That We May Thither Ascend in Heart and Mind - A Reflection for Ascension, 2020

In a 1941 essay, Rudolf Bultmann wrote that belief in a three-tiered universe has become impossible in the age of electric lights and the wireless.  Of course, Bultmann was not speaking about wi-fi, but about radio transmissions. Nevertheless, in this new wireless era, his assertion remains the same, the old three-tiered understanding of the universe with a heaven above, hell beneath, and the world in between, has been swept away by the enlightenment of modernity.  What then, are we to do with stories of the ascension of our Lord, in which he blasts like a rocket into the sky to return to sit at the right hand of God?

I suspect that if we gaze too long at this problem, we will find ourselves staring blankly into the heavens, like the disciples of Jesus, only to be jolted back to reality by voices that remind us not to stare into the heavens, but get about the work of the kingdom.  And herein, I think, is the message of the Ascension, namely that the Ascension of Jesus is less about where Jesus goes and more poignantly, about where Jesus has taken us.

It seems to me that Ascension Day get short-shrift in the liturgical year.  The Book of Alternative Services lists it as one of the seven Principal Feasts observed in the Church Year.  The Ascension lives weekly, though, in our liturgical texts, in particular the Eucharistic Prayer of the 1962 BAS in which we remember “the precious death of thy beloved Son, his might resurrection, and glorious ascension.”   In the Creed, we proclaim that he “ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father.”  The Ascension of our Lord inhabits our language of prayer and proclamation, but when we stop to consider it for but a moment, we cower before its absurdity and retreat from any attempt to understand what belief in the Ascension might mean for us in the age of the wireless, or indeed in any other age.

The Ascension is always mentioned in connection with the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of our Lord.  It is part of the story of our salvation and as such it gives shape to our Christian life.  Seen as part of the divine movement of God in Christ, we understand it to be an essential piece of the larger narrative sweep of God’s encounter with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.  What do I mean by this?  It seems to me that the story of God in Christ is best related not through the narrative tales of the Gospel but in a hymn found in one of Paul’s letters, the letter to the Philippians, to be precise:

Let the same mind be in you that was^* in Christ Jesus,
⁶who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited,
⁷but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.

⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him
   and gave him the name
   that is above every name,
¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus
   every knee should bend,
   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue should confess
   that Jesus Christ is Lord,
   to the glory of God the Father.

The hymn takes us through a sweep of divine movement.  Christ Jesus descends from God and takes human form, emptying himself of the power of his divinity, and yet, in his powerlessness, the true power of God is manifest, for though he faces death, God raises him up, and not just to life again, but brings him back home with glory that exceeds all glory.  The gloss that Paul provides on this hymn though, is the simple introduction, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

Paul is not suggesting here that we merely imitate Christ, rather, more profoundly; he is suggesting that in the divine drama of Christ’s incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension, we are taken up into the divine drama.  The suffering and abandonment we feel, becomes the suffering and abandonment of the Christ, but as the Christ is raised to glory, his glory becomes our glory.  This is the reconciliation of humanity and God.  He descends to us, and we ascend with him.  The downward and upward movements are but metaphors for God’s participation in the life of his people in Christ, and humanity’s participation in God, in Christ.

This point was not lost on Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the editor of the first Book of Common Prayer when he adapted an old collect prayer for the Ascension and revised it to read:

"Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell.” (BCP 201)

The petition that our hearts and minds might ascend with Christ speaks to the reality of those disciples who stood dumbfounded as they were left without the bodily presence of their Lord.  For a short moment, they thought that the apparent disappearance of their Lord meant that they had been abandoned.  Then the reality hit them, they had not so much lost Jesus, but Jesus had taken them to a new place and had changed their world.  Their hearts and minds had not quite caught up with the new reality in which they were living. 

Thus, in the wireless age, let us not cast our gaze heavenward, straining to understand the mechanics of what it means for Jesus to be taken up into the heavens.  If we direct our gaze heavenward, we will lose sight of the glory that has come upon us.  We will lose sight of God whose glory resides not in the skies, but in the transformed lives of men and women who choose to follow him still today.  The reconciling love of God resides not in the heavens, but in the community of the faithful, in the hearts and minds of men and women who have been taken up with Christ, into the new kingdom with call the Church. To “descend” is not to drop for the sky, nor is to “ascend” to return to it.   Perhaps these terms are best understood in the language of dwelling.  God dwelt with us that we might evermore dwell with him.  And lest we forget, this is no future promise; it is the reality in which we, as Christian people, live.