Day 53 - Saturday, April 22
The Ascension of Jesus
Scripture: Mark 16:15-20
And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

Poetry:
"Ascension"
by Marie J. Post
Cock’s crow and no wheel turning on the cobbled streets
Where night still clutches pocked walls
And even beggars, sleep-spraddled in corners,
But here, outside the gate, beyond centurion’s stare,
The shadows blue to light and dawn accentuates
The farthest mountain tops.
What mission--this too early morning stroll?
What lesson to be taught that could not be better said
And translated in heavily curtained rooms?
What need of hill-tiered seats and pulpit-rock?
Does this too steep ascent through admonition, charge, promise
Predict another (darker) day?
Now, in the morning clarity of mountaintop illumination,
Before light-dazzled eyes, the slow and sure withdrawal
Leaving nothing but explanations gently given.
And yet, as He said, he walks their downward road
Knowing too well their sad bewilderment,
Their baffled answers in marketplace and temple courts
Where disbelief and ridicule catch all their words in nets.

THIS SAME JESUS

In Christian art—as in Christian theology—the ascension of Christ is profoundly connected to two subsequent biblical events that bracket the life of the church: the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) and the eschatological arrival of Christ “to judge the living and the dead” (2 Tim 4:1; Acts 10:42). In artistic terms, one way to conceptualize this connection is to say that in the ascension Christ is “taken up” into the (pictorial) position from which the Spirit is “poured out on all flesh” (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28) and from which he will judge history with “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18; 1 Pet 3:22). In Acts 1, immediately after Jesus is “lifted up” suddenly two men in white stood among the disciples, assuring them that “this same Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in the same way you saw him go into heaven” (1:11). For centuries, the church’s visual theologians (artists) have thus depicted Jesus’s ascension and return “in the same way,” taking the two subjects to mutually imply one another.

The image depicted here is from a sixth-century illuminated manuscript from Syria called the Rabbula Gospels. This image densely packs multiple biblical allusions together in order to portray the ascension as an event of divine enthronement. Here Christ ascends not simply into the sky but into heaven—the world above, beneath, and behind the visible spheres of earth and sky—depicted here as a sapphire throne encircled by a rainbow (see Ezek 1:26-28; Rev 4:2-3; cf. Exod 24:10). This enthronement is attended not only by angels who bring crowns but also by the mysterious “four living beings” who surround the throne of God in Ezekiel’s visions, each with the faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, each flashing forth fire and lightning, each accompanied by “a wheel within a wheel” (Ezek 1:4-28)—these beings then reappear in more differentiated forms in the Book of Revelation (Rev 4:6–6:8, 7:11, 14:3, 15:7, 19:4).

By synthesizing the ascension of Jesus, described at the end of Luke and beginning of Acts, with the apocalyptic visions of the throne room of God in Ezekiel and Revelation, this image theologically interprets the ascension not as Christ “leaving”—and certainly not as his launching somewhere into outer space—but as Christ taking his place “at the right hand of the power of God” (Luke 22:69; cf. Matt 26:64; Acts 7:56; Rom 8:34; Eph 1:20; Col 3:1; Heb 8:1, 12:2; 1 Pet 3:22). This position is not one of absence from the world but of ongoing relation to it: it is precisely this position from which he is present to the world through the Spirit, and from which he will return to consecrate the marriage of heaven and earth, “making everything new” (Rev 21:1-5).

This image also theologically interprets the meaning of the church following the ascension. It does not depict the disciples in the historical moment of Christ’s ascension as much as it presents the church across times and places testifying to Jesus as the ascended Lord of history. After all, Paul (the balding, bearded man on the left holding the book) is included here among the disciples, even though the ascension occurred years before his conversion (the same convention is also often used in depictions of Pentecost). Similarly, Mary stands in the center of the image directly beneath Jesus, not merely as an historical person but, more importantly, as an image of the universal church: just as Mary said yes to the overshadowing, incarnating work of the Spirit (Luke 1:35-38), so too the church, throughout its ages, must continue to be the body of Christ in the world specifically by saying yes to the reconciling work of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:12-13).

PRAYER
You are not only risen and alive, you are Lord! This is your ascension, your ascendancy over the whole universe. You stand over and above all that is best in life as its source. You stand above all that is worst as ultimate victor. You stand above all powers and authorities as judge. You stand above all failure and weakness and sin as forgiveness and love. You alone are worthy of total allegiance, total commitment. You are Lord, “My Lord and my God.”
Amen.
(Rex Chapman)

Jonathan A. Anderson
Associate Professor of Art