30 May
Dear Friends,
Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?
That’s the question the men in white robes asked just after Jesus ascended. A rhetorical question, no doubt. Honestly, if I had witnessed something like that, I’d be staring straight up too, probably not blinking. It’s hard to blame the disciples for getting lost in the moment.
But the question still echoes: why are you looking up at heaven? What are you waiting for? Who are you expecting? It’s the old question, really. The Psalmist asked it too: “I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come?”
Reading through the New Testament can give you spiritual whiplash with all the movement between heaven and earth. Jesus came down in the incarnation. After the crucifixion, before the resurrection, he went down even further—to the “lower parts of the earth,” as Ephesians puts it. This week, he goes up again in the ascension. And next Sunday, the Spirit comes down at Pentecost. Up and down, heaven to earth and back again—this is the rhythm, the mystery of Christ.
And yet here we are, standing with those disciples, our necks bent back, staring at the sky, trying to make sense of what just happened. Maybe that’s not such a strange place to be. I find myself there more often than I’d like to admit.
“Where does our help come from?
When Malcolm Guite tries to make sense of these events, he describes it as follows:
We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we ourselves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.”
Marius Louw