Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
22/5/16 11.00am.
Acts 1.1-11
When he had said this, as they were
watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
Genesis 28.10-19
And he dreamed that
there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and
the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
The question I want us to grapple with this
morning is very simple to pose,
but
surprisingly difficult to answer.
And the question is this: Where is Jesus?
In a moment of casting around for an opening
illustration to this sermon,
I
wondered if there were any ‘Where’s Jesus?’ posters,
in
the style of a Where’s Wally? cartoon,
and
a moment or two on Google led to a definitive answer.
Yes,
there are indeed many, many ‘Where’s Jesus?’ posters.
But two in particular struck me.
The first is one that I have on my study wall,
and
it makes me smile every time I see it.
It’s two door to door evangelists speaking to a
woman,
and
asking her, ‘Have you found Jesus?’
And then, if you look closely,
you
can just see Jesus, hiding behind the curtain.
Francis of Assisi, in his search for Jesus,
famously
discovered that Jesus was to be seen
in
the face of the poor, the suffering, and the outcast.
Which allows a rather pleasing little poem
that
I penned in an idle moment recently:
Saint
Francis of Assisi si
Went
to see what he could see, see, see.
But
all Assisi saw, saw, saw,
Was
the saviour in the faces of the poor, poor, poor.
Anyway, to the second picture…
‘Where’s Jesus? Seriously! Where the hell is
he? People are starving.’
And this seemed to me to be a very good
question.
Where is Jesus when people are starving?
Where’s
Jesus when an aeroplane falls out of the sky?
Where’s Jesus when people suffer and die in war
and conflict?
Where’s
Jesus when people sit at borders
hoping
against hope for a new life?
This is almost the same question
as
the basic question of Christian theodicy,
which
asks why God of love allows suffering in the world.
But it isn’t quite the same question,
and
in some ways it may be more helpful.
The question ‘why does God allow suffering?’ is
abstract,
but
the question ‘Where is Jesus when suffering happens?’
is
far more concrete and answerable.
One often cited (at least by me) answer to this
question
was
offered by the theologian W H Vanstone
in the wake of the appalling disaster
in Aberfan
when the coal tip above the
Welsh mining village
slid down the mountain and
engulfed a farm, several houses,
and a school, leaving 116
children and 28 adults dead.
Vanstone
said that God was not at the top of the mountain pushing it over,
but at the bottom with those
suffering,
receiving the impact of the disaster
in his own body.
Where
was Jesus when Aberfan slipped?
Vanstone says, he was at the bottom of
the mountain.
And
so, we might wonder,
why does the book of Acts so clearly
depict him ascending into heaven?
From
the perspective of Jesus’ disciples,
those who had known him in the flesh, as
it were,
who
had wandered the streets and byways of Palestine with him,
sharing food and laughter,
and seeing people transformed by his
physical touch,
it
certainly seemed as if Jesus had gone from their midst.
The
story of the ascension captures eloquently the sense of isolation
felt by these early followers who no
longer had available to them
the person of Jesus to
consult with, and engage with,
in ways both trivial and
meaningful.
He
had gone from them.
Of
course, the isolation had begun at the cross,
that moment of absolute departure,
as the earthly Jesus was nailed to a
tree and hung until he was dead;
with the earthly life of the saviour coming
to an end at that point.
But
then there was the strange interlude of the resurrection,
as people discovered that in some way
Jesus was still present with and
within them,
able to continue affecting their lives
And
then we come to this strange story of the ascension,
which marks the transition from
encountering Jesus as a man,
to encountering him by the ongoing
presence of his spirit.
And
so Luke tells us that Jesus has ascended into heaven.
But the problem with this, is that it can
be very hard to know
quite what we mean when we say that
Jesus is in heaven.
What
does it mean to assert that Jesus has gone from the earth
but is still alive and present with
God?
These
are deep mysteries, and there are no straightforward answers.
In
fact, before we can even begin to answer what it means
to say that Jesus is ‘in heaven’,
we need to have some idea of what we
mean by heaven in the first place.
Where
is heaven, for heaven’s sake?
Is it above the stars?
Is it in a galaxy a long time
ago, and far, far away?
Is it a place on earth, as Belinda
Carlisle once sang?
Is it a celestial carrot to
be used alongside the stick of ‘hell’
to enforce
conformity
and perpetuate the
privilege of the elite
by controlling and
consoling the recalcitrant masses?
Would we be better, as John Lennon famously
challenged us,
imagining
that there’s no heaven, and above us only sky?
Certainly, in our modern, scientific,
post-enlightenment worldview
it
becomes very hard to sustain the notion
that
heaven is in some way ‘up there’.
We don’t have a cosmology that thinks heaven is
‘up’ and hell is ‘below’,
because
we know that the fires that erupt from below
are
a function of the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates
and
not the breaking through of the fires of eternal torment.
Similarly we know that the sky above us
is
peopled by stars and galaxies held in place by gravitational forces,
rather
than by spirits of bright light that might be angels or even gods
looking
down on us from on high.
So, what are we to make of a passage like
today’s reading from Acts,
where
we are told quite clearly that Jesus,
recently
returned from his journey to the hellish depths of the earth,
is
now lifted up on a cloud into heaven.
What are we to make of the promise that he will
return
in
the same way that he went?
And, if we think for a moment of our Old
Testament reading from Genesis,
what
are we to make of Jacob’s vision
of
a ladder stretching from the earth to the heavens
with
angels ascending and descending upon it?
Well, firstly perhaps, I ought to clarify what
I think we should NOT make of it:
This
is not an invitation for
Bible-believing Christians
to
re-write their science text-books
in
favour of a first century understanding of the cosmos,
any
more than the creation and flood narratives from earlier in Genesis
are
an invitation for us to reject the insights of science
regarding
the age of the earth
or
the origin of species.
So, was there a ladder from heaven to earth?
No,
I don’t think there was.
It
was a vision, a dream,
that
revealed something of profound truth to Jacob.
But
it was never a historical reality.
And I suggest a similar approach to the story
of Jesus’ ascension.
Did
he historically ascend on a cloud at the end of his earthly life?
I
suspect not.
And
to try and make it so it to rather miss the point.
This is not a story about what happened to
Jesus’ body.
It’s
a story about heaven and earth.
So, to return to the question of where, or
what, is heaven?
If
it is not, literally, ‘up there’,
then
where is it?
Tom Wright describes heaven as ‘God’s space’,
a
bit like an extra dimension to the world as we normally encounter it.
It is the world as it should be,
the
world as it might be, the world as it sometimes can be;
and
maybe, just maybe, it is the world as it one day will be.
We catch glimpses of God’s space all the time,
if
we teach our eyes and minds to pay sufficient attention.
From the beauty of a sunset over the sea,
to
the miracle of a baby’s first cry,
to
the selfless act of generosity and kindness,
to
the touching places of baptism and communion.
There are moments in life when the boundary
between here and there
becomes
transparent enough
to
let the glory and peace and joy of God’s space
break
into the complex and conflicted world of this present darkness.
In fact, we pray these moments into being every
time we speak the words
of
the Lord’s prayer:
Your kingdom come, your will be done,
on
earth, as it is in heaven.
We speak aloud our longing for, and commitment
to,
the
idea of God’s space invading our space,
in
ways that transform and redeem the present,
turning
despair into hope,
loss
into comfort,
and
sin into salvation.
As Christians, we don’t believe in heaven ‘up
there’,
or
indeed in Hell ‘down there’.
Rather, we believe that there is a new world
coming,
and
that it is breaking in upon this world.
It is in the light of this conviction that we
need to hear the story of the ascension,
if
we are not to miss the true point of the story.
The ascension of Jesus is the ultimate
‘touching place’
of
heaven and earth.
That which Jacob saw in a dream,
becomes
fully realized in the person of Jesus,
in
whom the boundary between our space and God’s space is transcended.
In Jesus, the God of heaven becomes present to
us,
just
as we are brought near to the one
who
would otherwise be absent from us.
In the life and ministry of the earthly Jesus,
we
encounter God with us,
walking
and talking, and laughing and crying,
and
living and dying with us.
In the resurrection of Jesus,
we
encounter God defeating the power of death,
and
releasing us from the tyranny of the grave
that
otherwise haunts our waking moments
and
keeps us from being most fully alive.
In the ascension of Jesus,
we
encounter God eternally embracing humanity
in
all our fallenness and brokenness,
as
the Messiah, still bearing in his body the marks of the crucifixion,
is
embraced by heaven.
The earthly Jesus is the resurrected Jesus, is
the ascended Jesus.
In
Jesus, earth and heaven meet.
One of the early heresies about Jesus,
which
still carries a lot of traction to this day, even among Christians,
was that Jesus has three phases, or stages, of
existence.
I call this the caterpillar heresy,
because
a caterpillar has three stages of existence:
Caterpillar,
Chrysalis, Butterfly.
And, as anyone who has read The Very Hungry Caterpillar knows,
the
first two stages are just something to get through
on
the way to the true final form of the glorious butterfly.
Well, I want to suggest that it is an error
to
try and impose a caterpillar understanding of existence on Jesus;
and
yet I observe many people trying to do so.
There heresy runs like this:
First
Stage; divine logos, agent of creation,
eternal
disembodied word of God.
Second
Stage; incarnation, earthly Jesus,
born
of a virgin, baptized, buried, and died.
Third
Stage; Resurrected and ascended Christ,
with
mystically transformed body
able
to enter locked rooms
and fly on clouds to return to the
heaven from which he came.
Well, the ascension story helps us gain another
perspective on this,
because
the Jesus who opens the boundary,
between
God’s space and our space, is the human
Jesus.
It is Jesus the man who opens the gates of
heaven,
and
brings the transforming love of God to bear on the earth.
And just as the kingdom comes on earth, as it
is in heaven;
so
also those of us on the earth are redeemed to heaven
with
our earthly bodies as much a part of our experience of salvation
as
Jesus’ scarred and broken body was a part of his ascension.
Here’s the thing I’m trying to say:
Heaven
is not about where we go at the end of this life,
and
it was not where Jesus ‘went’ at the end of his life.
Rather, heaven is the alternative reality that
breaks into this life,
and
it is Jesus who brings the two realities together
as
God’s space and our space touch.
The ascension isn’t about where Jesus has gone,
rather
it is about how Jesus opens the doorway to God’s space
in
the midst of human time and history.
The ascension is about the true and lasting
value of being human.
This life is not a stage we are passing
through,
on
our way to somewhere else.
Rather, it is the reality within which
salvation
is wrought and redemption received,
through
the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
And so those who follow Jesus through his life,
death and resurrection,
become
those who are sent to the whole earth,
commissioned
by the Spirit to bring to all
the
good news of reconciliation between heaven and earth.
We are those who learn to say, with Jacob,
‘Surely
the LORD is in this place-- and I did not know it!’
We are those who learn to see the possibilities
of heaven
in
the midst of the ordinary.
We are those who learn to proclaim the
alternative reality of God’s space,
and
to live that reality into being in our lives and in our world.
Heaven is not where we go to escape this life,
it
is this life redeemed.
As Rob Bell memorably put it in his book Love Wins,
‘Here
is the new there’
He says that,
Taking
heaven seriously .. means taking suffering seriously, now.
Not because we’ve bought into the myth
that we can create a utopia
given enough time,
technology, and good voting
choices,
but because we have great confidence
that God has not abandoned
human history
and is actively at work
within it, taking it somewhere.[1]
The task of the Christian is to drag the future
into the present,
it
is to pursue the life of heaven in the here-and-now.
What does this look like? Well, Rob Bell gives
a list, to get us started
and
suggests that signs of the coming kingdom might include:
·
Honest business,
·
redemptive art,
·
honourable law,
·
sustainable living,
·
medicine,
·
education,
·
making a home,
·
tending a garden.
These, he says, and so much more
are
‘sacred tasks, to be done in partnership with God now’[2]
because
they represent God’s space breaking into our space.
They are heaven coming to the earth.
What we believe about the future
shapes
the way we behave here-and-now.
If we believe that we’re departing this doomed
planet,
to
ride up to heaven on cloud to be with Jesus in the sky,
then why should we care about the world of the
here-and-now?
And worryingly there are many Christians who
believe just this,
and
are holding on for a better day.
But the ascension of Jesus challenges us to see
it differently,
and
having seen, to live differently.
If God’s space is coming to our space,
then
we have our own part to play in seeing that kingdom come.
This has to make a different to the way we
live,
it
has to affect our discipleship,
it
has to challenge our relationship to our possessions,
it
has to challenge our relationship to our neighbours,
it
has to challenge the decisions we make and the ideologies we live by.
Because if it doesn’t
then
we deny in our lives the miracle of the ascension,
and we tear heaven from the earth,
and
consign God’s space to somewhere else.
I’m going to close with a parable told by Pete
Rollins:
Just as it was written by those prophets of old,
the
last days of the Earth overflowed with suffering and pain.
In those dark days a huge pale horse rode through
the Earth
with
Death upon its back and Hell in its wake.
During this great tribulation the Earth was scorched
with the fires of war,
rivers
ran red with blood,
the
soil withheld its fruit
and
disease descended like a mist.
One by one all the nations of the Earth were brought
to their knees.
Far from all the suffering, high up in the heavenly
realm,
God
watched the events unfold with a heavy heart.
An ominous silence had descended upon heaven
as
the angels witnessed the Earth being plunged
into
darkness and despair.
But this could only continue for so long
for,
at the designated time, God stood upright,
breathed
deeply and addressed the angels,
“The time has now come for me to separate the sheep
from the goats,
the
healthy wheat from the inedible chaff”
Having spoken these words
God
slowly turned to face the world
and
called forth to the church with a booming voice,
“Rise up and ascend to heaven
all
of you who have who have sought to escape
the
horrors of this world by sheltering beneath my wing.
Come to me all who have turned from this suffering
world
by
calling out ‘Lord, Lord'”.
In an instant millions where caught up in the clouds
and
ascended into the heavenly realm.
Leaving
the suffering world behind them.
Once this great rapture had taken place
God
paused for a moment and then addressed the angels, saying,
“It is done, I have separated the people born of my
spirit
from
those who have turned from me.
It is time now for us leave this place
and
take up residence in the Earth,
or it
is there that we shall find our people.
The ones who would forsake heaven
in
order to embrace the earth.
The few who would turn away from eternity itself
to
serve at the feet of a fragile, broken life
that
passes from existence in but an instant.”
And so it was that God and the heavenly host left
that place
to
dwell among those who had rooted themselves upon the earth.
Quietly supporting the ones who had forsaken God for
the world
and
thus who bore the mark God.
The few who had discovered heaven in the very act of
forsaking it.[3]
1 comment:
Very interesting, especially the Pete Rollins parable. I think the mirror image of the Ascension is the biblical idea that Jesus 'appeared' in his incarnation. The Bible doesn't seem to use the language that we so often use, of his 'coming down' to us - rather, it uses the language of 'appearing'. In this understanding, you could say that in the Ascension he 'disappeared' - but only to our sight. He is still present among us but just harder to see. One day he will 'appear' again - not from another place, but from amongst us, and say 'Didn't you know? I was here all the time'.
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