I don’t know if any of you saw the 2021 movie, Don ’t Look Up. It wasn’t the greatest ever but it was a brilliant idea. A few scientists discover a comet that will hit the earth in 6 months’ time. They try to tell the President. She said don’t look up. And it got worse after that. The world divided into two camps those saying, just look up—and see the comet and those headed by the president who said, don’t look up. I thought the premise of this series was so good. IT was meant to symbolise climate change and all the other things we ignore. That people will just deny what is happening, even or particularly at the highest levels. But it was hard to watch. And the ending was not good.

I started here because really the ascension is about hard theology. And yet, one of the images we need to keep is the idea of looking up and taking notice.

So the text is very clear. The disciples did just look up. They had 40 days of Jesus appearing at various times, behind locked doors, eating fish and on the road to Emmaus. Then he gives a quick farewell, gives them instructions about what to do next and promises the Holy Spirit. And then he is literally taken up into the heavens. If you had not been looking up, you would have missed it. In one account there were angels left behind.

The disciples were clear. This was not his normal post resurrection leaving.
We can only imagine how exhausting it was for them. They went from being disciples, friends of Jesus, to the fear around the crucifixion and being collaborators with someone the Romans had put to death. Then experiencing hope and renewed friendship with Jesus after the resurrection, only to be abandoned again at the ascension.
It is utterly exhausting just to think about it.
And we can only speculate that it was over before it had started. Many must have gone home and never looked up again. But the others. The others went to Jerusalem and experienced the Holy Spirit. But that is next week.
Pentecost is such a big deal that the Ascension often gets lost along the way. And yet we can say that the Ascension is why we are Christians. It is why this faith still persists 2000 years after the man in Galilee. Because Jesus is not just a risen man appearing and disappearing to his disciples in Israel. He is sitting at the right hand of God. To be a Christian is to live in the power of Christ ascended and in expectation of his return.

I wonder if you have ever pondered what it is all about.
Imagine if Jesus had not ascended, or if he had gone but didn’t do so publicly. Even if he had appeared and disappeared to disciples for years afterwards in the end he would have been forgotten.
We only believe today because some supernatural power was unleashed and that required that Jesus return to the Father from whom he had come, transformed by incarnation and suffering and death and resurrection.

Of course, We know that heaven isn’t up there. We know what’s up there. Astronauts and Cosmonauts Have been there. The Cosmonauts proudly declared no heaven to be found. We know there is just more of the same time/space continuum there is down here. WE know that God the Father doesn’t sit up there either. In some way or other Jesus was folded into space. Perhaps if we understood the 7 extra dimensions string theory says are folded into our three, we might understand better. But I expect that even then there would be mystery.

The ascension is a hard symbol to relate to ordinary life. With Christmas we have the idea of new birth and with Easter, there is life coming out of death. Ascension is much much harder. It certainly inspired much early and later Christian art. There was a particular emphasis on his feet, just to underline the idea that he had really gone—upwards. Glory and feet together.

There are a number of points about all this that are important, that we can ponder
Jesus was going back to the Source in God. He had come from the Father, as the incarnation of the logos. He was going back in the form of a human being.
A human being who is also God on earth is one thing, and quite scandalous enough but quite another to imagine a human being united with God the Father. Returning, changed, into the godhead. All on behalf of us.
Human nature is hard to define. But whatever we are, our understanding has to be challenged by the ascension, the movement of a risen human being into the being of God.
And challenged even more by the idea that we are in Christ, and we too will be moved with him into the heavens. Folded into space.
This is all a good reason to look up. To keep looking up. And by looking up I mean having an ascension mindset. The ascension means that whatever happens here on earth we know that Jesus is with God, interceding for us. That makes hopes possible. It makes meaning possible.

The other important point is that God is NOT far away, up in the sky, in fact.
He goes to the Father in order to be closer to everyone. Closer to all creatures on earth.
There is a strange comment about his interceding and making sacrifice for us in the godhead. We don’t know what that means. Except that it makes humanity pretty central to God’s concern.
The closest we can get to understanding is to think of the pope or a King or Queen. In order to have their power of leading us and representing us, they have to be a bit removed—quite a lot removed. They really can’t just be ordinary.

But if he had remained resurrected but not ascended, he might have appeared here and there and most people, most believers would have missed out.
So, we can be comforted that when events on earth seem out of control, or evil seems to have the upper hand, we know that Christ in heaven is infinitely close to us in the Spirit. God is not far away.
In communion we believe we participate here on earth, in that glorified presence of God.

For much of the twentieth century these really difficult texts were demythologized.
But more recently they are being noticed again. And I discussed last time, how the infinite strangeness of physics helps with some of these puzzles.

The other thing that is always emphasised, that Jesus emphasised, is that his going led the way for the third member of the trinity to manifest in power –the Spirit. And this is probably the major way in which God is accessible to everyone in Jesus—apart from communion. Through the Spirit. But that is not the only way, strangely.

Which brings me to my next point.
Now we might ask about the Ascension, and I often have, what about Paul?
Jesus appeared to Paul. Paul talks about Jesus appearing to the disciples, and then to him, as one untimely born. (1 Cor 15:8)
Not only that, there are many, many reports of Jesus appearing, like a ghost or a vision perhaps, but in a way that is more real than ordinary life to people throughout the last 2000 years.
One explanation for this is that Jesus is appearing from the end of time. Not only has space been folded, or Jesus has been folded into space, but time is also folded, so that in these appearances the end is present now or touches us now. At the right hand of God Jesus is able to give us promises and reassurances and appearances that cannot be given in time.
Jesus did say that he would come back, in the same way that he left. He would come back at the fulfilment of time. Living in expectation of that is another way of looking up.
Lastly, the ascension is more evidence that leans towards the idea that salvation is a process for Christ and for us. IT isn’t just something that happens at the crucifixion and it isn’t just something that happens when we first have faith. For Christ it involved his coming as a baby, growing as a human being, growing into his identity, walking among us and carrying our burdens and healing, being rejected and crucified. Then rising again. Then ascending. Then coming in the Spirit. But always interceding for us in the highest heaven. For us salvation is turning toward Christ, being baptized, taking the sacraments, having our spiritual senses expanded in life and then journeying with Jesus in death.

If we accept a more ascension-oriented understanding of salvation, that means that we are in that process and we are part of that process, and that means participating, and not just sitting back and accepting our salvation. We don’t earn salvation, but we do enter into it. We can summarise that active participation as just looking up. And a part of looking up is expecting and anticipating the Spirit, whose feast day is next week.

The ascension also means that when things get bad, a comet is approaching, a pandemic comes, tyrants rule the world, we know that illness and earthly rulers and heavenly bodies and even powers and principalities don’t have ultimate power. Jesus does, and he is ascended and interceding for us with God. That’s why those feet are such a powerful symbol.