In the ancient world, the world around the time of Jesus,
coins and their image played an important role. They were the medium of the
time to show you who was in control often with the image of the ruler along
with an inscription that said something about them.
When Jesus asked for a coin (note he asked for one, intimating
that he didn’t have one) he asked whose image was on the coin and what
was the inscription.
The image was that of the Emperor Tiberius and the
inscription declared him to be a hight priest and the son of the divine
Augustus.
On Thursday last the Church celebrated one of the most
important Feasts, yet sadly often not celebrated and very often misunderstood
largely because of artistic imagery taking a literal interpretation of
Scripture.
The Feast of the Ascension is crucial when properly viewed to
gain an understanding of what the whole Biblical narrative is saying.
Given the cosmological understanding in the ancient world the
overall thinking was that God/s lived on mountains that reached into the
clouds. (Mount Olympus) In fact, the old English word for cloud was first used for a mass of
rock or earth, a hill. It was from the 13th century onwards that the
idea of what we now know and think of as clouds developed.
Acts 1.9 ‘After he
said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him
from their sight.’
We read on that the ‘Men of Galilee’ (presumably Jesus’ disciples)
were gazing into heaven. Our natural assumption
is that this means they were gazing, heavenwards’ – looking up into the sky.
Read that text carefully and it doesn’t say that they were
looking upwards, but to ‘heaven.’
Taking that quite literally, and with a limited cosmological
understanding before flight, before rockets, before we have explored space,
artist and others began to assume that ‘heaven’ acquainted with somewhere up
in the clouds. This gave rise to artists creating picture of Jesus’ ascension
in a ‘beam me up Scotty’ fashion (Captain Kirk never said that by the way!) Thus,
heaven began to be thought of as up above the clouds where God reigned and ruled.
‘There's a home for little children above the bright blue sky,’ Albert Midlane (1859)
A further development was the embracing of the Platonic
concept of the soul as a separate entity from the body, in ‘Christian terms’,
the spiritual over the physical. This in turn leads to the idea that the aim,
goal and purpose is to ‘escape’ from the shackles, toil and tribulations of
this earth bound life and ascend into the heavens to live with Jesus for ever.
Into this mix is added an evangelistic fervour that there is
only one way to ensure you can gain access to the life to come, to eternal life, to
life with Jesus in heaven. Our ‘sins’ make us earth tied, and hell bound. Jesus offers a way out of this dilemma, the
only way out.
However, this is not Biblical, and it is certainly not in any
way shape or form Jewish thinking, then or now, remembering Jesus was a Jew
as were his first followers.
If we try and reject the up language as referring to going
into clouds or something vertical and replace it with the idea of ascending to
a throne, like we witnessed King Charles do, then we begin to get closer to a
Hebrew and Scriptural viewpoint.
“At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.” Mark 13.26
This verse and the surrounding text has been read with
reference to Jesus’ second coming and if we have our ‘ticket’ and we are still
on earth, then we will be taken up into heaven to be with Jesus for ever.
However, in Daniel 7.13 we read, “In my vision at
night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the
clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his
presence.”
This is the Ascension of Jesus, coming into heaven, ascending
to the throne, being given all authority on heaven and earth. (Matthew 28. 18)
Put aside for a moment the language up and down,
clouds and heaven. Think instead of God’s sphere and our sphere. The origin stories of Genesis tell us that
both spheres overlapped, and that God walked about both spheres.
‘Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD
God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from
the LORD God among the trees of the garden.’ Genesis 3.8
The story also tells us that Adam and Eve choose a
path of self determination and set in motion a chain of events that would lead
to God’s sphere and our sphere becoming separated.
We then have several stories that talk about God seeking to create an overlap between the two spheres, a liminal sphere.
Significantly this was the tabernacle and then the temple, places that became heaven and earth spheres combined. Places where humans could encounter God and God could interact with earth and with humans and in one supreme example of a human who lived in both spheres, we know him as the Son of Man, Jesus.
Aligning our lives with Him, inviting the indwelling Holy Spirit into our lives, meditating and reading the Scriptures we begin to be moulded, shaped and fashioned into a Jesus likeness, a people who live in both spheres. The tabernacle and temple has become the Church universal with Christ as the Cornerstone.
1 Corinthians 6.19-20
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit,
who is in you, whom you have received from God?
The Ascension properly understood declares that Jesus
has ascended the throne and is seated at the right hand of God and has been
given all authority in heaven and earth.
Furthermore, an invitation is extended to everyone to
embrace this message of Good News and seek to live in a heaven and earth
reality in anticipation and as a signpost towards the day when it will once again
become a reality. (See Revelation 21)
However, verse
20 of 1 Cor 6 says, ‘You are not your own; you were bought at a
price. Therefore, honour God with your bodies. ‘
There is a task before each and everyone of us who
embrace the Christian faith and put our hope and our trust in Jesus.
Wherever we go, whatever we do, whatever we say, (or don’t say) all of that should be schooled in the Scriptures, infused with the Holy Spirit and witness that in us abides a heaven and earth reality, a type of mini temple dispersed throughout the earth.
And check out this short video from the Bible Project
that outlines the importance of the temple in the Biblical narrative.
What It Means For Your
Body to Be a Temple
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