Forty days after Easter, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Ascension. The story of Jesus ascending to heaven is told in Luke’s Gospel and in Acts, with minor differences (even though scholars believe the same person or group wrote both books). Jesus and the disciples go a little ways outside of Jerusalem, they have a conversation (in Acts), Jesus blesses them (in Luke), and Jesus is carried up into heaven. In Acts, the disciples stare up watching to see where Jesus went (certainly understandable) until the two men in dazzling robes reappear to promise them that Jesus will return but now is time to focus on the world, not heaven. In Luke the men in dazzling robes don’t make an appearance, but the disciples return to Jerusalem “with great joy” and spend their time in the Temple worshiping God.
It is a strange story, but I guess it’s no stranger than the other things the disciples would have witnessed over the previous six weeks.
What might the implications be, of Jesus being taken into heaven whole and entire, in his body with all its scars and its experiences of the physical world? To me it implies that our bodies, and maybe the whole physical world, have been hallowed and made sacred. The theology which tells us “body bad, spirit good” (usually with much meaner words than that) is at best incomplete and misleading. It may be in the end that the physical and spiritual natures of the world are one and the same, and both sanctified and beloved by the Christ who carried his whole self into heaven.
— Rev. Toby