Acts 1:1-11
"Ascension" - Years A, B, C
Conversation about the presence of G*D is a good thing. We can huddle up and cuddle up a little closer for forty days and still not be assured that all is already well and all will be well again (no, it is not a contradiction to have them both going at once).
Carrying on so intense a focus on our center spot is almost like worrying at a zit until we pop it. Something has to give. Jesus popped right on out of there exclaiming that healing power would soon be present.
Well, such a surprise. We were dumbfounded! What just happened?
Note to disciples: Move it. Enact the conversation you've been having. The next stage of life will come just as quickly as did this one. Be so focused on being the presence of G*D that you will be just as surprised when it actually shows up around you as well as in and through you.
The return of Jesus is not deserved judgment - it is our establishing the presence of G*D on earth as we have imagined it in heaven.
- - -
still standing around?
yep
git
start walking around!
still talking about?
yep
git
start living about!
still here?
yep
git
start here!
start here!
yep
git
still here?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
On this day of remembering ascension we do well to pay attention to footnotes.
* Other ancient authorities lack "and was carried up into heaven" (Lk 24:51).
* Other ancient authorities lack "worshiped him, and" (Lk 24:52
And so we read: "Then Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God."
This moves us to the same sort of abrupt ending of Mark that cries out for something more. This is a good place for Luke to end his story of Jesus and then to pick it up again to begin his story of Church.
This reading also helps us see the issue of "blessing" without the confusion heaven adds to this and almost every conversation of which it is a part.
Acts begins with a remembrance of Jesus speaking with the disciples for forty days about the presence of G*D, the freedom of G*D, the mercy of G*D, the new-beginning of G*D, partnership with G*D (or if you must, the kingdom of G*D).
This conversation reminds the disciples that they are still not experiencing these gifts of presence, freedom, mercy, new beginnings, or partnership. So the hinge question, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the king-dom to Israel?" This question represents the failure of the disciples to stand with Jesus rather than under him.
Confirming this is their response to Jesus being lifted up and out of sight (still without heaven being mentioned). They gawk upward. Two strangers need to remind them that Jesus will return in the same way, inexplicably, and if they keep avoiding one another and the world around them, they will have missed the next opportunity to, unexplainedly, share their experience of an amazedly unexplainable G*D.
To put the two passages together - It is time for us to rise, as workers/saviors of the world, to throw off our chains of gazing in the wrong direction, and to be a blessing.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
Ascension: Take 2
The details of Luke and Acts vary enough that, presuming the same author, all scripture can be said to be in the service of particularized settings and agendas. Scripture comments on scripture, such as the story of Sodom, and presents varying stories about the same event, such as Creation, Jesus’ last meal, Resurrection, Ascension, and the list goes on and on.
Without trying to reconcile the irreconcilable portions of scripture we look for where the variations may be pointing.
We noted yesterday that Luke’s version might be seen through the eyes of witnessing to a blessing still in process.
Acts doesn’t have the blessing motif. Here is didactic instruction: do this, then that, then the next. A word of witness comes after whatever an ascension might be in physics terms, rather than during it. It comes not from Jesus, but angelic messenger types.
The question raised was to move disciples on from their stupefying awe. Basically the message is to stop our mesmerized slacked-jaw gaze and get on with whatever it means to follow belovedness into the world.
Regardless of the setting and timing issues between Luke and Acts, the focus is taken off some future event of restoring political, military, economic power and is placed on the ever present opportunity to be grateful for having been blessed by passing the blessing on to make it larger and larger. This gratefulness is the motivation to move beyond the privileges of glory to the responsibilities of serving.
Ascension is to raise us to engage life. To limit it to Jesus does a grave injustice to his impetus to be a joy to the world. Workers of the world, Ascend!