ASCENSION DAY- PART TWO

Part One Here

"In Christ your Son, our life and yours are brought together in a wonderful exchange. He made his home among us that we might forever dwell in you."
Scottish BCP

When I think of Mount Sinai and the giving of the law, I always picture Cecil B DeMill’s version in The Ten Commandments.

I can’t help it.

The peak of the mountain can’t be seen. It’s swallowed up by the tremendous cloud that’s gathered there. There’s rumbling and lighting flashes. All very foreboding. Mr. DeMill did a pretty good job, actually. How do you do justice to God’s Throne room?

Throughout scripture God’s ruling presence manifests itself as a Cloud of Glory. There is more going on here than condensation. Just as a part of the atmosphere may break off from the boundary of the water’s surface and float about in the liquid world below, the constantly present (but hidden) dimension of God’s habitation bubbles into sight and hovers about before our senses.

That’s what going on up there amidst the crashing and flashing on the mountain top- God is present in his regal power and glory. In fact the rumbling is attributed to the thousands of angels that surround His throne. (Psalm 68:15-17) God drove this chariot cloud before the Israelites in the wilderness. His fiery glow illuminated it by night. The tabernacle and temple were both replica’s- complete with angelic representations. It came and settled on these meeting places (Exodus 40:34-35, 1 Kings 8.10, 11) so fully that the priests could not enter. Isaiah once entered the temple and bent his knee amidst Israel’s impressive mock-up. The sound of massive beating wings replaced the temple silence and horrified, he raised his head to find himself in the reality itself. He was inside the cloud and God was on the throne before him. (Isaiah 6).

Ezekial saw it.

Pharaoh felt its heat as it dropped between his armies and the children of Israel at the Red Sea.

The shepherds of Bethlehem were surrounded by it at our saviour’s birth, and now the risen Lord is lifted up into it.

Our Lord’s ascension was into God’s ruling presence. Daniel described the scene in a passage that is regularly misapplied to the Second Coming. (Notice: The Son of Man is going up to God- not down from him.)

Daniel 7:13-14 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

This is what happened before God's throne on that Thursday almost two-thousand years ago. Christ- the Son of Man- was given the crown of the universe.

This seems so common place that we miss it- Christ is King.

But think it through. What’s new? Our God has always been God. At the very least this means that he has always ruled. What changed on this Thursday?

Man had come of age. Through the mystery of the incarnation, God fulfilled all that he had dreamed for his favorite creature- the one he referred to as sons and daughters. A man was seated on the throne of God. A man is now ruling creation…and we know him. It’s our big brother. That’s amazing news.

This was always God’s plan for mankind. He intended on "raising him" from child to glorious ruling adult. Sin hadn’t necessitated it (or the incarnation that accomplished it); rather it was accomplished in spite of our fallenness. Our Spiritual elder brothers were intended as tutors. But because of our rebellion they became our sentries, too. God had made us lower than the angels, and with the evil of Eden he had placed them with flaming blades to keep us from doing more harm.

Can you imagine the scene on that Coronation Day? A seemingly endless stair rose up towards the fiery being sitting on the throne high above. All of creation, from least to greatest, lined its way.

Christ’s sandaled foot touched the first step and the elements and waves bowed to him. He continued upward as oak and pine bent to the ground. Next came the animals as their new sovereign passed by. Up he moved until he reached the dizzying heights of the angelic armies. Lowest to greatest they bowed as walked past- the hands that once held swords of flame touched the ground in fealty to the human who dared look them in the eye. Finally only Michael, Gabriel, and (if tradition is to be trusted) Raphael were left. Each of the terrifying archangels knelt before the young Jew, reached out battle hardened hands and kissed the carpenter’s calluses. No one else stood between him and God, and God rose and smiled and with a motion of his hand indicated his own seat, and Christ embraced Him and turned and sat down. All of heaven exploded in love and admiration. The new King had been crowned…and he is a man like us.

Here the work of God in Christ for you and me reached its completion. God has given us much more than we had thrown away. What's his is ours. A human being has been taken up into the very life of God, and like thousand of lesser fathers would do centuries later, He handed over the keys to the family car.

ASCENSION DAY- PART ONE

9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Acts 1:9-11


A baby is good, but not all that she will one day be.

My daughter graduates from high school this month. She’s working, driving, choosing and…she’s beautiful as a young woman. I’m so very proud of her. I’m proud of each of my other five children, too, but this is her time of accomplishment, and she’s accomplished much.

I can remember when I could hold her in one hand. Someone must have said “She is perfect,” in the delivery room, because we were all thinking it. We meant it with all of our parental hearts. No exaggerating or covering up. She was just right, and yet… our dreams were for more than the pink, mostly bald little figure, who instinctively snuggled against her mother’s breast. She was totally good and yet not finished. Perfect and yet not mature.

We want our children to grow up. We hope that one day they will take their place beside us- to argue their perspective on the Bowl Championship Series, to take over the family business, to arrive at Thanksgiving with cranberry sauce and grandkids in tow.

Parents “raise” children. In the South we go all out and “raise them up.” What a rich expression.

Our calling is to bring about the maturation and exaltation of our children. We mold them and fashion them for ever increasing glory and responsibility. We help them grow into ever more lucid images of their creator, for the glory of God, as an ancient Saint declared, is man fully alive. We pray that our little boys and girls will one day ascend to the heights that their baptismal birthright calls them.

This is our business because it was first our God’s business. The story of scripture is the story of God as Parent. Perfect as men and women were in their original state, there was more for them. Born, as scripture reminds us, a little lower than the angels, God had a much greater place for us. Redemption is about that journey to maturity, even in the midst of rebellion. God’s a good parent even to a clan of brats.

All of this is important, if we want to understand the significance of tomorrow- our Lord’s Ascension Day.

Sunday School versions of biblical events tend to sugar things up. A coating of sugar is tasty, but it can hide what lies beneath. Often on nasty processed grains, this is helpful. Usually on important biblical narratives, its not.

The account of Noah, for example, brings to mind rainbows and a boat full of smiling animals, but can you imagine the smell from a world of rotting corpses that must have greeted the emerging family? The story of Christ’s ascension comes with similar nursery visions of Christ rising up and flying off through the clouds into space- past Saturn and his rings and Pluto’s controversial body.

I used to envision him still going with a smile on his face. That would put him somewhere around two-thousand light years from earth by now. Maybe you can remember singing a song in Junior Church that began with a countdown to blasted off before declaring “Somewhere in Outer Space, God has prepared a place, for those who trust him and obey.” Space travel is cool, but that’s not it. Ascension Day doesn’t dispute the claim that the first man in space was a Russian. Its significance lies elsewhere, and the key is in those clouds that St. Luke mentions.

Lunch is over. I'll pick this back up.

AMERICAN P.I.E.

I’ve ranted a good bit against Modernity.

Don’t like it.

At all.

Apparently the few who stop by get that part: I’m against it. But I’ve been asked just what I mean by “it”.

Derrick at Beaten with Brains has provided a very helpful summary of the situation- as it applies to American Evangelicalism, anyway.

He calls it American P.I.E. It's a clever acronym for the Pietism, Individualism, and Egalitarianism that form the lens through which American Christians see the world, God and themselves.

In this series he discusses plain ‘ole generic pietism, but it also comes in delicious varieties. There's this flavor, and this one, too. He then goes on to talk about egalitarianism. Individualism gets attention in every treatment, because it's to P.I.E as milk is to Ice Cream.

It’s a thoughtful summation. After reading it you’re likely to look around and think, “Ah, now I understand.”

GOD, STRAIGHT UP

I had my radio on during the trip home from work last night.

It was a Christian station.

There was “Preaching”.

I know, but it is Lent, after all. A good time for audio self-flagellation. So leave me alone…

Anyway, I was listening to this fellow explaining that his biblical protagonist was in a fix, but fortunately the protagonist knew where to turn. He knew he needed God.

Now there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. It’s dead on, actually. But the preacher didn’t stop there. He made the pastoral point that it was God alone that was needed.

Just God- straight up. He didn’t need a worship service, or a Bible study, nor…whatever. He just needed God- pure, direct and unadulterated.

Perhaps all he meant to say was that its possible to look to all this other stuff instead of our God. True enough. That’s the basic danger of living in a world designed to refract its Creator’s glory. But I don’t think that was where he was going. He was meaning to establish a principled separation between God and …whatever. He wasn’t distinguishing. He was dividing.

This is very wrong headed. I don't mean desiring God, certainly; but believing that He wants to be or that its even possible to receive him, unmediated.

At the heart of our faith is the belief that God made himself available, knowable, and powerful in our lives- once and for all, mind you- through the mediation of a human, creaturely nature. We know our God through the blood, touch, tears, work, weakness and humility of a man. We learned this story through the diligence, care and preservation of many men and women. We heard this knowledge through the tissue, sense and sheer physicality of our own bodies.

Mediated, all of it.

Exclusively internal, intellectual, and totally unincarnated notions may form the conduit to God for some faiths, but not ours. Those faiths would teach that the only true bridge to God is located somewhere between our ears. The doorway is a spiritual one only. But our faith teaches that the gate itself is a crucified body and God himself is seen and served in the outstretched hands of a thirsty child.

The problem is Modernity. I really need to work that into the title somehow. Perhaps, Dappled Thoughts- Damn Modernity or Damned Modernity and Dappled Thoughts. Hmmm. I’ll work on it. But in the meantime it needs to be resisted. Here's a start:

Douglas Jones wrote a series of short essays making a beginning toward a more incarnational understanding of truth and knowledge. I hope you'll read each one. [HT: Derrick from whom I stole the links]

Knowing is Doing
Knowing is Haiku
Knowing is Presence
Knowing is Imaging
Knowing isn’t Syllogistic
Knowing is Tracing
Knowing is Loving
Knowing is Story
Knowing is Community
Knowing is Timing
Knowing is Falling

HIS DARK MATERIALS

I’m thoroughly enjoying Philip Pullman’s His
Dark Materials Trilogy. These award winning books certainly have an ax to grind; it’s a heavily Gnostic one, too.

When I left off reading, the young heroes were raising an expedition to hunt down and destroy God. Not your typical young adult fare; at least, it’s usually not so explicitly told. I’m not through with the story yet, but I think they’re going to be successful with the whole enterprise. Assuming the books’ underlying myth, this won’t be a bad thing.

In my opinion, this isn’t an attack on the Father of our Lord (as much as it may have been meant to be so). The Authority, as God is called in the trilogy, is not the Creator. Obviously, not the same guy.

But there’s little doubt that many will confuse the god of Pullman with the God of the Bible. There’s even less doubt that Pullman’s church and the Christian church will become conflated. Unlike the situation with The Authority, however, I’m not sure there’s an absolute gap between the organization Pullman describes and the one I’ve experienced. That’s a problem. But the first step towards solving a problem is in realizing that the problem exists. Pullman is helpful here.

It’s good for God’s people to see themselves as the rest of the world sees them and to hear the story that they tell as a non-Christian might hear it. Though his story is about a different god and a different message entirely, we need to ask, “Why did Mr. Pullman think of this story when he thought of the Church?”

Wouldn’t it be nice if the simple day to day lives of Christians were enough to discredit the veracity of this sort of narrative? But they’re not. We forget that we are the message, and by and large we’re a message the world wants no part of. Like the church of Pullman’s novels, our own corporate self-centered demise ought to be applauded because neither have much of anything to do with The Kingdom- excepting nomenclature.

Anyway, I look forward to talking with my kids about this one. I think it will be helpful…and fun. But it worries me a bit regarding the audience as a whole, because it’s so well done. The new movie version (scheduled for release in December of this year) might actually succeed in subverting the genuine Christian story precisely where the embarrassingly flawed DaVinci Code failed.

Dr. Rowan Williams, current Archbishop of Canterbury, showed us what “being that message” might look like in a discussion with Philip Pullman. He didn’t blame the author for mistaken ideas, which the church’s own history has made credible; nor did he grow defensive when the author’s shots came close to home. He sat down, listened and conversed, and in doing so showed us the kind of winsome, humble, and intelligent person of conviction that others just might be drawn to. If all Christians were more like he, we could just enjoy this well told story without worrying about its negative effect; because no one could possibly find us lurking about in Pullman’s yarn.

HEAVEN'S NOT MY HOME

I grew up singing “This world is not my home. I’m just a passin’ through.”

I shouldn’t have. Sung it, I mean.

Turns out that I had it exactly backwards.

I believed heaven was a place “somewhere else – over there.” I believed that the phrase The Kingdom of Heaven referred to that specific piece of “somewhere else." I also thought that Jesus, therefore, went around talking to people about how to arrive at that “somewhere else” and that he died on the cross to "save souls"- as opposed to bodies because only souls can make the trip; and so finally, I knew the gospel was about “going to heaven when you die.”

Simple. Popular. Self-evident, really.

And underlying the whole thing was that powerful ditty “This world is not my home. I’m just a passin’ through”

Backwards. All of it.

Remove the ditty and the whole landscape turns on its head.

Let me show you-

1. Heaven is that part of this creation where God is especially present. Sometimes he pulls back the veil to let us see what’s already here. Its just that sort of thing that happened to Elisha and his servant in 2 Kings 6:15-19. When heaven opens (as in Rev. 4:1), we’re not taken away from here, rather we are able to see all of here.

2. When Jesus or his cousin John wandered into a village telling people that the Kingdom of God was at hand, what did the villagers hear?

Come on, now. We have the entire Old Testament from which to answer. Did they hear “this is how you can go to heaven when you die?" Why would they have heard that? People coming out of a Twentieth Century Ole’ Time Revival tent meeting might have heard that, but a second century Jewish potter? I can’t find that sort of thing in the Old Testament at all.

No, the kingdom of God wasn’t a place. The gospel wasn’t a map. Jesus wasn’t saying he’d discovered a new route to a special destination. Rather, the Kingdom of God was a fact. The gospel was a proclamation.

It wasn’t that a new territory had been found; it was that God’s kingship had been asserted and established over this world. God had returned to Israel to set everything right. The kingdom was at hand because the king was present. God was in town.

3. We affirm every Sunday (because Holy Scripture most assuredly teaches it) that God created every visible thing. Stuff was God’s idea. Specifically, these Heavens and this Earth were the handiwork of God, and he took great joy in them. We have scriptural authority on that.

Was it all a mistake? Was Adam’s fall God’s big chance to get out of the whole “stuff” business?

The entire redemption story says otherwise; Romans 8 makes the point explicitly. God is saving all of creation. All of this creation.

There’s no better guarantee of this than the verity of Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning. While Good Friday was God’s “No!” to the fallen state of things in his world, Easter was his great "Yes!” to the goodness of Creation. Good Friday might have been followed by something else. If God had changed his mind, this was the time and place to show it.

“All of this is cursed” the cross declared, “and now….we’re going to do this instead.”

But that’s not what happened. Christ’s death was followed by a bodily resurrection. He put this world on in his incarnation; and he refused to take it off again- even after his death. Weeks later, on a Thursday, he took that same flesh back into the very life of the Trinity. Heaven and Earth met in that individual; because of him Revelation 21 promises the same for this world.

God isn’t in the business of saving bodiless souls. God has saved, is saving, and will save this world of men and women. He does so without destroying their humanity. Could salvation work in any other way?

This, then, is the great Christian hope. We do not look forward to “going to heaven when we die," rather we look forward to “the resurrection of the dead” and the New Heavens and New Earth that will be transformed along with our risen bodies- as was our Lord’s.

If my family were to travel to Disney World, we might stop for the night in Valdosta. Motel stays are a rarity for us; so no doubt, we’d have a good time, but in the morning we’d be off- because our destination is Disney World, not Motel 6. Heaven considered as a separate realm of this creation is not my home. It may be the case that after my death, God will preserve me there for awhile, but that’s not where I’m going. I shouldn’t confuse the two.

No doubt Christ has those who have fallen asleep before the final renewal of all things well in hand. Though questions of post mortem existence are important, they are insignificant when compared with the rest of the story- simply because they are a mere hiatus along the way.

This is tremendously practical. This life, this world, this enfleshed human person is the point of God’s activity. As someone else has suggested, the proper question for evangelism isn’t “If you were die tonight where would you spend eternity?," but rather “If you were to live for another 1000 years, what kind of person would you be?”

Salvation's not about life after death, but rather about life after life after death. Perhaps the best introduction to this historic understanding is N.T. Wright’s inexpensive booklet New Heavens, New Earth: The Biblical Picture of the Christian Hope. It’s available here from Grove Books.