Marginal Christianity

Ascension: when absence means "real presence" and "real presence" longs for full presence.

Tomorrow is Ascension Day. Ascension Day is about the God Who Completes. So far in the liturgical year we have met the God Who Calls (Advent), the God Who Comes (Christmas), the God Who Confronts (Epiphany), the God Who Cries (Lent), the God Who Confounds (Easter) and now the God Who Completes (Ascension). The rest of the year we’ll celebrate the God Who Comes Again (Pentecost), the Christian God (Trinity Sunday), the Cosmocrator (Christ the King Sunday) before starting anew with Advent next year. But what does Ascension Day complete? It completes God’s work through Jesus, as the reflection below shows. It’s the Feet that Matter In Acts’ account of Jesus’ ascension we read “as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (1:9).  Presumably, as the story goes, Jesus’ feet were the last part of him his apostles could see. After receiving their commission to be Jesus’ witness throughout the world, the apostles’ feet remain...

It’s the Feet that Matter In Acts’ account of Jesus’ ascension we read “ as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (1:9).  Presumably Jesus’ feet were the last part of him his apostles could see. After receiving their commission to be Jesus’ witness throughout the world, the apostles’ feet remained nailed to the ground. “T wo men in white robes stood by them.  They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? ’” This being “rooted to the spot” characterizes the disciples’ response to moments of divine revelation in Jesus’ ministry. At his Transfiguration, Peter wants to build dwelling places so Jesus, Moses, and Elijah might remain on the mountain (presumably with the three disciples). The women at Jesus’ tomb stand transfixed looking into Jesus’ empty tomb for him. And we have just seen the apostles staring into heaven as Jesus ascended. It would be too easy to riff on such rootedness and draw lessons a...

) Ascension culminates the achievement of God’s eternal purpose. Earlier I described God’s eternal purpose as his passion to have a world full of people to live over, with, for, and astonishingly as a human being, in intimate fellowship on a planet flourishing in beauty and abundance. Jesus Christ, fully human-fully divine, in his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension lived as God as a human being, and at the same time, the human being God intended us to be offering his life as the faithful rendition of humanity. In him we behold that interlocking of the realms of heaven and earth we spoke of earlier. In him we too have been lifted into that faithful rendition of humanity so we also may live life as God intended. Heaven and earth are united in another way in him. When he ascends to heaven he does so as the divine-human being he became in his incarnation. He sits today at God’s right hand as one of us. And again we share that position with him by his grace. It would be ex...

Ascension: The God Who Completes (Credit to Inherit the Mirth ) Sadly underemphasized but monumentally important Jesus’ ascension saves our faith from becoming “merely” Easter-centered (as if Jesus work for us is over) or “merely” Pentecost-centered (as if the Spirit’s work is somehow other or different from Jesus’). The ascension completes Jesus’ -journey from heaven to earth and back to heaven -work of salvation from womb to tomb to heavenly throne room -achievement of God’s eternal purpose Thus, the God we meet in the face and work of Jesus is the God who completes all he has desired and worked for. No stronger affirmation of divine faithfulness is available or needed. Mention of heaven and Jesus flying through the sky on way there account for much of the embarrassment and perplexity many feel about this part of Jesus’ story. Though the USSR cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is famously reported to have said that on his trip into space in 1961 that he looked around and did...

August 27, 2012August 26, 2012 Marc Cortez Featured , Theology [W]hy do heroes ride off into the sunset? Wouldn’t it be better if they stayed? Who wants a hero who skips town as soon as the crisis is over? The hard stuff is what comes next. Sure you beat up the big bad guy, but what about all the little ones? What about all the problems you didn’t fix? What about the daily grind of living in a broken world? Look at you on your cool horse. Who do you think is going to clean up all that poop it left behind? Forget the sunset. I want a hero who sticks around, not one who takes off. But isn’t that exactly what Jesus did? His people waited thousands of years for him to come. And finally, the Messiah arrived. Then….bam! He’s gone. One minute he’s there with the disciples, and then “he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight” (Acts 1:9). He ascended. He left. I can just picture the disciples standing there, staring into the sky lik...

What was God's response?  What was the reaction of the Triune God to such a disaster?  The response of the Father, Son and Spirit to Adam's plunge into ruin can be put into one word: No!  In that No! echoes the eternal Yes! of the Trinity to us.  Creation flows out of the fellowship of the Triune God, and out of the decision, the determined decision, to share the Triune life with us.  That will of God for our blessing in Christ, that determined Yes! to us, translates into an intolerable No! in the teeth of the Fall.  God is for us and therefore opposed–utterly, eternally and passionately opposed–to our destruction.  That opposition, that fiery and passionate and determined No! to the disaster of the Fall, is the proper understanding of the wrath of God.  Wrath is not the opposite of love.  Wrath is the love of God in action, in opposing action.  It is precisely because the Triune God has spoken an eternal Yes! to the human race, a...

http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2013/05/ascension-and-embrace/ by Debra Dean Murphy 9 May 2013 The Feast of the Ascension Acts 1:1-11 Psalm 47 Ephesians 1:15-23 Luke 24: 44-53 Nor doth he by ascending show alone, But first He, and He first enters the way.                                                                                              John Donne, Ascension I was puzzling over what to write here when across my Facebook newsfeed came the story  of a New Englander (a “Yale grad” the headline no...