Ascension in the Phases of Jesus Christ

 7 Easter  B    May 12, 2024
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26   Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13  John 17:6-19

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Some assumptions that I make when I read the New Testament writings are: 1-They were written decades after Jesus was gone. 2-They were written in the koine Greek, not in the language of Jesus and his Galilean disciples, Aramaic.  3-As later writings, these writings represent first the concerns of their writing contexts, and pertain less to the years zero to 30 when Jesus actually lived. 4-The writings of Paul in his letters regarding church order and the mystical experiences of the Risen Christ, pre-date the writing of the Gospels. This means that the teaching, preaching, and mystagogy of Paul and other leaders are programmatically interwoven in the Gospel narrative presentations of the life of Christ. The early communities were teaching the meaning of their experiences of the Risen Christ through a narrative of the life of Jesus.

The New Testament writings occurred in communities which were under great stress.  On one hand, followers of Jesus felt so favored and blessed with their mystical experiences even while being a minority group subject to situations of persecution which could arise at any moment.  The stress had created the situation of resorting to a coping phenomenon through a belief in a divine cosmic rescue.  

Preachers like St. Paul believed in a double ascension.  St. Paul wrote that in our mysterious relationship with Christ we are already raised and seated with Christ  in heavenly places, bespeaking the visionary state of the mystical experience.  At the same time, in the earliest New Testament writing, the first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul comforted his readers by referring to the event of being caught up in the air to meet the Lord.

One could say that the early Christians were like Paul, people waiting to be caught up in the air in some future cosmic divine rescue of being taken from this visible world into the invisible world, at least invisible to how the eyes now see.

Being caught up in the air in some divinely cosmic rescue is visionary language with a long tradition.  From writings of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Apocrypha, and other writings, now called the apocalyptic genre, we can find this tradition of being caught up in the air.  The apocalyptic genre functioned in oppressed communities to help them cope with their horrendous situations.  The apocalyptic literature provide visualizations as an analgesic for the pain of their life situations.

Being caught up in the air, in the apocalyptic tradition has also been called an "assumption."  Enoch, Moses, Elijah, and significantly later, Blessed Mary, are figures who are regarded to be those who were assumed into the afterlife in ways that stood out as being unique passings from this visible realm.  One of the features of these "assumption" personalities is how they reappear in the visionary realm, such as what Moses and Elijah did in the event of the Transfiguration.  And who has more apparitional re-appearances than the Virgin Mary?

The presentation of Jesus as the Ascended Lord and Messiah is comprised within this tradition of the Assumptions and being "caught up in the air."  But the Ascension of Jesus is seen as being very unique within this tradition of being caught up in the air.

It is in fact seen as but a phase in how God came to be manifested to humanity.  The Divine has such a capacity of Plenitude that nothing but Plenitude can comprehend Plenitude.  In order to be known by those who can know within the realm of Plenitude there had to be phases or manifestations or emptyings of the Divine into perceptible forms by humans. In the phases of the divine for human beings, we have the tradition of the phases of Jesus Christ.

What are the phases of Jesus Christ?  They include his state in the Beginning as Word who is God, his emptying phase as Word made flesh in Jesus in his birth, and the phases of his life highlighting his ministry and teaching, his continuing quest to manifest complete identity with human experience in his death on the cross, his burial, his resurrection re-appearances, his Ascension, and arriving at a glorified status with the fullness of his sojourn within human experience.  The Ascended Christ is one who has known full human identity so as to be the appropriate advocate and intercessor for humans living within the realm of God.

A famous prayer of Jesus is presented by the writer of John's Gospel, as his oracle of the ascended Lord.  Notice how the writer has Jesus speaking in the past tense: 

 "While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them."

What verb tense is "was," "protected," and "guarded?"  Past tense.  If Jesus prayed, "While I was with them," does this imply that he is no longer with them in the way that he had previously been with them?

And if Jesus is no longer with his disciple during this prayer, where is he?

The writer of the Gospel of John believed, like Paul, that he had the mind of Christ, and could speak and write in his name.  The writer wrote as an oracle of the Ascended Christ, and presented the Ascended Christ in the role which the early Christians understood him to have.  He was an intercessor on behalf of humanity and on behalf his friends who were committed to get his message of the love of God for the people of this world spread far and wide.  

The Ascension of Jesus, on this Ascension Sunday, resides in the tradition of the Assumptions, namely, that there is communicative connection or communicative travel between the invisible realms, the realm of words within each person, with the external world where the words take on the flesh through our sensorial experience.  Words are externalized outside of their interior origins within people, but they "ascend" inwards to be refreshed and edited for further occasions of being made flesh.  This process of the word being made flesh needs higher guidance so that word being made flesh is known in its best form of love and justice.  Jesus as the prime exemplar for how word is made flesh best continues to be an interior Word editor in our attempts to live out the best words of our life.

On this the Ascension Sunday, we as Christians believe that Christ exists in an invisible realm, the worded realm, where Word is God.   By word we are connected  with the divine and we can be given perpetual editorial guidance in how our lives are to be scripted.  Pray is word life in editorial process.  The ascended Christ is our Word editor, interceding for us and continually offering us new ways to script our lives, in making our words flesh in the practice of love and justice.

Let us be thankful for the phases of the life of Jesus Christ, who now resides in his ascended and glorified phase to intercede for us, to be the continual editor of our worded lives,  and to continually send us the connected procession of the Holy Spirit to aid us in the main experience of life, knowing ourselves as one with our heavenly parent.  Amen.