What Are You Looking For? Part 1: The Nicene Creed

He Ascended Into Heaven

He Ascended Into Heaven

            Of all the events in the life of Jesus, this one would have been the coolest one to be at.  There you are, on a beautiful spring day, surrounded with the disciples.  You’re just hanging out with Jesus.  It’s been forty days since the resurrection and during that time he has eaten with you and taught you many things.  Somehow in your heart, you know it’s not going to last.  You don’t know how the time with him will end, but you know it will end.  At least in a manner of speaking.  Jesus is telling you to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes.  Then you are to go out and be his witnesses to everyone.  It sounds pretty good.  After all, he’s with you.  He just said he would be with you until the end of the world.  Then suddenly he starts lifting off of the ground.  He ascends higher and higher, up into the clouds until you can’t see him anymore.  You just stand there with your mouth hanging open.  You rub your eyes.  You can’t believe, can’t comprehend, and can’t process what you just saw.  You did just see what you thought you saw, didn’t you? 

Suddenly two men dressed in white are standing there. They start speaking, “Men of Galilee…”  You see their lips move, but your brain is still in overload from what you’ve just seen and the words don’t penetrate.  It sounds something like teacher of cartoon fame.  They talk a little louder.  “Men of Galilee…”  Still nothing.  Finally, in exasperation, “MEN OF GALILEE!”  Finally you stop staring at the sky and look at them.  “Why are you staring at the sky:  This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”  (Acts 1: 11 NABRE) 

I freely admit my take isn’t entirely scriptural, but would your attention instantly be with the two men in white if you had just seen Jesus suddenly rise off of the earth in disappear into the clouds?  Mine wouldn’t.  I’d be trying to comprehend what I had just seen and what it meant.

            So what did it mean?  For one thing, it meant that, unlike other people who had been raised from the dead, Jesus would never die again.  His body was a glorified body.  Lazarus would die as would every other person who had been raised from the dead.  Their bodies were raised just as mortal as they had been before they died the first time. 

            It also underscored his divinity.  It was, if you will, the final exclamation point to his physical time here on earth.  No human could ascend to the Father.  Only the Son could.  In the Incarnation, the Word, the Son, the Divine became flesh.  In the Passion, that flesh died.  That human soul became separated from the body.  In the Resurrection, the soul is re-united with the physical, glorified body.  In the Ascension, we see that even the Glorified Christ was more than just man.  He was divine as well.  By the Ascension of his glorified human body with his human nature and his divine nature, he opened the way for us to the Father.  Humans could be in heaven.  To someone of his day and time, that was the greatest impossibility.  Humans could not be where the Godhead was.  It didn’t happen.  It couldn’t happen.  By his death and resurrection, a new thing had begun.  They were just beginning to understand what that meant.  Two thousand years later, maybe we’ve kind of forgotten.