I wrote about the Ascension on Ascension Day, last Thursday. But it was no surprise to me that my own church seems to have completely ignored the Ascension this year – no special services on Thursday, no mention on the following Sunday, except possibly at the one of three services which I did not attend.
However, many churches marked the Ascension yesterday, and several bloggers who are also pastors of some kind have blogged their sermons. I won’t link to these as I don’t usually read sermons posted on blogs.
But I did read Maggi Dawn’s short homily, with its charming story about the Ascension, which well illustrates her point:
It’s a common mistake in Sunday School theology to make the Ascension sound like the moment when earth and heaven are separated from each other… as if Jesus looks back at the messy earth, post resurrection, and says, “job done, I’m out of here.” A view of the Ascension that separates God from us, heaven from earth, is a woeful theology, and misses the balletic beauty and completeness of the Easter season. … it was only by leaving the earth that Jesus could become permanently present with all of us. … the disciples stood there gaping at the sky hoping he would come back, when what they need to do was go and wait in the Upper Room like he’d told them, so that he could send them his Spirit.
Ummm, well, in 50 years I have never heard that perspective on the Ascension.
All I can say is you must move in some very strange circles if that is what is put across in your Sunday Schools Maggie.
To give some perspective on my experiences; I attended a Methodist Sunday School as a child, when I was a little older I sang in an Anglican Church choir, just after that I attended a Baptist Church and now I am part of a Newfrontiers Church.
My point being that I have experience of several ‘strands’ of Christianity over many years and what you are postulating has never been even hinted at let alone been stated.
This of course relates to the UK where I live.
Glenn, for your information Maggi is a Church of England priest working as a college chaplain. Her charming story is not of course to be taken as literal teaching.
But the idea that the Ascension marks the departure of Jesus from this world, the separation of heaven on earth, is alive and well in England. I’m not sure about in Sunday schools because I have never been in one. But it is in comments on this blog, for example this one, and this one which interprets John 16:7 as referring to the Ascension. I don’t say this to knock these thoughtful comments. But I do want to suggest that this teaching needs to be balanced with the truth that Jesus is always with us.