JESUS’ PARTING GIFTS

Reflections on the Ascension of the Lord (Acts 1:1-11, Ephesians 1:17-23, & Matthew 28:16-20)

The Risen Lord did not leave us empty-handed. Gospel passages that narrate the ascension episode identify three parting gifts that Jesus left us with.

1. BLESSING: Luke remarks, “When Jesus had led them out as far as Bethany, He lifted up His hands and blessed them. While He was blessing them, He left them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:50-51). This final gesture of blessing that Jesus performed before his ascension evokes the biblical image of the Tamid blessing. As commanded in Exodus 29: 38-41, every morning at 9 am and 3 pm, Jewish priests celebrated what is known as the tamid, or “perpetual/continual offering” (Shane Kapler, Through, With, and In Him, 2014). The tamid usually concluded with priests gathering on the steps of the Holy Place, extending their arms out toward the people and invoking the priestly blessing that the Lord taught Moses and Aaron (Numbers 6:24-26).

Only the High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies once a year during the tamid, to burn incense before God’s earthly throne on the Feast of Yom Kippur. Jesus as the new High Priest enters the Holy of Holies for eternity, climbing the steps to God’s throne, in order to bless God’s people. When the apostles saw Jesus disappear into a “cloud” (First reading), an Old Testament symbol of God’s presence, they understood that Jesus had entered into God’s heavenly throne. Ascension is not just the entry of Jesus into the true Holy of Holies but also the guarantee of access to God’s blessing for all peoples of all times and places.

2. JOY: Luke’s gospel notes that after Jesus left them, the disciples “worshipped” him and returned to Jerusalem with “great joy”. Normally, joy is not an experience we associate with the departure of someone we love. Why would the apostles rejoice? Would they not miss the Lord? Now that they are alone, shouldn’t they be filled with anxiety instead of joy? Pope Benedict XVI in Jesus of Nazareth reflects, notes that the fact that the disciples did not weep or act confused but “returned with great joy” corrects our image of the ‘Ascension’. It does not mean departure into a remote region of the cosmos but, rather, the continuing closeness that the disciples experience so strongly that it becomes a source of lasting joy. The cloud presents Jesus’ departure not as a journey to the stars, but as his entry into the mystery of God. It invokes an entirely different order of magnitude, a different dimension of being.”

Jesus did not leave on one of Elon Musk’s space missions. Ascension is not dis-incarnation. Ascension breaks the dichotomy between our “worldly” bodies and a purely “other-worldly” God. Through the mystery of ascension, Jesus has ensured that there is now a “man like us” at the very heart of the Holy Trinity. Poet Dante writes in Paradiso that he saw in the depths of God “one Who looked exactly like me. And then I knew the love that moves the sun and all the stars.” The joy of ascension that the disciples experienced is the good news that the chasm between humanity and divinity is broken. Ascension is the joyful completion of incarnation. Divinity embraced creation in the mystery of the incarnation and creation embraces divinity in the mystery of the ascension.

3. MISSION: In the first reading, we encounter two men dressed in dazzling white. We meet someone else similarly dressed (in clothing white as snow) in the resurrection episode. Have you noticed that in both these instances, the disciples are staring at something in confusion, fear or desperation? In the ascension episode, they are staring up into the sky (Acts 1:10). In the resurrection, they are staring down into the tomb (Matthew 28:1). At the end of each of these episodes, the white-robed mysterious messengers remind the disciples of their mission. “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”, they ask the disciples. Maybe they are telling them to stop staring and go fulfil the gospel mandate to go, to make disciples, to teach, to observe all that Jesus has commanded.

Our destiny is the heavens, yes. But our duty is not to stay idle staring at the sky but to be busy with the mission that God has entrusted to each one of us. The disciples took the Lord’s command seriously. Their message was so powerful and their witness so effective that some of their critics accused them of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). But what is our story now? Dallas Willard (The Great Omission, 2006) notes that owing to the scandalous disparity between our faith and our lives, the Great Commission risks becoming the Great Omission. He insists that the last command Jesus gave the Church before he ascended to heaven was the Great Commission, the call for Christians to “make disciples of all the nations.” But Christians have responded by making “Christians,” not “disciples.” May the blessing of ascension, help us become joyful missionaries who render Christ present to our contemporaries today.