WHERE IS YOUR RISEN LORD?
Luke 24:44-53
Ascension of Our Lord
Analysis by Fred Niedner
44Then Jesus said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” 50Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
From Wikimedia Commons
“We keep on finding Jesus – on the road with us even when we don’t recognize him, in the breaking of the bread, in the stranger to whom we show hospitality. He’s everywhere!”
DIAGNOSIS: Christus Absconditus
Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem): Hide and Seek
Luke’s gospel depicts a curious, sometimes comical game of hide-and-seek Jesus plays with his family and friends. It begins on the way home from Passover when Jesus is a boy (Luke 1:41-51). His parents think he’s with them on the road, but he’s not. Three days later they finally find him in the temple discussing theology, and he asks why they ever thought to look for him anywhere else. At the end of Luke’s story, Jesus’ women friends saw where they laid his dead body (23:55), but when they went to find him again on the third day, he’d gone missing and two fellows tell them they’re looking in the wrong place. Later that day, the boyhood story happens in reverse. The Emmaus couple returning home from Passover thinks Jesus will never again be with them, but he is. Then, just when they recognize him, he vanishes. Very late that same evening, it all happens again. Jesus appears among frightened followers who don’t know what to think or believe concerning his whereabouts. He shares some munchies, then disappears again. Acts 1 suggests the game went on for 40 more days before Jesus disappeared, or rather, “was taken up,” Elijah-style (cf. the Greek of Acts 1:11 and 2 Kings 2:9-11 LXX) for what seems a final time. Over and over, Jesus’ people can’t find him, sometimes even when he’s walking and talking with them. Somehow, he’s never where he’s supposed to be – by our lights, anyway.
Step 2: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem): Hermeneutics of Glory
We have clues aplenty that our searching, like that of Mary and Joseph, the women at the tomb, or the disciples as they gaze into heaven, has been misguided. Three times in Luke 24 we listen in on a lesson that explains how to read the TANAK (Law, Prophets, and Writings) in such a way as to find God’s true messiah, twice taught by Jesus himself and once by Moses and Elijah, who embody the law and prophets and who keep showing up all through Luke (Transfiguration, empty tomb, and ascension scenes) to teach us how to read their stuff. Whatever else you see in the scriptures, this much you must assume and diligently look for – the messiah had to suffer, and only then rise to whatever life and role he will have in “ruling” the world as God’s chosen one. But we can’t believe it. When Jesus hangs there between those two thieves, our instinctive take on that scene aligns most truly with the scoffing thief in Luke’s story, not the one who at least half-jokingly asks the fellow-condemned guy with that “King of the Jews” sign over his head if he can be his lieutenant when he takes over. Millennia of tradition and now our own common sense says this cannot be where and how the messiah ascends his throne! A messiah is born to rule the world! We can’t believe you find the Lord’s messiah here, scorned and dying. What a sick, sorry joke.
Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Ultimate Problem): Waiting ‘til Doomsday for Our Due
So, yes, we have been to all the Bible classes and had our mind-opening lessons in hermeneutics, thank you. Why, then, do we ask one last time, along with the rest of the disciples around Jesus as he’s about to be taken up, “Lord, is this the time you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Because no matter how many times we hear it, and even get it, the necessity that the messiah must suffer and die remains counter-intuitive and slips away so easily. Let just one person or thing lay us low, and the voice from the wilderness arises in us, “Yeah, yeah, Jesus, we get all that spiritual stuff. It’s cool. We do all that widows and orphans care you talked about and we make a habit of that last supper thing you did. But when will you put us in charge? We’re your inner circle, for Pete’s sake! We should be running the world! Or at least have control over our own lives.” So we sit and wait to receive the power and control we deserve. We’ll wait as long as it takes, which turns out to be as long it takes to end up nailed somewhere, on a cross we didn’t choose.
PROGNOSIS: Being Found with Jesus
Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Ultimate Solution): A Hell of a Place to Hide
As we hang there, still waiting, we can’t help asking, “Where in hell are you, Jesus?” And to our astonishment, this time we’ve gone searching in the right place. He’s here. With us. In hell. Actually, he got here first, and he welcomes us with the promise that regardless of what this boneyard looks like, it happens to be “Paradise” (Persian for “Garden of Eden,” by the way) simply because we’re with him, and together we have people to see and things to do thanks to the Holy Spirit’s baptism that still enlivens and clothes us, even here.
Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution): Receiving the Gift of Trust
We can’t believe it! Well, of course we can’t. But that never stops the Holy Spirit, who keeps on sending the TANAK team (Moses and Elijah) and all the other witnesses to review the old lesson about how to read the scriptures and tirelessly call us back to trusting in God’s promises of mercy and forgiveness and God’s hold on us and faithfulness to us in the very times when we have no control or power of the sort we have craved. We believe. Help comes in our unbelief.
Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution): Seeing It All Again
In the last line of the last scene of Jesus’ hide and seek game with his family and friends, the two white-robed fellows tell the disciples as they gaze into heaven trying to see the taken-up Jesus, “Don’t look up there. He’ll come in the same way you saw him go.” (Acts 1:11) Which is our clue to ponder the whole account of Jesus’ being taken-up, a sequence that began in Luke 9:51, “When the time came for him to be taken up, he set his face toward Jerusalem, and he would not be turned back.” This means we don’t look for a reverse levitation event, but rather a repeat of the entire journey to the cross, which Luke then proceeds to re-tell in the Acts of the Apostles in the form of the story of the disciples, and us with them, on journeys of daily cross-bearing discipleship that take us, now the body of the risen Christ himself on the loose in the world, to all the places we will bear witness and in his name comfort, forgive, heal, and give our lives with and for each other. We don’t and can’t control the world, but we have each other, for the Spirit keeps us gathered and together. And we keep on finding Jesus – on the road with us even when we don’t recognize him, in the breaking of the bread, in the stranger to whom we show hospitality. He’s everywhere!
