Ascension pt II

In 2014 I did a two part sermon in the morning and the evening of one day, someone recently asked me about the questionable ending to Mark's Gospel (Covered in the 2nd Sermon), so I thought I'd share what I'd already written on the subject...

2014.06.01 6pm
Ephesians 1:15-23
Mark 16:14-20

This morning we were looking at the Ascension of Christ in to heaven, and we were thinking about how hard it is to tell the story of these unique events in the life of the early Church, and particularly how hard it must have been for the disciples to find the words to describe something they had never seen before. We talked about the difficulty of knowing when to finish a story and how in some stories it is important to include something of what comes next.

This morning we heard the account of the Ascension from the writer of Luke in Acts chapter 1. This evening we heard the account of the ascension from Mark's Gospel. This account gives us some dilemmas to deal with. This morning we thought about some films that go on too long and some that finish at just the right moment, and how important it was that we don't simply end this story with the empty tomb. Now ironically the struggle with Mark's Gospel is that some of the early manuscripts that we have of it do just that. They finish with the women fleeing in fear from the empty tomb. Those versions of Mark's Gospel leave everything open including the tomb. Cinematically that's a great ending - that leaves the universe hanging on a knife edge. It's like the end of the films The Italian Job, The Usual Suspects or Inception.

But what do we do with the knowledge that there is more than one version of the ending of Mark's Gospel out there? In a way it's like the several versions of the classic 1980's Sci-fi movie Blade Runner that now exist, the most important difference being the change in the ending with some versions that fundamentally change the nature of the lead character. With fictional stories it's all bit of fun to wrestle over ambiguous endings and alternative versions. But With the Gospel's we are talking about differences that change the world. So what do we do with that? Do we trust those who chose to add the ascension story? Do we dig into the history and find out more? Do we take a cynical stance and only trust the material that is in all of the versions?

Well to start with let's be clear, the shorter version casts no particular doubt, it simply leaves the ending open. Secondly, history is not so simple that we can assume that the earliest or the shorter version is the most accurate. If I were to offer you a booklet printed in 1947 about the history of the second world war and another 800 page book written by a professor of military History From Durham University in 2011, which one do you think might have the most accurate and comprehensive account of the events of the war?

The addition could be a matter of creative choice, about theological emphasis, about the time taken to reflect on what is important, what needs to be included and what needs to be left out. All this is very interesting but it means very little unless we actually deal with the contents of the text.

But before we do that I want to bring some context using our reading from Ephesians. Now I'm sure that there were a number of important theological reasons why these texts were put together in the Lectionary. Theological links with the ascension when Paul talks about when God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. There are important theological issues being raised in this passage about this being an eternal heavenly inheritance that we enter into as believers and not a finite, fleeting earthly inheritance, and the point being that this is reflected in Christ's resurrection body nor remaining on earth or decaying but ascending into heaven.

But that's not the point I want to focus on right now. The point I want to focus on is that this is one of the few letters where Paul actually seems to be genuinely filled with Joy about the people to whom he is writing. Often in this letters he has a very well written joyous greeting at the beginning of the letter which rapidly gives way to him setting them straight on a number of things they are doing wrong, and you can usually tell a lot about his mood by the number of cheerful verses at the beginning of the letter. Ephesians I think is second only in cheerfulness to Philippians.

What is important here is that when Paul is happy with people, he is thankful for them and wants to dwell with them. Our reading this evening began at verse 15 and he's still being thankful and joyous, and if we go back for a moment to verses 7 & 8 we hear these words 7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

He wants to dwell with those people of faith who bring him joy and no doubt strengthen his faith as much as he strengthens theirs. By Contrast though, the end of Mark's Gospel gives us a strangely different mood. There is less of a desire to dwell and more of a command to get on with the job;
 Jesus appears to the disciples and has a go at them because they lack faith then commands them to; “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. After all the subtlety and nuance of Jesus' ministry we are suddenly hit by this rather black and white statement 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

Jesus says a few more words and then that's it, he's taken up into heaven. Luke's account is softer and more descriptive. We can't say for sure which one is the more accurate account or whether either of them represent a true account of Jesus' last words on Earth. Certainly the "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." Bit has a great final words ring to it, but after all that had been done and all that Christ had achieved through his actions, to leave his disciples having just rebuked the m like that seems odd.

Perhaps we need to look more the places where these accounts were being read in order to consider why these particular aspects of the story were being emphasised. Luke was writing for the Gentiles, Paul in his letter to the Ephesians was celebrating one of many healthy growing Christian communities that were springing up across the Roman Empire.

It is most likely that Mark's Gospel was written for Jewish Christians near the time of the war that led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. These were troubled times and there was indeed work to be done, this was not time for sitting back and dwelling in each other's presence with the Joy of the Lord in their hearts - it was time of life and death decisions, decisions about what it was to be Jewish Christian in a place where the Jewish nation was about to be crushed.

How we tell our story depends in part on who we are telling it to. That was true then and it is true now. Perhaps there was a time when Mark's Gospel didn't need such a certain ending, perhaps there was a time when there was time to marvel at the mystery of the empty tomb, to dwell within the questions and imagine the nature of Christ's resurrection. But perhaps there came a time when God's people needed every drop of certainty they could hold onto, and maybe then it was time to add those extra words and to record them in such a way as was useful to those people living on the verge of destruction. It may also be true that the two versions hung around side by side in different places for a while until the longer one was chosen as part of the canon of New Testament books.

It would be easy to presume that finding those other and versions of Mark's Gospel without the added ending ought to be cause for historical worry and concern about our faith, but the reality is that our story is richer than that, deeper than that and even the differences between those versions are a part of the story we have to tell. They help remind us that we are in a new place and a new time and we need to find the right words, the right way to tell these stories to this generation. Some of our words should be about dwelling with our brothers and sisters in Christ, about reaching wide our open arms of hospitality to a world in need of God's love and Grace. And some of our words should be about the need to get on with the job, to be aware of the darkness and the trouble around us.

Sometimes our telling of these stories should have a short sharp snappy ending, to get people thinking and to get them coming back for more. Other times we should linger a while, dwell with the text, to seek deeper understanding and to understand what it is to express these stories together as a community.

In any case I'm glad they kept the longer ending for Mark's gospel because however we tell it, it reminds us that Jesus left up with the call to "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation."

Part i: http://revpetebrazier.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ascension-pt-i.html

Ascension Pt I

On Ascension Sunday in 2014 I did a two part sermon in the morning and the evening of one day, someone recently asked me about the questionable ending to Mark's Gospel (Covered in the 2nd Sermon), so I thought I'd share what I'd already written on the subject...

2014.06.01 10am
Acts 1:6-14
John 17:1-11

 Here's a phrase you shouldn't begin a sermon with; 'The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but...'

And yet that is how I want to begin this sermon. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but where do you go from there. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is all very well but it's a slightly awkward end to the story. God incarnate has come and raised up a group of disciples, he has taught them over a number of years and he has made the ultimate sacrifice to atone for their sins, this was the greatest and most important moment in the history of the universe, and then as if that was not enough, Jesus Christ returns from the dead to demonstrate how eternal life is possible for all people. And so what next?

This morning we are thinking about the ascension of Christ into heaven. This is a peculiar and dramatic story, and the way that we go about telling the peculiar and dramatic events in life is an interesting thing to consider. Memories of unusual events are complicated, and they are complicated in part because we lack the language to describe what is happening; we lack a set of similar experiences to compare it to.

9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Clouds, heaven, sky and two men dressed in white - I wonder what it was they actually saw, how they might describe it if they had all the right words for such a situation. This was the early Church Struggling to find the words for a very special event; a dramatic event.

If you like big dramatic action movies you will probably be aware that the ending is the most difficult bit to get right. After the battle is won, after the disaster is averted, after the hero has saved the day, what do you do? Do you end the film right there or do you tie up all the loose ends. Do you land on the dramatic punch line and go straight to the credits or do you drag it out for another ten minutes with clearing up the love stories and the whatever happened to that guy who was stuck in the basement bits. Do you end on the high drama or do you end with the more personal more emotional stories, perhaps a joke or even a final twist in the plot.

Some films get this balance perfect, others get it horribly wrong. Often the ones that get it right are the ones that finish as soon as the big surprise ending hits you, 'the Usual Suspects' is a great example of this or perhaps the original Planet of the Apes from 1968. The ones that get it wrong are usually those ones that go one too long after the big event has happened, mission Impossible III springs to mind, perhaps The Lost World Jurassic Park II, Casino Royale, which is a great film but just out stays its welcome  as it drags out the ending a little too far.

Very occasionally you get a classic film, a near perfect piece of cinema that manages to be so in spite of or even in part because it took the time to play out the story to the very end. The Wizard of Oz is one of those, perhaps not the most serious film on the world, but a masterpiece none the less and for 1939 the visual effects were stunning. And the full ending is completely necessary. You couldn't just have Dorothy click, click, click her heels and go home and let that be the ending, because you would miss so much of what the film is about.

The story of Jesus is no fiction, but people still needed to make decisions about how to tell the story, which details to keep in and which to leave out. They needed to make decisions about how much to join the dots between the various features of the story and how much to let the stories tell themselves and allow the reader to make up their own minds about the meaning. The two readings we had today came from Acts, written by Luke, the only guy who attempted to do a sequel to his Gospel, and John. And John has many of the marks of a remake, but something you don't see often these days, it's a good remake, a remake worth paying attention to. And you can tell this is a remake because a lot of the things you think you've read in John's Gospel aren't actually there.

He alludes to things, he plants ideas in your mind and he tells stories on the presumption that you will already know what he's talking about. He tells the story of the last supper without the supper; he convinces you that the Word at the beginning of his gospel is Jesus, without ever saying it directly. And most importantly for today, John gives us no account of the Ascension. Instead we have hints of it throughout his ministry and particularly in the reading we heard today which comes from before the crucifixion. As in this we hear Jesus say "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" and "I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you.

You could not have two more different Gospel Writers than Luke and John. Luke is a collector of stories, who places a light editorial hand on the text in the hope that we might be convicted of the truth of the text. Whereas John comes with a heavier hand, joining up the theology like a web or a map, leaving gaps where he wants us to think and placing brightly coloured flags where he wants us to pay attention. This was the early Church Struggling to find the words for a very special event.
 It is important sometimes to look for the right words to describe the miraculous in the ordinary, like when we see the nature of God in the turning of the Earth and see his healing grace in the running waters of a stream. And there are times when we need to find ordinary words to describe the miraculous. Like in John Chapter 3 when we hear the words For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not die but receive eternal life. But there are times when we need to make some attempt to describe the indescribable, to find a set of words to capture a unique event.

The temptation is to say that the Crucifixion and the resurrection are the heart of the story; they come together to make the punch-line event, the plot twist to end all plot twist. Why bother with the ascension? Surely the story ends best with the empty tomb. Big Shock, awesome ending, roll the credits. But no, this is like the Wizard of Oz. There is time at the end of that film to reflect on what everything meant. How the characters and the themes connected up. How lessons learned in the fantastic and colourful story would play out in the black and white of day to day life.

If you end with the empty tomb you miss so much of the point. You miss that the story is not over, that the retelling of the story by the disciples to all the world, is part of the story. You miss that God has begin the process of handing the keys of his Kingdom to his people. You miss that the resurrection was not simply about a temporary physical reprieve from the Grave; it is about a move to a new life a new kind of life. Not the old one, rehashed to last forever but a new life that is eternal in its very nature And in Christ's ascension we see a glimpse of this eternal life played out before us. Not so much an ending as a teaser for the sequel; the beginning of what comes next, because as all the best movie trailors say, that was when everything changed. But then, we have that moment to reflect on the fantastic colourful event before the coming of the holy spirit at Pentecost. As this passage ends;

12 Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. 13 When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. 14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Fade to black, end credits. Amen.

Part ii: http://revpetebrazier.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/ascension-pt-ii.html