Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park

From the Salt Project, www.saltproject.org

This is the seventh of the seven weeks of Eastertide (poetically one more week than the six weeks of Lent), and the fourth of four weeks exploring Jesus’ teachings about living in intimacy with God. This Sunday is often celebrated as “Ascension Sunday,” marking the risen Jesus’ departure after 40 days of dwelling with the community of disciples. Next week is Pentecost, the birth of the church!

For the author of both the Gospel according to Luke and Acts of the Apostles, the bookends of Jesus’ ministry are baptism and ascension, “the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us,” and Acts is about the birth and early work of the church (Acts 1:22). Thus the Ascension serves as a key turning point in the overall two-volume story, the hinge between Part One and Part Two. Indeed, the Book of Acts could be subtitled, “Jesus Ascends, the Holy Spirit Descends, and the Church is Born.”

On Ascension Day, Jesus throws his followers one last curve ball. In the procession into Jerusalem just a month-and-a-half ago (the one we celebrate on Palm Sunday), Jesus and his entourage approached from Bethany, a village on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, the prestigious location from which the Messiah was expected to arrive (Zech 14:4). To arrive, yes — and also to conquer and remain and rule. For the disciples, then, coming down from Bethany into Jerusalem must have felt right: the long wait is over, the prophecy is fulfilled!  But now Jesus leads them in the opposite direction. Now, instead of entering Jerusalem, they’re leaving it. Now, instead of descending from the Mount of Olives, they climb it. They retrace their steps. And now, instead of the Messiah arriving, the Messiah will — could this be right? — withdraw and depart. The choreography is striking, and on its face, disturbing: the long-expected pattern of salvation is turned on its head!

Ascension, by Kathleen Norris

Why do you stand looking up at the skies?
                                                                   Acts I:II
It wasn’t just wind, chasing
thin gunmetal clouds
across the loud sky;
it wasn’t the feeling that one might ascend
on that excited air,
rising like a trumpet note.

And it wasn’t just my sister’s water breaking,
her crying out,
the downward draw of blood and bone…

It was all of that,
the mud and new grass
pushing up through melting snow,
the lilac in bud
by my front door, bent low
by last week’s ice storm.

Now the new mother, that leaky vessel,
begins to nurse her child,
beginning the long good-bye.