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Luke 24:44-53
Acts 1:1-11
Ascension Day is always celebrated forty days after Easter. And since Easter is always on a Sunday, the Day of Ascension (or Feast of the Ascension if you’re Catholic) always falls on a Thursday. Since we don’t worship together on Thursdays, in many Protestant churches, the following Sunday becomes the day we consider the Ascension of Christ. We have two scripture passages about this story, found in the last chapter of Luke and the first chapter of Acts. They are quite different. In the 24th chapter of Luke, the women go to the tomb and find it empty. They tell the men, who consider it an idle tale. Then two of Jesus’ followers travel to Emmaus, and Christ appears to them on the road but they don’t recognize him, until he shares a meal with them and is known in the breaking of the bread. Then those disciples return to Jerusalem to tell the others, and suddenly Jesus appears among them. He teaches them, eats some fish, and then takes them to Bethany, where he blesses them and is taken into heaven. That is one very full day!
But in Acts, the ascension occurs, we are told, 40 days after the resurrection. (That’s why Ascension Day is celebrated 40 days after Easter.) Apparently the early church focused on the Acts passage rather than the Luke version of the story.) In the Acts version, not only does Jesus stay around for 40 days, but after he is taken into heaven, two angels appears to Christ’s followers to assure them that Christ will return. So in the Acts passage you get 40 days with Jesus AND a visit from angels, and in the Luke passage you get one jam-packed day and then bye-bye.
The weird thing is: most scholars believe that Luke and Acts were written by the same person. In fact, they call it Luke-(hyphen)-Acts, as a two-part volume. Why would the author tell the story so differently? I don’t have a great answer to that question, unfortunately, but it does seem clear to me that the writers of our scripture were not as concerned about historicity as some of us tend to be, nor were they concerned about harmonizing the gospels into one account. To put it another way: they were less concerned about facts and more concerned about truth.
And the truth is that sometimes it feels like Christ sticks around for day after day of miracles and teaching and fellowship and other times it feels like we get glory from sun up to sun down and then it’s gone. Sometimes God stays and then leaves, and sometimes God just leaves. At least that’s how it feels. That is not, of course, the message of either of these stories.
The great literature of the world is full of messianic figures, even Christ figures. Some of them are obvious, like Aslan in the Narnia Chronicles, while others are more debated, like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter. But in thinking of the ascension of Christ, I am reminded of the great character Mary Poppins. Okay, so Jesus didn’t come into town on an umbrella, and Jesus didn’t teach silly songs or step in time. And I’ve never seen supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in the Bible. But at the beginning of the story, the Banks family was rather a mess. The children are unruly and always in trouble or running away. The nanny has quit. The children have been brought home by the police. Their father is too busy to interact with them and the mother is clueless. Then Mary Poppins arrives on the scene and changes everything. Ultimately, of course, her presence changes the dynamic of the whole family, with Mr. Banks seeing beyond his work and finally interacting with his children. Then we see with the turning of the weather vane, a change in the wind, and Mary Poppins ascends into the sky, with a smile that somehow holds both sadness and joy. Her job is done. We might wish that she could have stayed with the Banks family. Think of the difference she could have made had she stayed! But Mary Poppins needed to leave. She needed to allow the Banks family to take what she taught them, and make it on their own. So Mary Poppins ascended into the sky.[1]
Perhaps you find this comparison a little silly, maybe even disrespectful. And it certainly is a limited comparison. But think of what might have happened if the risen Christ had stayed on earth indefinitely. We would have depended on Christ to do everything for us, and we never would have learned to lead.
We don’t have to take responsibility for other humans; Jesus will do it.
We don’t have to take responsibility for ourselves; Jesus will heal us.
We don’t have to feel responsible for our mistakes; Jesus will fix them.
We don’t have to feel responsible for pollution; Jesus will clear it.
Christ’s ascension reminds us that we are trusted to fix our human world, or at least to be part of the fixing. Maybe that is why the Luke version of the story—the one where Christ leaves so quickly—also says that Christ blessed them. In fact, Christ withdrew while blessing them.
Theologian and poet Jan Richardson says this about our story: “As we spiral back around these stories this year, what takes hold of me is this: how Jesus prays for and blesses his friends as he leaves them. How the leaving is part of the blessing. As if the blessing can happen no other way than by his departure, by his letting go of the ones whom he has loved—these ones whom he will never cease to love but must release into their own lives, so that they may enter into the blessing and enact it on this earth.”[2]
My dear friend Beth Hoffman has given me permission to share this story about a different kind of blessing. She wrote: Over my head I heard “Chaplain, room 440, stat,” and I was at a run. It was the summer of my chaplaincy residency at Maine Medical center and I was called to get to the room of Mr. Lewis. He was 99 years old and was getting ready to leave us. His family had been gathering in his room to celebrate his glorious run on this earth and what a celebration it was! Big band music was playing every time I had stopped in and there were balloons of every color dancing to the beat of those Glenn Miller songs. And there were children in every nook and cranny of the room. Mr. Lewis had quite a passel of grandchildren, great grandchildren, and even great great grandchildren. And I was at a run answering the over head page, wondering what I would find, wondering why I was called. Everyone knew Mr. Lewis was headed for heaven very soon. He himself had slipped into a long nap and now would not probably awake. Everyone was ready. Everyone except Jamie. As I rounded the corner I saw the family spilling out into the hall and someone said, “Jamie is inside and we weren’t sure what to do.” At 6 years old, Jamie was the oldest of four great great grandchildren and he called Mr. Lewis, Great Papa. With my patient still sleeping soundly in the bed, I was surprised to find so much commotion. This determined little boy—with the beats of Count Baisey in the back ground urging him on—had climbed up on the edge of the bed with a fist full of balloons and was getting ready to jump. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m going to heaven with Great Papa. He’s going and I don’t want to be left behind. Heaven is up. I’m going up.” And with that declaration, he jumped from the bed! And landed on the floor with a disappointing thud. But little Jamie, strong Jamie, determined Jamie, worried-about-being-left-behind Jamie, grabbed some more balloons, and undeterred, climbed over his grandpa’s feet as they stuck out just a little bit from the now messed up cover. He crouched for maximum boost and gave it another go. All those extra balloons and Jamie was still with us.
“Jamie, what do you think will happen if those balloons actually carry you off?” “I’m gonna hang out with Great Papa on the swings in heaven. All day long we’ll go up and down, up and down, and maybe God can give us a push.” A few more tries with the balloons and then I asked Jamie how his little brothers and sisters would feel if he flew up to heaven like Great Papa’s spirit was getting ready to.
You see it turns out that Jamie was the swing king in his family, and he was teaching his siblings the joy of flying through the air, how to pump your legs to go higher when you were on your own, and how to hold on tight when someone was giving you a push, even if it wasn’t God and only your big brother. As we talked Jamie began to think that as much as he wanted to be in heaven with Great Papa, maybe he was supposed to stay behind and tend to the hard work of swing instruction right here on earth. Jamie was scared but he realized he had a responsibility and that he needed to keep his feet on the ground for his family, except of course when he was swinging. Then he could defy gravity all he wanted. Later that week Mr. Lewis went to heaven and the entire Lewis family could be seen out the window releasing all those balloons towards the sky. And Jamie was there, doing his part.
“Christ ascended not to leave us behind and to go off to enjoy some distant space, but to fill the heaven that is all around us, the spaces of earth and sky, of water and soil. Christ ascended to fill the spaces between God and disciple, between parent and child, between breath, and daring to breathe again.”[3] Let us dare to breathe. Let us dare to fly. Let us dare to let go.
Amen.
[1] Many thanks to Sara Bartlett for this idea.
[2] https://paintedprayerbook.com/2011/05/29/ascensioneaster-7-blessing-in-the-leaving/
[3] Many thanks to Beth Hoffman for this story and ending quote.