As we come toward the end of our Easter season, the final Sunday before Pentecost we celebrate the Ascension – we remember the occasion on which Jesus finally left this earth and ascended to heaven.
Or do we? Is that really the point of the Ascension? All those paintings of Jesus drifting up through the clouds could certainly make us think so. But …
Let’s note first that Matthew and John don’t make any mention of the Ascension at all – for them the issue of how Jesus leaves this earth is not significant. Mark has a passing reference to Jesus being taken up to heaven. In his gospel that’s also all that Luke includes. It’s only in the Acts of the Apostles, as we hear in our first Reading, that Luke gives the more elaborate account.
We should also note that on this Feast Day the Church gives us as our gospel reading the final words of Matthew’s gospel – which don’t say anything about Jesus leaving at all – in fact the exact opposite. Matthew finishes his gospel with Jesus declaration that he will be with us always. This sentiment follows on strongly from everything we’ve been hearing from John in the last few weeks.
Returning to Mark, he finishes with his usual brevity, saying: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.” Again, here Jesus hasn’t gone away, he stays and works with the disciples. Going “up to heaven” clearly doesn’t mean being somewhere else, separate from us.
So let’s reexamine what Luke is saying in his account in Acts. Yes Jesus leaves this earth, but immediately the disciples are told not to hang around staring into the sky. The point isn’t that Jesus has disappeared, but what happens immediately after at Pentecost, and the acts that the disciples then undertake.
So we should perhaps consider that the significance of this feast is not in Jesus leaving to go somewhere else, but that he died so that he could stay with us and provide us with the power to follow his teaching.
We celebrate the Ascension to remember that Jesus went to heaven, to the right hand of the Father, so that he could stay with us.