ASCENSION OF THE LORD
Acts 1:1-11; Eph 1:17-23; Mt 28:16-20ASCEND INTO HEAVEN: A NOBLE DREAM
As summer returns, many families are planning for far away trips. Some people visit their hometown; some go on pilgrimage; and others travel to foreign lands. On an average, each of these trip can cost up to hundreds or may be even thousands of dollars.
Recently, toward the beginning of the millenium, a particular trip had stunned so many people because of its tremendous cost: the trip of Dennis Tito, an American millionaire who paid 20 million dollars for a ticket to travel for 7 days in space.
Since his childhood, whenever he looked up a the night sky, Tito always dreamt that one day, he would be able to fly up into the sky. As he grew up, he went to school, studied and became an engineer working for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) – a U.S. agency which specializes in the aeronautics and space programs. At JPL, Tito designed trajectories - the orbiting paths for the Mariner spacecraft missions to Mars and Venus. Later on, he left JPl in pursuit of a career in investment management and became a millionaire.
As a millionaire, Tito did not loose his dream of flying into space, eventhough he knew his chances were very slim. The reason was because most astronauts came from a solid background in piloting powerful aircrafts, and must be talented, strong and healthy in height and body weight. Meanwhile, Tito only measured a humble 5ft.5 and weighted 140 lbs. But when the Russian Space Agency agreed to sell Tito a ticket to space at 20 million dollars, and after seven months of continuous training, Tito’s dream became a reality. Before his flight to space, he commented: “We all have one life to live. I just want to be able to accomplish all my wholesome and legitimate dreams.”
“We all have one life to live”, and within that life, there are so many dreams being weaved. However, it is questionable whether all those dreams are wholesome and legitimate? Are all my dreams good and noble, or are they degrading and foul? Do these dreams raise me up or cast me down toward destruction?
To talk about dreams means to talk about goals that have not yet been achieved at the present. Goals belong in the future, yet goals direct and influence our lives in the present. When a young person hopes that later on in life, he will have a Masters’s Degree, in his present, he already has to sleep late and rise up early to study, he has to learn and store up much needed information and knowledge necessary in order to receive the Master’s Degree that his heart desires. Therefore, dreams steer us to the future, yet they already formed how we live our lives in the present time.
To look toward tomorrow so that today we may live more fully is precisely the way of wisdom in which the Ascended Lord Jesus wants to tell us.
Many people, because of their worldly view, when talk about Jesus’ ascension, they imagine Jesus’ body being lifted off from the earth and rises to some place high in heaven. This perception misleads many people to understand heaven as a certain place in space. Jury Gagarin, the first Russian astronaut, after returning from space, had declared: “I looked all over space but could not find God any where; and yet the Christians prayed ‘Our Father who art in heaven’ ”. Many people, lost their faith after hearing this because they thought God was supposed to dwell some where high in the blue sky, and now, after scientists went into space, with their advanced high-powered telescope and could not see anyone, that must mean that there is no God.
Some people misunderstandd that in heaven, people live their lives in the same ways as on earth,
meaning they still eat, sleep, rest, get married, give birth… That was the reason why the Saduccees asked Jesus about the woman who was married to seven brothers, then when all get to heaven, whose wife will she be?If heaven is a physical place somewhere in space, then it will eventually break down like all other physical matters. “To go to heaven” does not mean to fly up to the blue sky above us, but it means to step out from the physical world and enter into a spiritual realm, undisturbed nor influenced by time, space or the senses, yet totally engulfed by love.
So then when we say “Jesus ascended into heaven”, it means that He returned to the spiritual relationship of God’s pure and perfect love.
In this world, when in love, people have to use concrete, physical ways to express and receive love. No one has ever seen what love actually looks like, so we have to express it with a flower, an embrace, a gaze, or a kiss… Saying you love someone without expressing it through concrete actions will make it impossible for he/she to feel your love. This is because we are limited by a world of physical realities. That’s why when God revealed Himself to the human race, He had to show it a way that people can see, touch, hear and feel. The summit of God’s expression of love is the fact that Jesus became man and lived among us.
And yet, through Jesus’ ascension into heaven, Jesus had made clear to us that mankind will not be subjected to the physical realms forever. There will come a day when we will break free from this physical world, when the limitations of time and space will end, and we will enter into the relationship of pure Love.
Certainly, man’s most noble dream is the dream of happiness. But such happiness does not exist if it lacks love. The purer the love, the more perfect the happiness. The purest and most perfect love only exist in the Kingdom of God.
Before ascending into heaven, Jesus invited his disciples to learn to love this way right here on earth. He told them: “Go and teach all people”, “you are my witnesses”. Then what exactly do they teach and witness if not God’s Love for the world.
Any sincere teaching must accompanies a life of witnessing to what is being taught. Surely people would not believe in the words of the apostles if they had led shameful lives filled with adultry, greed, vengence, obsessions for power, and constant bickering. People believed the apostles because the apostled had learned to live the way Jesus taught them: “People will recognize that you are my disciples because of this sign, that you love one another”.
Therefore, the celebration of Jesus’ ascension into heaven has opened up for me a new attitude for living: To live in the world but set my heart toward heaven. Gazing up toward heaven helps me overcome all the sinful obsessions of the flesh, and of the material world, so that I can reach a higher love. It is the love for truth, love for life, love for things that have spiritual values – this kind of love will lift me up higher and closer to God’s love and love for mankind.
C.T.