you, where the power lies, where you feel uncomfortable tackling it? And what might be the ends of the earth for you? The unnerving new experience that disorientates and disturbs, yet could be just where God needs you? These places may not be far, and yet they might be. Whether they are or not, the commission is yours as it was for those first apostles, to stay in Christ’s love and to go in his mission, to stay and to go.
I’ve always taken a particular delight in Lord Palmerston’s last words. From his sick bed he said, “Die, my dear Doctor? That’s the last thing I intend to do.” Since first hearing those words in a quotation game in a student flat more years ago than I care to admit, I just haven’t been able to get them out of my head. Famous last words.
The Internet has reassured me that I’m not the only one with a fascination with these things. Nowadays there are umpteen sites offering a veritable feast of imaginative last words, such as:
"Don't worry, I read somewhere that bears mostly eat roots and berries."
"Why yes darling, I do think you look fat in that dress."
"Excuse me, I'm a tourist, and I'm lost."
"See? I told you the power's turned off."
"Either the wallpaper goes or I do."
"For my next trick I will escape from this flaming coffin while wearing a straight jacket and singing Eye Of The Tiger."
Famous last words, well, not quite!
And that’s just what we’ve got in Luke’s two accounts of the ascension. Famous last words that are both startlingly direct and perplexingly confusing. In Acts the ascension takes place after the risen Jesus has been appearing before the apostles for forty days; in Luke’s Gospel it takes place on the night of Easter Sunday. Are we to take these as two different events? I don’t think so. Even for Luke the ascension retains that mysterious, strange, almost disturbing element about it that’s so familiar to us looking at it with modern eyes. Luke wasn’t naïve in his portrayal of Jesus’ departure. Pre-scientific, as people say, as a kind of dismissive slur. No, he wants his readers to know that something radical has changed, and the two accounts give subtle and different insights, using a story.
In the gospel version the ascension is a ratification of what has gone before – all of it! Fulfilment, suffering, forgiveness. The Spirit is promised, something new is beginning from Jerusalem. It’s a kind of validation. Jesus blesses them, and they worship him. They are to stay, and stay with it.
In Acts the ascension is more a commissioning. You know that what went before is true. You have been witnesses, now you will be witnessing. That witnessing will be something quite new to them, and the Spirit will empower them in it. They are to go, and go with it.
For Luke, the ascension sums up the shift from “stay” to “go,” but not in a linear, one replaces the other kind of way. What they have seen of Jesus, his life and death and teaching, remains their foundation. They are to stay in worshipping him. But they are to go, in that the truth they have found in Jesus isn’t to be kept to themselves, nor indeed to those who share their outlook, their experiences, their history. This Jesus is much bigger than that, and their task is to make those new connections. They are to be a mission people – this Jesus truth is a universal truth, this God thing has to do with all of life, and all lives.
It’s hard for us to capture the terrifying jolt this must have been for these Galileans. They were at home in their little villages. They lived lives where they knew their neighbours, and their neighbours knew them – in fact knew their parents and their grandparent s too. Like the communities of north Staffs I knew a generation ago where someone might be called Ethel Manley as was, although she had been married for fifty years and always used her husband’s name. People could even say Ethel Manley as was, the daughter of Flo Jones as was. The connections of generations kept alive in conversation. People known to that depth. It was like that for Peter and the others. They were village people, and yet they are commissioned to “go.”
I’ve an aged Aunt now in her nineties. Amongst her scrap books I remember a postcard a relation of hers sent in 1910 to her mother to say she had safely arrived at the end of her journey. The girl had gone from Swindon to Wotton Basset, a journey I think of about six miles. Indeed this hundred years later Wotton Basset is all but part of Swindon. Nevertheless the journey in 1910 was for that girl an anxiety provoking and daring enterprise. Peter would have understood that.
Yet here is the daring commission of the Ascended Christ, “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Do you hear what is being said to these villagers, these country yokels? Christ is sending them to all the places they would have previously avoided.
To Jerusalem? The great city and the place where their beloved teacher was tortured and killed. Jerusalem, the place where the important, powerful people, held sway. Where their country manners stuck our like sore thumbs.
To Judea? That place that thought itself so much more important than the backwater from which they came? Judea where the real Jews lived because of the proximity to Jerusalem? Judea, where their rural accents made them laughing stocks. Who’d trust a Galilean?
To Samaria? Where those heretics live? Lucky to get out of that place with your life, they’re just despicable. And anyway they hate us, they won’t give us the time of day. They use the same name for things as us, but they mean something different.
To the ends of the earth? What does that mean? Rome, Spain, Gaul, heaven knows where. They’re all foreigners. What have we to do with them? Barbarians? Or they think us so? What have we got to do with them, or they with us? And any way I can’t understand what they say, and I don’t like what they eat!
God’s mission is to do with the whole of life and with all lives. That’s the Ascension commission according to Luke.
Where’s Judea for you? The territory you know but don’t know that Christ is calling you to? Where’s Samaria, the place of encounter with those of whom you are suspicious or even frightened? Who challenge you at the depth of your most heartfelt understandings? Where’s Jerusalem for you, where the power lies, where you feel uncomfortable tackling it? And what might be the ends of the earth for you? The unnerving new experience that disorientates and disturbs, yet could be just where God needs you? These places may not be far, and yet they might be. Whether they are or not, the commission is yours as it was for those first apostles, to stay in Christ’s love and to go in his mission, to stay and to go.