Luke 24:36–53
Each year, on a Thursday, 40 days after Resurrection Sunday (Easter), portions of the Christian Church celebrate a holiday about which other parts of the church are fairly ignorant. That holiday is Ascension Day. The Biblical basis for its celebration comes primarily from the Gospel of Luke and from Acts, both attributed to the writer, Luke, a missionary companion of the Apostle Paul.
Luke tells the story the ascension of Jesus twice. The passage most often cited is at the beginning of the book of Acts where the Ascension is an introduction to the formation of the church at Pentecost. In Acts, Jesus appears to his disciples after his resurrection over a 40-day span of time. That’s why Ascension Day is celebrated 40 days after Resurrection Sunday.
However, Luke’s other telling of the Ascension story in the Gospel of Luke has a different emphasis. In the Gospel of Luke, the Ascension of Jesus is the final act of the Gospel story linked closely to the Resurrection of Jesus. In fact, if we read the entire last chapter of Luke, chapter 24, we get a concise look at the whole story of Resurrection and Ascension together.
- (Verses 1-12) First is the story of the women who go to the tomb but find it empty except for “two men in dazzling clothes” later identified as a “vision of angels” (Luke 24:23).
- (Verses 13-32) Then, there is the story of two disciples on the way to Emmaus who discover they have been walking with the risen Jesus when he joins them for a meal and breaks bread with them.
- (Verses 33-35) At the end of that section, those two disciples return to Jerusalem and share resurrection stories with the other disciples who have also experienced the risen Lord.
- (Verses 36-49) Then, Jesus himself appears to those who have gathered. He teaches them about himself from Israel’s scriptures, what Christians today know as the Old Testament.
- (Verses 50-53) Finally, seemingly yet the same day, Jesus leads his disciples out of the city and disappears into the sky, out of sight.
It is this story of the disappearance of Jesus, tied closely to the Resurrection of Jesus, that we call the Ascension of Jesus. In simplest terms, to ascend is to rise, to go up. Jesus is pictured as rising up into the sky. Ascending is also the opposite of descending, the movement of lowering or going down.
I thought of two possible modern-day images for the ascension. I grew up in the late 1960’s when the space program and the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was big news. Many people, including I, were fascinated by rising objects called rockets. How was it possible that such a gigantic metal object weighing so much could not only ascend into the sky but actually beyond the atmosphere into space? Watching a lift-off on television with a powerful engine propelling a rocket into space was fascinating and mind-boggling.
Thus, it can be tempting to think of Jesus’s “lift-off” or ascension in the same way. Maybe Jesus had the equivalent of some heavenly rocket fuel that took him off into space. Maybe, just as we scanned the skies until we could no longer see the rocket, the disciples looked up until they could no longer see Jesus.
The other image from my childhood which persists today is of the superhero. Of course, the original superhero was Superman. Superman was known as the man who could fly, blasting off like a rocket but then flying like a bird or a plane. In fact, that was the slogan that became famous: “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”
How could Superman fly? There were various explanations, but most of them had to do with supercells in his alien body activated by the sun to overcome gravity. So, it might be tempting to think of the ascension of Jesus like the powers of a heavenly superhero activating his superpowers to zoom up to heaven.
The Context of the Gospel of Luke.
Yet neither the rocket nor the superhero gives an accurate picture of the Ascension of Jesus in Luke 24. However, to understand this last chapter in the Gospel of Luke, we need to see it in context of the whole story in Luke. In Luke, an ascending Jesus (going up to heaven) is related to a descending God (coming down to earth). To talk about the Ascension, we need to look at the ascending of Jesus in the context of the descending of God to earth by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amazingly, all of this descending and ascending is what gives us our biggest clues as to why Jesus is called the Son of God.
The Conception and Birth of Jesus.
If we go back to Luke chapter one, we find that the birth of Jesus comes about because the Holy Spirit descends on Mary to form Jesus in her womb. When the angel tells Mary that she will be with child, 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. Luke 1:34–35 (NRSV)
Two words are used here. One word (ἐπέρχομαι ) means “come upon” suggesting the Spirit coming down on her. The other word (ἐπισκιάζω) suggests a shadow falling upon Mary, thus, the word “overshadow.” Both words signify something that God does, and, in fact, only God can do.
Luke says that is the reason (“therefore”) that the baby is “holy” and “will be called the Son of God.” There is no implication that Mary has any supernatural power within herself. Indeed, even the baby in her womb has no superpowers within himself; he is not an alien like Superman. Rather, he is a child to be born, fully human, like any of us. The power that makes him the Son of God is the power of the Holy Spirit of God. That power descends upon Jesus at conception and thus is present at his birth.
The Baptism and Ministry of Jesus.
The second phase of Jesus’s life, according to Luke, is the ministry of Jesus. That ministry is initiated and symbolized by the baptism of Jesus. What happens at Jesus’s baptism? The Holy Spirit descends on him. Luke puts it this way in Luke 3:21–22 (NRSV) 21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The verb here (καταβαίνω) is specific: It means to go down, to descend, to fall. Once again, the picture is not that of a superhero who has superhuman power in and of himself. Instead, Jesus is a normal human being upon whom God’s own Holy Spirit comes down. This is totally a work of God. In the coming down of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove is also the proclamation, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
The Judgment and Death of Jesus.
That leads us to look more closely at how Luke talks about the events leading up to the death of Jesus. Here, it gets more complicated.
The religious leaders themselves tried to get Jesus to define a set of superpowers that they understood. In Luke 22:66–71 (NRSVue) Luke says, 66 When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered together, and they brought him to their council. 67 They said, “If you are the Messiah, tell us.” Their version of Superman was a super-king called “the Messiah”; this was something they understood. The Messiah was to carry out the humanly impossible task of kicking the Roman authorities out of the Holy Land. That was their idea of what a superhero would do.
But when they asked him in court whether he was the superhero Messiah they envisioned, Jesus answered by saying, …“If I tell you, you will not believe, 68 and if I question you, you will not answer. 69 But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.”
Both the terms, “Messiah” and “Son of God” are loaded with the kind of superhero implications Jesus wants to avoid. He does not have some superhuman, magical alien powers. He is a human being. So, he refers to himself indirectly as the “Son of Man” or in some modern translations as “the Human One.”
But the religious leaders keep pushing him, 70 All of them asked, “Are you, then, the Son of God?” So Jesus could not deny it, even if those religious leaders had the wrong idea of who the “Son of God” was. Again, though, his answer is indirect. He said to them, “You say that I am.” But they got the point. They had their evidence of blasphemy. 71 Then they said, “What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips!” So the court proceeded, and Jesus was eventually sentenced to death.
When it comes to the cross itself, it is clear that Jesus rejects the assumptions of a superhero Messiah, the Son of God as people ordinarily understood that term. Jesus did not presume upon special magical powers as the Son of God, but rather he submitted himself to God the Father. 46 Then Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. Luke 23:46 (NRSVue) Jesus doesn’t do anything humanly speaking to assure himself a heritage of divinity, an afterlife, or a kingly superhero role. He simply commended his spirit to the Father. His life was in God’s hands.
Summary — God Descending.
To summarize: Luke describes the Holy Spirit of God descending on Jesus at his conception and birth and at his baptism, the beginning of his ministry. We also observe that Jesus rejects any superhero powers as the Son of God but rather submits his very human mortal life to his Heavenly Father. This brings us back to the end of Luke’s Gospel, chapter 24. A descending God and a submissive man lead to an ascending Jesus in the Resurrection and Ascension.
God Ascending — Resurrection and Ascension.
As previously noted, Luke 24 treats the Resurrection and the Ascension as part of the same story, the same glorious work of God. Not only that, Jesus interprets the Old Testament teaching about the Messiah like this: 46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day… Rather than being a superhero who uses supernatural power and brute strength to force his way out of every jam, every hard situation in life, Jesus is the Messiah by suffering the consequences of sin with the people he came to save.
Thus, it is only by submitting to the descending work of God that Jesus prepares himself to both suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day… Rising from the dead is not some internal rocket ability that he was born with. It is not like Superman that he can change clothes to activate his ascent. Instead, it is God’s power at work. That power can work only when Jesus submits himself in suffering love. It’s only in that submission that God’s real power is released. The power of suffering love is the power of God that raises Jesus from the dead. This language is consistent throughout the New Testament. The supposed superhero is actually the one who suffers. The Resurrection is the evidence, the validation, that this is indeed God’s power at work.
Similarly, the Ascension is not described as a self-propelled rocket power of Jesus. In the scene that Luke portrays, Jesus did three things with his disciples: …he led them out as far as Bethany…, he blessed them… and … he withdrew from them… (Luke 24:50-51) These are all expressed in the active voice; they are things that Jesus actively did. But then the language turns passive: he was carried up into heaven. Jesus didn’t carry himself. He didn’t have rocket fuel on him to propel himself into space. He did not fly away with Superman powers. It was God doing the work. God lifted him up in the Ascension just as God raised him from the dead in the Resurrection. In both cases, God caused him to rise up.
It was the power of God the Father that raised him up. Then, as other parts of the New Testament indicate, he was seated him on the throne at his right hand. This is a picture of the place of ruling authority.
Other parts of the New Testament confirm this clear connection between the Resurrection and the Ascension. On the day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter preached a very significant sermon to the people gathered in Jerusalem who were clearly startled by the things they were seeing all around them. Referring to the Resurrection, Peter says this (Acts 2:32–36 NRSV): 32 This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Then Peter goes on, referring to the Ascension: 33 Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. (referring to the descending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost).
But Peter goes even further on the significance of the Ascension by referring to Psalm 110 and the Psalm’s author, David. Peter says: 34 For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he [David] himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, / “Sit at my right hand, / 35 until I make your enemies your footstool.” And Peter concludes: 36 Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” (Acts 2:34-36) It is God the Father by the Holy Spirit who gives Jesus the recognition as Lord, Messiah, Son of God.
Luke highlights something else in how the resurrected Jesus responds to the disciples on that Resurrection Evening. Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. (Luke 24:36b-37) But Jesus wants to make sure they know that he is the same man, Jesus, that lived and taught among them. He told them to use their human senses: 39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have… Jesus also asks for something to eat, and he eats a fish in front of them.
Here, we note that Greek culture had its myths that great men died and turned into gods. That’s not what happened to Jesus. That would essentially make him irrelevant to our lives. We have not been turned into deities. Our North American culture also has its myths about superheroes—that superheroes have powers that make them look human when they are really are superhuman. That’s not what happened to Jesus. Being a superhuman would, again, make him irrelevant to our lives.
Jesus is a man; he has a body. He is born, lives a life on earth, and dies—like us. In the Resurrection, Jesus has a resurrected body, which is what we are promised through him. We are called to live like Jesus lived, submitting to the power of God which descends on us by the Holy Spirit just as it descended on Jesus at his baptism and descended on the early disciples at Pentecost.
Jesus is not a superhero. Jesus is a human being with powers in himself like every other human being. Luke highlights words of Jesus to the disciples that state clearly where his power comes from. 44 Then he [Jesus] said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”.“…Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day…
The power of God comes first through the faithful witness of scripture to a God who descends from heaven to save his people. God’s power is not the violent brute force of a worldly superhero, but rather it is the power of suffering love. Jesus submits to that power. It is only in that power that the Spirit of God raises Jesus from the dead and raises him up as both Son of Man (the fully Human One) and Son of God, the one worthy to reign in glory at the right hand of the heavenly Father. It is only in this suffering love that Jesus is revealed to be and thus fully proclaimed to be all along as the Supreme Lord, the one who in the power of God’s love rules the universe.
Thus, the question for today becomes, “What does it mean to trust in Jesus as the Son of God?” Too often, we also want a Superman who rescues us out of the consequences of our sins by simply swooping in to save us. But that is a myth of this world which fantasizes about a Superman Son of God. It lets us off the hook by trusting in a fantasy rather than actually following Jesus. We can pass off our lack of faith or our disobedience by saying, “Jesus was not really a man like us. He had some supernatural power.” Or, “I could never be like Jesus; he was the Son of God.” But in saying that we deny the equally important doctrine of Christian faith that Jesus was human being like us. He was, in fact, the definition of what it means to be fully human.
In the end, it is that great mystery that Jesus shows us. Jesus is fully human, the Son of Man, the one who identifies so closely with us that he suffers the consequences of our sin. It is precisely that suffering love, showing the essence of who God is, that leads us to conclude he was fully the Son of God. Jesus is like us, for all of us are made in the image of God; in that sense, we are sons and daughters of God. It’s just that we have never fully lived that, enslaved as we are by sin. Through his life and his death, Jesus shows us what it means to be fully human. Through and his resurrection and ascension, he is shown by God to also be fully and completely a child of God, the Son of God.
In whom will we put our trust? Will we cast aside the power myths of our world, just as Jesus did? Jesus is the one who descended, fully surrendered and laid down his life. Only then could God raise him up to the throne, the place of authority, as King of kings and Lord of lords.
Jesus said to those first disciples: 48 You are witnesses of these things. He told them to surrender, to suffer, and to wait for that true power from on high, the power of the Holy Spirit unleashed at Pentecost. 50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany…
- Bethany, a town at the foot of the Mount of Olives.
- Bethany, whose name means “House of suffering.”
- Bethany, the place where Jesus himself by the power of God, raised Lazarus.
50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.
Let us submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit of God who has descended to us.
Let us follow the Son of Man who has ascended and been proclaimed the Son of God.