May 24, 2009

Glynn Cardy

Ascension Sunday     Acts 1:1-11     Luke 24:44-53

The Ascension never happened. It was not an historical event. If a tourist with a handicam had been present at Bethany they would have recorded absolutely nothing. The re-present Jesus of resurrection faith did not elevate into heaven whilst his disciples looked on.

The important question for most biblical scholars therefore is not whether it happened but what it meant. There is also a further question: Given what it meant does it continue to have any relevance at all for today?

The Ascension meant firstly that the heart of Jesus is for all time in the heart of God, because the heart of God was experienced in Jesus. Luke symbolises this with the going-up-into-the-clouds scenario. The disciples’ experience of Jesus was so overwhelming that they saw in him ‘the human face of God.’ All Christian understandings of God derive from this initial experience of Jesus.

Secondly, given that Jesus was now dead and gone yet his presence still seemed to be with them, the Early Church used the Hebrew story of Elijah and Elisha to construct a belief about the Spirit of Jesus continuing to be powerfully among them. Luke paints a picture of a re-formed bodily Jesus going up [the Ascension] and a windy, fiery spirit coming down [Pentecost]. The Gospel writer John doesn’t use the same paint. For him the resurrected Jesus simply breathes on the disciples and tells them to receive it. For Matthew and Mark the bequeathing of the Spirit doesn’t happen. They just expect believers to get on with it.

The formulation of the Trinity three centuries later would pick up these Ascension and Pentecost themes. However it would be a different painting altogether using Greek colours to radically revise the Jewish canvas.

Both the understandings of the biblical authors and the 3rd and 4th century church shared a common belief in a three-tiered universe. Earth, the middle tier, was flat. God lived above on the top floor, and hell was in the basement. That’s why Jesus went up – up was where God was said to be. That’s why traditional Christian liturgies still use the flat-earth language of God up top sending Jesus down then taking him up in order that the Spirit might come down in order that believers might be able to go up.

I think the notion of a God up top grew out of our human longing to be rescued. There are many people who have felt like they are drowning in pain, misery, and depression. They have cried out for help. The life support of family, friends, and caring agencies haven’t always met their needs. They don’t feel they have the resources within themselves. They pray for a heavenly God, especially a friendly-looking Jesus-God, to come and save them.

I understand that prayer. I empathize with those who pray it. I just don’t think it’s an accurate depiction of the God known in Jesus. That God, to continue the metaphor, was in the troubled waters with those drowning rather than plucking them out. That God did not and does not defy the laws of gravity but rather encourages people to swim and help those who can’t.

Rather than a three-tiered universe I think it’s more accurate to say that God has always been here. Jesus was conceived, born, and buried here. The Spirit of Jesus lives on here in us. There is no top floor and basement. There is just this beautiful, wondrous universe in which the power of love lives, moves, and has its being. This therefore is an earthed theology rather than a cloudy one. Such earthed theology gives rise to an ethic that treats fellow humans, other creatures, and our environment compassionately and respectfully.

On the other hand theology with God on top, above and over us, gives rise to an ethic of trying to live up to what that God wants - as interpreted by an ecclesiastical elite. Almost inevitably these elite elevate themselves by means of wealth and power to also be on top, above and over us. They maintain this power by telling us how bad and disobedient we are. The heavenly rescuing God will only save us they say if we are good and do and believe what we are told.

The Ascension was a 1st century, flat-earth, theological picture of the heart Jesus being in the heart of God. It was trying to express the relationship between God and Jesus. In this it was a precursor to the Trinity. Every Christian and church I know tries to express what they understand to be the relationship between God and Jesus. We continue trying to paint pictures that our true to our experience, hopes, and understandings of the world.

The church of my childhood seemed to me to emphasise that Jesus was kind and benign. Apart from the gender he was like the Queen of England going round smiling, doing apolitical good deeds, and living in heavenly splendour but still mixing with commoners. Why anyone would kill him was mystifying. His death was just a random act of violence.

The church of my teenage years emphasised Jesus’ crucifixion. Rather than his death being a random act of violence it seemed it was a deliberate God-inspired scheme to save us from evil. Like in Harry Potter the death of the innocent willing victim [Jesus] would magically rescue us from the consequences of cosmic evil and our bad deeds. I learnt what Jesus allegedly died for; but not what he lived for.

The church of my twenties emphasised Jesus the revolutionary. Jesus had seemingly done a course in structural analysis and knew all about racism, sexism, and indigenous land rights. He was the protester par excellence, carrying in his body and soul the pain of the oppressed, living and dying for the cause. He was a serious fellow and didn’t seem to enjoy life.

The Progressive Christian movement in general also paints Jesus from a particular angle. We think that Jesus correctly identified the human propensity to fix its God ideas in the concrete of incontestable truths. A by-product of this fixing was the condemnation of beliefs and social arrangements deemed to be outside of sacred texts. Prophets, like Jesus, were therefore needed to crack and break through that concrete in order that both new insights and innovations and marginalized and oppressed people might be treated justly and/or included by the religious and political institutions. The breaking however was of the notion of certainty, and the power structures that maintain certainty, rather than a wholesale destruction of the inherited texts and traditions.

All of these experiences of Church with their different understandings of the relationship between God and Jesus have this is common: they promote an ethic of empathy, compassion, and courage. As Bishop Richard Holloway says, “It is in its work of organised care for others, whatever its theological basis, that Christianity is at its most compelling.”[1]

I preached at the Cathedral for Evensong a few weeks back. I offered the congregation a similar theology to that which I regularly inflict upon you. Afterwards one gentleman berated me. I was intrigued that not only did he think I was wrong, but he seemed deeply and personally aggrieved that I could think differently than he. I tried to say, ‘There, there, it’s alright. Most Christians think more like you than like me’. It actually doesn’t worry me all that much if he thinks Jesus was a Martian, or if he tries to convince others this is so. What worries me is whether Martian ethics prioritize and promote empathy, compassion, and courage.

The life of Jesus seems to me to be bigger than any single interpretation of that life. God is among us, beating in other hearts, and in places we haven’t heard of. Tolerance and intellectual modesty are therefore important when trying to understand the relationship of God and Jesus. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t question, critique, and challenge one another’s interpretations. More importantly though we should build bridges across the bounds of religious, cultural and national differences in order to promote the ethics of empathy, compassion, and courage.

Endnote:

[1] P.49, 55 Holloway, R. Looking Into The Distance Canongate, 2004