God has gone up with a shout

One of the seven major celebrations of the church year, The Ascension story is on our lectionary calendar for this coming Sunday. Visualized elegantly in the above painting by Salvador Dali, it's told at the end of Luke's gospel, then more extravagantly at the beginning of Acts, which is our lectionary reading. 

Over the ages of the Christian church, the Ascension story has been the object of many works of art, much of which features what is whimsically called "the disappearing feet" with disciples standing or kneeling to watch Jesus' feet vanish into a low cloud. Some of the art includes Jesus' mother Mary, the woman clothed in her traditional blue. 

"Why is it necessary for Jesus to ascend bodily into the sky?" is a great discussion question for an adult Sunday school class or small group Bible study to explore. Often coming out in those discussions is the inspired suggestion that, like the stories of Jesus raising children from the dead as Elijah and Elisha did, it's necessary for the greatest prophet, the one foretold by Moses, to excel all the prophetic works, including the magnificent story of Elijah's ride to heaven in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire. 

There is also the notion that being the Son of God, Jesus' physical body could not be left behind to the destructive work of nature. And also affirming the notion that Jesus' resurrection body was indeed a physical body, not a spiritual body: "Do you have anything here to eat?" and they gave him a piece of broiled fish and he ate it. 

Any worthy story, Bible or otherwise, should be able to stand up to doubt, question, and discussion. 

There is also the issue of where an Ascending body would end up. In Jesus' Time, and Elijah's, and the later dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin for that matter, the destination was credibly beyond the blue firmament in the dwelling place of God. A twenty-first century person who has ever peered into the sky through a telescope might reasonably have questions. 

At any event, below is the story of Jesus' ascension as Luke tells it in the opening verses of his book The Acts of the Apostles. This version is from David Bentley Hart's NT translation.     
 

The Acts of the Apostles by Luke



C h a p t e r One. 1 I produced an earlier treatise, O Theophilus, concerning everything Jesus initiated, both as a practice and as a teaching, 2 Until the day when he was taken above, having issued instructions through a Holy Spirit to the Apostles he had chosen, 3 To whom, after he had suffered, he showed himself alive by many irrefutable proofs, being seen by them over a period of forty days and telling them things about the Kingdom of God; 4 And, meeting with them, he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem, but rather to “Await the promise of the Father, which you heard from me: 5 Because John indeed baptized of water; but you will be baptized in a Spirit, the Holy one, not many days hereafter.” 6 So, then, coming together they questioned him, saying, “Lord, are you restoring the kingdom of Israel at this time?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority, 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judaea and Samaria, even to the end of the earth.” 9 And saying these things, as they were watching, he was taken up, and a cloud took him from their eyes. 10 And as they were staring at him ascending into the sky, look: Standing beside them were two men in white garments, 11 Who said, “Galilaean men, why do you stand looking at the sky? This Jesus who has thus been taken up from you into the sky will come in the way you 

saw him going to the sky.” 12 They then returned to Jerusalem from the mountain called Mount of the Olive Grove, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath’s walk away. 13 And when they came in, they went up into the upper room where they were staying: Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, bar-­Tholomaeus and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas son of James. 14 These devoted themselves constantly to prayer, with a shared intensity of feeling, together with the women and with Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. 

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the last image above is borrowed from online material

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