C. S. Lewis once remarked that the scriptural account of the Ascension of the Lord “presents greater difficulties to the modern mind than any other part of Scripture”. We tend, he explained, to see it in terms of “primitive crudities”, what with “the vertical ascent like a balloon, the local Heaven, the decorated chair to the right of the Father’s throne”. Our basic embarrassment with the Ascension is perhaps reflected in the fact that we rarely explicitly include it when speaking of the Paschal Mystery: the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus often ends abruptly just there. In Canada, the Ascension is no longer celebrated forty days after Easter but has been removed to a Sunday. All in all, there is a vague discomfort with the whole idea that is never articulated but often just below the surface.
And yet, the Ascension is one of the very few facts from Jesus’s life that is listed in the Creeds. Both the Apostle’s and Nicene Creed are silent on his teachings, on his miracles and even on Pentecost, but prominently feature his ascension into heaven. Luke not only ends his gospel with an account of the Ascension, but also uses it as the starting point of the Acts of the Apostles. Even if we have difficulty today seeing it, the Ascension must be central to the Christian faith in some way.
Lewis is a good place to start, perhaps, because he raises the obvious question, “Where did Jesus go after he was resurrected?” He is obviously no longer with us in the same way he was with his disciples after the resurrection. If his resurrection was a resurrection of his body, as our faith professes, and was not the appearance of a spectre, Jesus had to go somewhere. He is not hiding in the caves near the Dead Sea. But neither is he living on the moon, as might be implied if we took the “vertical ascent” in a childish way. Clearly what Luke intended to convey is that Jesus has gone to heaven—to “prepare a place” for us, as Jesus says in John’s gospel.
This, I think, is a very important point. We do not believe in a Saviour who did his work and then simply disappeared or vanished. “I will not leave you orphans”, Jesus told his disciples (Jn. 14:18). Matthew’s gospel ends with the promise, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
A key to understanding the Ascension in this light is offered by Benedict XVI in the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth. It is noteworthy that in Luke’s account of the Ascension, the disciples are not dejected when Jesus ascends to the Father. Instead, they are joyful: “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God” (Lk. 24: 51–53). Benedict explains that this is so because in the Ascension, Jesus blesses and draws near to the world:
The gesture of hands outstretched in blessing expresses Jesus’ continuing relationship to his disciples, to the world. In departing, he comes to us, in order to raise us up above ourselves and to open the world to God. That is why the disciples could return home from Bethany rejoicing. In faith we know that Jesus holds his hands stretched out in blessing over us. That is the lasting motive of Christian joy.
Indeed, if you think about it, it would be very hard for Jesus to really be with us unless he passed into a form of existence that was not confined to one place and time. It is only because of the ascension that we can truly be close to the Risen Lord. He who is “preparing a place for us” is not far from us but really quite near. We do not need to take a rocket to the moon to find him. He is with us, if only we realise, as Benedict delightfully phrases it, that we need to meet him through a “space travel of the heart”.