the significance of ascension

Last Thursday I was invited to give the meditation at an Ascension Day service.

I chose to focus on the similarities and differences between the ascension of Jesus Christ (Acts 1:1-11) and an Old Testament ascension, the ascension of Elijah (2 Kings 2:1-18).

Both the ascension of Elijah and the ascension of Jesus take place in the company of others.  Jesus ascends from the presence of the eleven disciples on the Mount of Olives.  Elijah ascends from the presence of his disciple, Elisha, on the far side of the Jordan River.  In the Elijah narrative, however, it is not Elisha alone who is witness to the ascension of his master.  At each stage of the journey toward Elijah being taken up to heaven, a "company of prophets" meets Elisha and asks him, "Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?" (2 Kgs 2:3, 5)  From Jericho, the last point of departure before the Jordan, the company of prophets follows Elijah and Elisha at a distance, presumably to see what will happen (2 Kgs 2:7).  While the company of prophets waits on the Jericho side of the Jordan, Elijah and Elisha cross over to the place from which Elijah then ascends in wind and fire.  Though it was only Elisha who crossed over with his mentor, the company of prophets also seems to have known that Elijah ascended.  When Elisha returns from the other side of the Jordan, the company of prophets recognize not only that "the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha" but that "it may be that the Spirit of the Lord has caught [Elijah] up and thrown him down on some mountain or in some valley" (2:16).  Thus, even though the company of prophets recognize that spiritual authority has passed from Elijah to another, their proposal to Elisha is to search for Elijah, as though to restore Elijah to his prior role.  Elisha disapproves of their proposal, knowing that Elijah cannot return, yet under pressure permits the company to search.

The search of the company of prophets for the ascended prophet is mirrored in Acts 1 by the "looking up toward heaven" of the disciples after their ascended Lord.  And, just as Elisha warned the company of prophets not to search for Elijah, so "two men in white robes" admonish the disciples not "to stand looking up toward heaven?" (Acts 1:10-11).  Their message to the disciples left behind is a variation on Jesus' last words to them before he was taken up.  The two men assure the disciples that Jesus will come again "in the same way as you saw him go into heaven", which is to say that for the time being Jesus has really departed from them as a person of flesh and blood.  The disciples are not to look into heaven, for they cannot bring back the one whom God has taken away.  Jesus, similarly, had just previously told the disciples that "it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority" (1:7); just as the disciples' gazing toward heaven could not bring Jesus back, so the disciples' longing for Jesus to now "restore the kingdom to Israel" could not make it so (1:6).  In either case, the disciples are looking for their leader and prophet to assume his prior position in their lives.  Their desire with regard to Jesus is as the desire of the company of prophets with regard to Elijah; they wish to bring back to earth the ascended holy man.

Jesus' plan for his disciples' lives is entirely different from their own.  Rather than doing the work of the kingdom in their stead, Jesus will empower the disciples to do God's work in his stead.  "You", he says to the disciple band, the New Testament company of prophets, "will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (1:8).  The work is no less Jesus', but the power for kingdom work and witness has been transferred from the one prophet of God to the many; witness moves from the flesh and blood body of Christ to the spiritual body of his followers.  By the power of his Holy Spirit, the church will do the work of the kingdom of God until Jesus comes again.   

Thus it is that the disciples realized in their lives what the company of prophets could not realize in theirs.  Because they did not wish to see Elisha's master, their master, taken away, because they went looking for him rather than assume the responsibility of his mission, they did not receive, as Elisha did, the spirit that once rested on Elijah.  But for the mercy of God through his messengers, the disciples of Jesus would have gone the way of the company of prophets.  As it was, however, they remembered and heeded the words of Jesus "not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father" (Acts 1:4).  Their commitment to follow Jesus was met with the power to follow Jesus from Jerusalem into the world at Pentecost.

In our own time, the church, like the company of prophets and the disciples gazing toward heaven, often rather cedes the work of God to holy individuals.  The church too would rather search for Elijah than take up his mantle (see 2 Kgs 2:13).  As a result, the spirit that might have passed to the whole company of God's people passes only to solitary Elishas.  The Protestant ideal of the priesthood of all believers goes unfulfilled.  In the words of John Howard Yoder, the church of "no one ungifted, no one not called, no one not empowered, and no one dominated" is "the reformation that has yet to happen."

One final word on the ascension of Jesus Christ: What is the significance of the ascension?  The ascension lies between resurrection and Pentecost.  The ascension makes possible the conferring of the power of the resurrection of Jesus to his followers at Pentecost.  If Jesus does not go away, he cannot come to us by his Spirit.  If he does not leave us empty through his ascension, he cannot fill us by his Spirit.  Perhaps then the ascension of Jesus is a call to the church for preparation and purification in anticipation of empowerment for service and mission in the world.

-Joe

The quote from John Howard Yoder comes from Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992), pp. 59-60.