The Sunday gospel reading tomorrow is the story of the Ascension as found in Mark 16:15-20. Every homilist will be anxious to make some application of the story to the daily lives of his congregation. But before doing that, it would be intellectually and spiritually helpful for him to explain as best as possible---not an easy task---the original meaning in the mind of the evangelist (gospel author) and the first-century Christians who are "looking over his shoulder" as he writes this story. I myself would want to know, e.g.:
When did the Ascension of Jesus into heaven occur? One gospel suggests it was forty days after the Resurrection, another gospel suggests about two weeks, another suggests Easter Sunday itself, etc.
When Jesus in this reading orders his followers to "Go into the whole world," did He mean the entire globe or just the limited world about which his followers and his own human mind would have known?
In another gospel, the Ascension story mentions doubt toward the resurrected-ascending Jesus expressed by some of his disciples. This doubt appears in this Mark reading but just before the Ascension event itself. How could they be doubting (unbelieving?) with the resurrected Jesus right in front of them?
The Ascension means that the body-soul of Jesus enters heaven. If heaven is supposed to a metauniversal "place" or a state of existence for only spirits (God, angels, human souls), how does the ascended Christ "fit" into heaven? Yes, his body is a resurrected-transformed body capable of walking through walls, appearing and disappearing at will, etc., but it still is a body, i.e., it must have some material dimension---otherwise it's not a body. And the laws of physics say that any bit of matter must occupy physical space. In this sense, exactly where is his ascended body?
I'm anxious to hear what my homilist preaches.
-Old Gargoyle
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2 comments:
1. I suppose this would be a matter of opinion since it is not directly revealed. just to be safe we should average the three hints in which we would reach the conclusion that He ascended 18 days later at 7:59am.
2. did He still have a simple human mind at this point? or did He get a transformed super-mind which comes with the whole raised-from-the-dead package which includes walking through walls and jedi-style mind tricks which hides your identity from your friends until you eat lunch with them.
3. Matt 28:16-17
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
- It could be sparing Thomas the humiliation of being named the doubter... oops guess that memo to keep it quiet got to the other gospel authors... sorry Thomas.
- It doesn't say what exactly they doubted... maybe something like Jesus: "hey guys, guess what? after i'm done talking i'm gonna fly up into the sky!"
Bartholomew: "oh come on Jesus, stop pulling our legs... haven't you put us through enough with the whole 'hey i'm dead, now i'm not' bit?"
4. maybe operating on the physics laws of deeper dimensions allow for space to be occupied and unoccupied at will while shifting between dimensions? that might explain in Genesis 18 how the Lord was able to eat the food that Abraham gave him and the other two angels with him...
FormerStudent#33, you are hereby promoted to, oh, I guess FormerStudent#32. And you might be ready for some formal college courses in scholarly Biblical interpretation, not fundamentalist-Christian nonsense, nor Internet information and opinions, nor Hollywood religion movies. Meanwhile, try to read Frank Tipler's "The Physics of Immortality" and "The Physics of Christianity."
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