Jesus said to his disciples: “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Then he led them out as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them, he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God. (Luke 24.46-53)
On this Seventh Sunday of Easter, most Catholic Churches in America will be celebrating the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, the feast moved from Thursday to Sunday to allow everyone in the pew to hear the story of the Ascension, probably a wise move if for no other reason than it maintains the continuity of the Easter storyline as told in the Scriptures. With fewer people attending church services on Ascension Thursday, the thought probably was that the majority of people would miss out on the story unless it was moved to the following Sunday. Otherwise, it would have been a direct flight from Easter to Pentecost, without a layover at the Ascension.
Technically, Luke is the only evangelist that tells the story of the Ascension. Matthew and John do not mention it. And while the Gospel of Mark has a summary reference to it, the two verses only appear in the so-called “longer ending” of his gospel that most scholars agree was not part of the original text. If that were not confusing enough, Luke, for his part, has two versions of the same event, which leads to all kinds of questions.
The first version takes place at the end of his gospel and the second version at the start of his second volume that we call Acts of the Apostles. The two do not tell the same story, or better stated, they do not agree on the details, posing problems because they were written by the same man. There is no good answer as to why he presents the story in different ways, except to plead the same case we have done many times before. He is not as much concerned with historical truth as he is with theological truths.
That is not to say that the ascension is not true. But it is to say we’ll never know the facts of the event. In the gospel, Luke says the ascension took place on the night of Easter Sunday. When he writes of it in Acts, he says it was forty days after Easter. That is a big difference. An even bigger one is the multiple appearances to others that the Risen Lord makes as recorded in Acts before he ascended to heaven that do not make it into the gospel account. There are a number of other differences as well.
Rather than get lost in the weeds, I suggest we look at the account as given to us in the gospel that we hear today and try to understand the greater meaning that Luke is presenting to us in this version of the story. As already noted, the gospel account has the ascension take place on the evening of Easter Sunday, the same day as the resurrection. According to Luke’s sequence, the Risen Lord first appeared to Peter, although nothing of the appearance is told to us. Then he appears to two disciples on the way to Emmaus. After opening their eyes, he then appears to all the disciples who are gathered in Jerusalem. In the gospel, these will be the only appearances.
The appearance to the disciples has several purposes according to Luke. First, the Risen Lord rebukes the disciples for their failure to believe. He breaks bread for them and eats in their presence. And then he interprets for them the Hebrew scriptures to explain the need for his suffering death, showing it was a fulfillment of God’s plan.
In short order, he leads them to Bethany, the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and, much like the evangelist Mark, Luke describes the ascension in the barest of terms, telling us, “He raised his hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them, he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.” We’re told that the disciples return to Jerusalem where they could be found in the Temple, praising God.
As I see it, this final post-resurrection appearance seems to put before us the interplay between presence and absence that is critical to our interpretation of the ascension. While Jesus walked with his disciples through Galilee, his presence was obvious. After his crucifixion and burial, they suffered from his absence, lost and alone in the world without their leader.
Then, he appears to them late in the evening of the first day of the week, making his presence known to them. However, when they believe they are seeing a ghost, he shows them his hands and his feet, and invites them to touch him “because a ghost does not have flesh and bones.” He also asked them for something to eat, taking a piece of fish, eating it in front of them, removing all doubt from their minds that he was present with them again.
However, that scene is followed immediately by their going to Bethany where “he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.” In other words, he is absent from them. But not for long. He had instructed them shortly after his appearance that they were to “stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” That power on high, of course, is the Spirit, which he describes as the “the promise of my Father.” We should note that the promise of the Holy Spirit is the last thing Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke.
That is important because it means his absence is only temporary. In just a short while, his presence will be with them again, found now in the Spirit, promised by the Father. So, in truth, his withdrawal or ascension is not so much an absence as it is a way to open the door to his presence in a new way, known to us as the Spirit.
Scholars believe Luke is drawing on the Hebrew scriptures here, specifically borrowing from the stories of the two great prophets Moses and Elijah. After both men had left the world, their spirit was passed on to their successors. In the case of Moses, his successor was Joshua who was commissioned by Moses to carry on his mission of bringing the people into the Promised Land, inheriting the Spirit that had led them through the desert “with a cloud by day and a fire by night.”
In regard to Elijah, his protege Elisha had begged for a double portion of the same Spirit that had filled the prophet. As Elijah was taken up into the heavens, his cloak fell to the ground and was picked up by Elisha who now used the mantle to break a flowing river in two in the same way that Elijah had done. The cloak was material proof that the spirit had been passed on to Elisha who would continue the work of Elijah.
Doubtlessly familiar with these famous stories in the Hebrew scriptures, Luke has them in the background as he tells of the followers of Jesus who must “be witnesses of these things” as the Risen Lord had commissioned them to do. Now, they will receive a double portion of the Spirit and they will wear the mantle of prophecy.
In many ways, we can find, then, an awesome continuity rippling beneath the surface of the story of the Ascension, one that reaches far into the history of the Chosen People, a promise of continued presence made by the Most High God to his people when he told them, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” That presence would be as unwavering as the promise behind it, a real, even if invisible, assurance of partnership with the Divine One.
I like to believe that the promise of continued Divine Presence in the world is even older, found first in the Garden of Eden when the Most High God formed the man from the dirt of the Earth, breathing into the creature the breath of life. When he made a helpmate for the man, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”
But I believe there is much more behind those words than a recognition of the companionship of man and woman. It is the first utterance of the promise that God will continue to say again and again through human history, a promise that we will never be alone because his presence will always be with us. The first relationship was not between man and woman, but between God and his creatures.
Augustine said much the same thing when he wrote these beautiful words in his Confessions, “You have made us for Thee, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” Truly, it is all as simple as that. In our very origins as creatures of the earth, the Most High God made a covenant with us, a promise that we would not be orphans, but would always be his children, his presence with us from the dawn of creation to the final gasp of earth.
It is for this same reason that I find very moving the words that the two disciples on the way to Emmaus say to the stranger who, unknown to them, is the Risen Lord, and who joins them on the road. When evening comes, the two men say to him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” Stay with us. It is the prayer of humanity at every moment of existence, a prayer uttered to the Most High God, begging that his presence remain with us because, if left alone, we cannot endure.
The evangelist tells us that, upon hearing the request from the two disciples, the Risen Lord “went in to stay with them.” He sat at the table with them and broke bread with them, a symbol not only of a shared meal, but, more importantly, of an unbreakable bond that they would share forever after. No longer strangers on the way, they would be companions, a word borrowed from the Latin that means one who eats bread with another.
In short, the Ascension is not a disappearance or an absence of the Risen Lord from our midst, but the means for the presence of the Most High God to stay with us, the promise of the Spirit to stay with us fulfilled as God does all his promises. With the Ascension of the Risen Lord into the heavens, the descent of the Spirit into the disciples begins, given to them so that they can witness to the truth that, in the words of Jesus, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but should have everlasting life.”
Everlasting. Again, it is the promise of the Most High God. An everlasting presence with us, within us, without which we cannot endure. Breathed into the world at the start, breathed into the world again after the Ascension, and breathed into the world even now as the Spirit hovers over all of creation, it stays with us because God knows it is not good for man to be alone.
Perhaps it is best said by Isaiah the prophet who, hearing the people of Zion complain that “The Lord has forsaken us,” spoke these words on behalf of the Most High God, “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands I have engraved you.”
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 