First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
8 May 2005
Gravity Check
In 1965, the great jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane, released a breakthrough album. It was by most accounts Coltrane's first true departure from the traditional jazz idiom. Impulse Records, who produced it, heralds the work as a monument of either "Coltrane's supreme, ecstatic statement of his musical liberation from chord changes or of his abandonment of all jazz tradition."1 Apparently, his music was so "far out" that even its own producers weren't sure quite what to make of it. The album is aptly entitled Ascension. Having wrestled with our scriptures for today that tell the story of Christ's ascension to heaven, I know how those producers must have felt when trying to find something to say about Coltrane's Ascension.
To most of our modern ears, the story we just heard from Acts strikes us as "far out". The story of what happens 40 days after the resurrection when Jesus is lifted off his feet to rise and sit at God's right hand in heaven seems as "far out" as any work of free jazz. We know we don't live on the second floor of a triple-decker universe. We know that God is not literally up there somewhere. We know that God doesn't have a right hand, or a left one for that matter. When we hear a story like this we aren't sure just where to put it or how to follow it. Our story in Acts (also referenced in Luke) makes it clear that Christ's albeit resurrected body was literally lifted up into the sky! The witnesses might just as well have been standing at Cape Canaveral. "T minus 3, 2, 1. We have lift off!" If you or I were standing there, you know what we'd all be thinking: "Houston, we have a problem" . . ."We need a gravity check here!" . . . "I'm sorry but even resurrected people can't fly. Pigs, maybe, now that the Sox have won World Series, but resurrected people? No way! And so, along with plenty of preachers and theologians, we'd just as soon cough our way through these first verses of Acts at least until we get to Pentecost in the next chapter. No question...this is some far out stuff. Can't we just skip this one? I wish.
I took some comfort this past week in remembering that my Muslim and Jewish colleagues have to wrestle with similar stories. One of the holiest sites in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque sits just behind the Western Wall in the old city of Jerusalem. The Mosque commemorates the story of the Prophet Mohammed's night journey and the site of his ascension to heaven. And in the Hebrew Bible, there is the story Elisha watching as Elijah is whisked away by a chariot of fire and horses of fire, dropping his robe to the ground before he made his own ascent. I have to tell you that this one has a great deal of personal meaning for me. At my ordination into the ministry, a colleague of my father who was also minister and who died when I was in high school, read this story just before my mom presented me with this, my father's robe. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Unfortunately for my dad and me though, the story of Christ's ascension is the only one that involves the rising of one who had already been resurrected. Indeed, when it comes to the Christian ascension tradition, we might get confused about the difference between the resurrection and the ascension. Both the resurrection and the ascension involve the rising to eternal life.
When I used to read the Apostle's Creed growing up, which we'll all do in a few minutes, I used to think that the ascended-into-heaven bit was just for emphasis. Many of you know how the historic Creed goes without even reading it. After he was crucified, dead and buried, "he descended into hell. The third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty." I never realized there was a semi-colon between the "he rose" part and the "he ascended" part. Because my father was one of those preachers who took a pass when it came to preaching about the ascension, I missed the fact that that semi-colon accounted for the forty days of the risen Christ walking the earth and making all sorts of appearances.
So what does it mean that he ascended into heaven? Before we completely dismiss the literal interpretation, I want to pause and marvel at the much-maligned three-tiered universe which all this talk of descending and ascending suggests. Personally, I love the way that stories like these stretch my religious imagination. Like the Easter story, no matter how metaphorical our take may be, there's an abiding mystery here and one that ultimately checks our sometimes hard headed assumptions about how the world works. If indeed all things are possible with God, why not this too? Did it really happen that Christ was lifted into the air? Probably not! But I say probably and not definitely because if we close the door too quickly on the possibility of it, we risk being just as fundamentalist about our scientific interpretation as fundamentalists are about their literal interpretation. Besides, can you imagine how deprived our language and literature would be without any ongoing references to the triple-decker universe? Would we look at the stars at night with the same awe and wonder? Would we be able to say however loosely that lost loved ones are smiling down upon us? Sure, it's a theological magic trick of sorts, a deus ex machine to get Jesus off the stage, but just because we think magic isn't real doesn't mean we can't enjoy it from time to time. Blowing this story off as simply nonsensical is just too easy for me. Entertaining it at face value, at least at first, is far more fun. When was the last time your mind was even momentarily liberated from the force of gravity, or from the science behind it? This is far out stuff, but I thank God for it.
Having shared my reluctance about wholeheartedly dismissing the literal interpretation, let's get on with the more theological and metaphorical understandings, shall we? Allow me to sound a few albeit random notes. First, if Jesus did not ascend or at least go somewhere else, chances are he'd still be walking the earth and making appearances, maybe at dinner parties and on TV talk shows. Imagine that! We'd all be saved from the need of having to speculate about what would Jesus do or what would Jesus drive or what pray tell would he wear? We could just ask him directly. Chances are the world would be a much better place and Jim Stewart would not have given me a refrigerator magnet that says "Dear Jesus, save me from your followers!" More importantly though—and now we're getting to at least some of the theological rub—Jesus himself would not have been able to assume his place at that right hand of God and to share in the utter freedom enjoyed only by God. In the words of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Jesus is now "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, not only in this age but also in the ages to come." Like Coltrane's album, the ascension is a monument of liberation, the liberation of Jesus to be in all places and at all times. His descent into hell and (semi-colon) his ascent into heaven stands as our assurance that there is no place untouched by Christ's love, no place where he has not gone before us. The ascension is what unleashes Jesus from his bodily form and spreads him out to be a cosmic force and to be present with us, even in the depths of our hearts, right here and now. Our hymns for today say as much. Remember the last verse of the gorgeous hymn we sang after the peace? "Christ before us, Christ beside us, Christ beneath our feet. Christ within us, Christ above us, let all around us be Christ." And, indeed, Christ's "glory fills the skies" and well beyond! If he were still walking the earth in whatever resurrected form, the thought of him being everywhere would be a tough sell, don't you think? But . . . now that Jesus has been exalted, raised to the kingdom of heaven above and within, all of humanity is exalted with him! Christ goes before us to open the gates and stand, as Mariah so brilliantly said last week, as our host at heaven's door.
In his book the Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell helps us to further flesh out this idea. Without being even remotely generous to the literal interpretation, he writes "We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. [He does have a point here!] He continues, "Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy. Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility [yeah, yeah, we know]. But if you read "Jesus ascended to heaven" in terms of its metaphoric connotation [are you listening?] you see that he has gone inward—not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point [Campbell thinks] is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega..."2
Imagine my relief when I found this little tidbit on my bookshelf. Ah yes, the inward and spiritual dimensions of the story, I thought, and an invitation for us all to go and do likewise. Well...sort of. Describing this story in such vivid outward and physical detail is an aid to our understanding of these inward reflections. It reminds us that day and night, we are all on journey home to a source that is at once above us and beyond us and "far out" there, but at the same time is within us and "far in" our own hearts. The angels in white robes who appear at the end of the Acts passage say as much. They say, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?" Look within you and all around you and you too will find yours clouds on which to rise!
To really access the gravity of this passage, we have to consider not only the spatial dimensions of this story but the temporal ones as well. The great theologian Karl Barth suggests that "we may name this time which broke in with Jesus Ascension into Heaven as the time of the abandonment, and in a certain respect, of the loneliness of the church on earth. It is the time in which Church is united with Christ only in faith and by the holy Spirit, it is the interim time between his earthly existence and his return in glory, it is the time of the great opportunity, of the task of the Church towards the world; it is the time of mission." It is also, Barth writes, the time of God's patience. The Ascension is the beginning of this time of ours.3
Ultimately, all this talk of heaven does come down to earth when we realize that the ascension, like Coltrane's album, is also a monument of abandonment—Christ's leaving us to take his rightful place as the head of the church means that we're left to be Christ's hands and feet for the world. It's now ours to do God's will on earth as it is heaven. Christ's earthly existence is no longer, and so it's all on us, at least until the day of his second coming. The question of the angels is a question for us "Why do you stand looking up at heaven? Didn't you learn anything while he was here? Don't you have some work to do now? Jesus just blew this Popsicle stand so it's all on you now! But don't worry, this Jesus who has been taken from you is actually all around you now, closer now than ever, and we'll get the Spirit down here soon too—Pentecost is only a few days away. 2000 years later, it seems we haven't ventured very far and we might sometimes wonder whether the time should be up for God's patience, but if we spend too much time wondering when Christ will return, and berating God for all that incorrigible patience, we might just as soon still be standing around and looking up at heaven. This far out story of Christ journey to heaven invites us all to remember our own journeys both inward and outward. Christ goes up, and with his help, and that of the Spirit, the church goes out to do what we can to bring God's heaven in, to our hearts and to this world. We know now not to follow our earthly rulers too closely since Christ has been crowned Lord of all, King of the Kingdom of heaven above and within. The inner work of our spiritual formation goes hand in hand with our outer mission to the world. The ascension is the beginning of this time of ours!
I opened by referencing an album of John Coltrane, one of my all time favorite Jazz and beyond musicians. I close now by referencing an album and a lyric therein of another favorite musician of mine, Stevie Wonder. This album is entitled "Fullingness' First Finale". The ascension is a first finale of sorts, for Christ who has found and who helps us to find our ultimate fulfillment in God, the source of all that is. But since we have not ascended and since Christ has not yet returned, there are more finales for which we wait and work and hope in our time here on Earth. The lyric that Wonder sings in the first song on this album is this: They say that heaven is ten zillion light years away/ but if there is a God we need to know where is your God?/That's what my friends ask me/ and I say it's taken him so long 'cause we've got so far to come?" How's that for a gravity check?
Thanks be to God for the ascension and the exaltation of Christ! Thanks be to God for the exaltation of our own hearts as we continue our inner and outer journeys home. Thanks be to God for leaving us with such a high and holy calling as await fullingness' final finale! Amen.
1 http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/product.aspx?ob=disc&src=art&pid=9600.
2 Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 57.
3 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics in Outline (New York: Harpers and Row Publishers, 1959), p. 128
© 2005, Daniel Smith