This useful quote, from a reflection offered by Luigi Gioia, theologian, St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York, (Reflections for Daily Prayer, Church of England) sets the scene for today’s brief reflection. It is a wonder, and the fact of our faith. Christians believe that Jesus is now in Heaven speaking up for us to our Father God. He was for a while living on earth in fully human form (‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’). Therefore, he has to have moved from that location then to the location of faith now.
Luke is clear in his account of the Ascension at the start of Acts (Acts 1:11) that Jesus was in conversation with his disciples, giving them ‘last minute instructions’ to the very moment when he left them to return to Heaven. He told the disciples to wait then to receive power from on high. They did, 10 days later, with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This is another fact of history – the extraordinary truth that 12 men spoke of Jesus Christ with such power then that, soon afterwards, the Christian church was born, and 2,000 years later, Jesus is followed by millions of people around the world. Jesus last words in Matthew’s Gospel are:
‘Now go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And I am with you always to the very end of the age.’ Matthew 28:19-20
The pillars of evidence for the Christian faith are scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Experience, the fourth – added by Wesley – is crucial to give a living dynamism to the faith Christians believe. And it is the little, personal, supernatural events that make up this experience for each believer. All these personal experiences of the supernatural (divine power) mean that we can look at the extraordinary fact of Jesus ascending in bodily form in an informed way, and so understand how he ’disappears visibly to become invisibly present and active everywhere and forever’. Thank God.
Revd Nigel Rawlinson
University Chaplain
29-05-25
Respond
