Ascension of Christ

Believed Ascension of Jesus
May 8, 2005

"... In a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit... as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight." (Acts 1:1-11) "... And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age." (Matthew 28:16-20)

Many years ago one of my history professors not so sagely commented on the Christian belief in the Ascension of Christ that if it were true we ought to be able to find his body out there somewhere in space. In spite of his naïveté, it is an interesting question. Where did Jesus go? Where is "heaven"?

Much of our tradition about heaven seems to reflect the ancient cosmology based on the idea that earth was surrounded by a dome ("vault") above which heaven was thought to be located. The planets and stars rotated about on this dome, guided by spiritual beings. In one version of this cosmology the farther up one went, through increasing layers of perfection, the closer one approached (but could never reach of course) the perfect One (God). Recall St. Paul's vision of being taken up into the "seventh Heaven". In this cosmology we go "up" into this heaven to a place of light and perfection. We know now that the heavens spread out in all directions from earth. There is no "up". The heavens as we know them are nothing but cold dark space, dead stars and galaxies, black holes and exploding nebulae. Not exactly the kind of comforting place we would associate with "heaven".

I wonder if all of this does not distract us from the meaning of the Ascension. Jesus was preparing his disciples for a new and different kind of heaven, in which God would be present with us here and now in the Holy Spirit. Whatever happens when the life of earth is over, perhaps it is not any kind of "place" like what we now know in time and space. Much of our problem here is that we cannot think or imagine in any other terms. Our context of time and space is entirely inadequate to embrace the reality of Jesus' words. The same is true of our entirely inadequate thoughts and language about God to which we often cling with inordinate conviction.

The two angels who appeared to the disciples after Jesus was taken from their sight wondered why they were standing there looking up into the sky. The heaven that Jesus proclaimed, and where he "went", is in the heart of the Most High. Not out there, but in here, where we now already live, and will live eventually in its perfection. I often imagine heaven as the extension of the warmth, intimacy and love which I already experience here and now. I don't have to go anywhere to be with the Most High. Heaven, our destiny in the Holy Spirit, is much nearer than we can possibly imagine.