June 1, 2025 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL
Acts 1: 1-11 + Psalm 47 + Ephesians 1: 17-23 + Luke 24: 46-53
For anyone not really paying close attention to all four of the Gospels, it might come as a surprise to know that only Luke’s Gospel tells the story of Jesus ascending into heaven. Matthew leaves off with the final words of Jesus. Mark’s original ending stops with an empty tomb. There is nothing in the earliest manuscripts about anything happening later. John writes about Jesus being ‘lifted up’ in the third chapter, but never says and describes anything about it after the resurrection. Luke tells us in the Gospel that Jesus was taken up to heaven, and in the Gospel, it is the same day as the resurrection. In Acts of the Apostles, Luke says that a cloud took him from sight. He never says that Jesus rode a cloud as some artists would have us believe, no matter how “inspired” their artistic work might be. There work is not biblical inspiration.
I remember a prayer book I had as a child that had a picture of feet hanging out of a cloud. All I could do with that image is wonder how he did that without falling down. It took some serious study of Sacred Scripture to learn that Luke is trying to trigger memories and images from the Old Testament where the same cloud was all around the Tabernacle in the desert and again was described as surrounding the Temple at its first dedication. It is also his effort to connect this with the cloud that came during the Transfiguration. What’s really going on here is Luke’s way of drawing us into the real nature of the Ascension which is and always will be a mystery – something for which there are no words to relate an experience that happened only this one time and never to anyone else. How could anyone describe that. It only happened one time and the person for whom it happened is gone. This ought to leave us in wonder asking what it means, what it says to us, and what God is doing.
What does this mean for us is the issue, not where did Jesus go, and how did he get there. Luke tells this story because of the need for us to find our place in God’s plan. What is supposed to happen between the departure of Jesus of Nazareth and the return of the Christ in the glory of the Father? That is what this story must tease us to consider, because this mystery, so hard to describe in words, is at the heart of every Christian life and is the cause of our hope. It is at that moment when the earthly work of Jesus is finally at an end that the church begins to take shape as a eucharistic community centered on our unity with Christ and one another. We have from this communion a new identity. The Ascension is the event that makes us aware of the presence of Jesus as well as his absence.
For those disciples it was not until Christ had seemingly left his people that they began to understand the true nature of his presence. It can be no different for us. It seems that he is gone until we remember how he remains within us as a eucharistic community. Great things were yet to be done. The power of Christ was about to transform not just a handful of individuals but the whole world. They would see that begin to happen, they would begin to see Christ at work, when they could begin to look for him in a new way. From then on, the presence of Christ would be experienced by those who learned to look for him, and for the effects of his power within themselves.
Christ did not move out of their lives. He began to move into their lives so that their skills, talents, and virtues might become divine instruments by which God’s work in the world would be done. This holy day, this day of the Ascension is really about us, about what we can do when we remain in communion as a Eucharistic community, and about where and how others seeking the Lord of Life may find him among us.