Readings:
Acts: 1: 15-17, 21-end
Psalm 1 1
John 5: 9-13
John 17: 6-19

Collect:
Risen, ascended Lord,
as we rejoice at your triumph,
fill your Church on earth with power and compassion,
that all who are estranged by sin may find forgiveness and know your peace,
to the glory of God the Father.  Amen.

Reflection

You may be familiar with a painting by German artist Hans Suss von Kulmbach, called ‘The Ascension of Christ’ (see below). Completed in 1513, it’s on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As marvellous as it is, I also find it mildly amusing, as all we see of Jesus is a pair of feet dangling from the clouds as he is ‘taken up into heaven’.

This physical departure made total sense in the cosmological and theological understanding of the gospel world and era, and for many centuries afterwards. The cosmos was seen as a three-layered physical space – heaven above, earth in the middle (centred on Jerusalem) and hell below, in the underworld. The blue sky was the underside of the floor of heaven, atop which sat God’s castle. 

A physical ascension was an honour afforded to the most important figures – biblical characters such as Enoch, Ezra, Levi, Moses, Elijah, as well as the Roman Emperor Augustus, Romulus, the founder of Rome, and the Greek hero Hercules. To be taken up to God’s palace above the clouds showed just how significant a figure you were. Of course Jesus would join this select band. 

This is all rather difficult to square with our contemporary knowledge about space, and the view we have now been granted of the earth as a small blue planet in the quiet vastness of the universe. Heaven can no longer be seen simply as a physical place somewhere in the sky. 

So what should we make of the Feast of the Ascension? Do we suspend our scientific knowledge and join the Renaissance figures clustered around the upwardly mobile divine feet? Do we dismiss it all as nonsense, albeit an occasion for a fine hymn or two, or maybe the firing of a distinctly post-modern rocket? As always, the answer is probably somewhere between the two (you can tell I’m an Anglican!) 

This slightly odd festival is a reminder to us that despite Jesus’ very practical and earthy teachings, there is something of the ‘elsewhere’ about him too. We might try to explain this ‘elsewhere’ in terms of quantum mechanics, time distortions or even psychological illusions, but it’s an elsewhere that is strangely compelling. Every so often you meet someone who seems to inhabit a place ‘between’ – a quality that we might see in those who have spent many years in spiritual discipline, but equally can be found in the very young, or the very loving, or the very innocent. Such people seem to shine, as if they carried something of God on their skin.  

So much of the time we only see ‘heaven’ as the place we want to go to when we die. It’s what we’ve been taught as children. But as St Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 13, “When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” The kingdom of heaven is all around us, is now, here, wherever we find ourselves. ‘Elsewhere’ is on our doorstep.   

This is an ‘elsewhere’ that Jesus encouraged his disciples to seek for, and the invitation remains for us too. It’s not castles in the air - but it is a life that rises above the mud and the tears of this mortal coil, that sees a hope and a nobility and a beauty in human existence, and that works to realise the potential in every person. It’s a life that won’t tolerate anyone being beaten down, or humiliated, or suffering injustice. It’s a life that believes in new life, for everyone. 

I’ve long seen Ascension Day as a sort of ‘Independence Day’ for Christians – Jesus saying, “I’ve shown you the way, now it’s your turn. Live this kind of life. I’m with you, always, but if you are truly a follower of mine, then the time is now: time to grow up, wise up…and rise up.”

Sharon Grenham-Thompson