A resurrection? In the earliest stage of the Church there was no tradition of a visible ascension of Jesus in sight of the disciples. But there is one exception. Luke is more interested than others from the start in demonstrating the corporeal reality of the risen Jesus and in the apostles as eyewitnesses; unlike the other witnesses, he separates resurrection and exaltation in time. He alone mentions a separate ascension in Bethany which closes the time of Jesus' appearances on earth (before the heavenly appearance to Paul) and definitely opens the period of the Church's world mission lasting until Jesus' second coming. This is particularly clear in the Acts of the Apostles which follows on Luke's gospel (after 70) and was probably first written between 80 and 90. In the conclusion added subsequently to Mark, stemming from the second century, this idea of a separate ascension is adopted, under the influence both of the phraseology used to describe the taking up of Elijah and of the words of the Psalm about sitting on the right hand of the the Father.
Obviously Jesus did not go on a journey into space. In which direction would he have ascended, at what speed, and how long would it have taken? An ascension in these terms is inconceivable to modern man, but it was familiar enough to people at the time. We hear of an ascension, not only in connection with Elijah and Enoch in the Old Testament, but also with other great figures in antiquity like Hercules, Empedocles, Romulus, Alexander the Great and Apollonius of Tyana. It was a question of being carried up, not of a "journey to heaven" neither the way to heaven, nor the arrival there being described, but only the disappearance from earth. In this aspect the cloud signifies both the closeness and the unapproachability of God. The taking up pattern was therefore at Luke's disposal as ideal type and narrative form.
Presumably he himself turned the traditional exaltation statement into a taking up story, for which all the essential structural elements were available in the earlier stories of the tomb and the appearances. Why? Luke was probably not concerned only with visualizing the statement of a non-visual exaltation. As in his whole Gospel, he was determined to correct quite firmly the still widespread expectation of the parousia, the second coming of Jesus, at an early date; instead of inactive waiting, there had to be the mission to the world. Jesus himself had gone to heaven and left the task to his disciples for the imminent missionary age - the time of the Church in continuity with the time of Jesus - until at the end of time Jesus will return as palpably as before. Luke wants to say that only those have understood Easter who do not look up to heaven in amazement but bear witness to Jesus in the world.
Walter Brueggemann in talking about the central narrative of the Old Testament, and so also central to Christianity, of the liberation of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, he points out that in Chapter 3 of Exodus, God says to Moses:
Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’
Which Brueggeman points out that God says, I will do all of these things, YOU do it. Which is both funny to hear from a Christian minister but also points out that God acting through human agency is central to the Jewish, and so Christian traditions. God sent Moses and Aaron to change the stubborn mind and heard heart of one man, the risen Jesus was commissioning his followers to change the hearts and minds of the world.
I have warmed up to what Kung says about Luke - the author of the Gospel I generally find most congenial - because, as he points out, Luke announced his intentions of correcting, of giving his understanding of the many things said about Jesus by those who knew and watched and heard him, which is what all writers, all reporters of anything do, they do it conscientiously and honestly or they do it badly, that's as true for science, politics, etc. as it is is for religion only in religion it will be dissected as it is never done in any other area of life.
As for Luke telling the truth about what Kung calls the "non-visual exaltation" in images, concepts, even in the creation of symbolically fraught events, that's also something that is done all the time. For those atheist-materialist devotees of scientism, science does this as a regular part of its operations, creations of pictures that are not "what atoms look like" but are visual symbols of the ideas and theories scientists create about atoms, molecules, etc. in order to explain phenomena and the data they collect to support what they say. Most plainly that is done whenever a large number of disparate measurements of events are crunched down into a number or a list of numbers which are then presented as the typical example of what happens or what is most probable to happen, even though in some cases documented within their very data, that typical example can be very unrepresentative in many if not every actual case in life. The generalizations made about human beings and animals within that practice can be everything from innocuous or generally useful to extraordinarily harmful, especially when used to support prejudice and negative stereotypes and even murderous hatred harnessed for political purposes to enhance the power of some of the worst among us.
I will note that the make believe "picture" of an atom is adopted by many ideological atheists as "their" symbol. Just added for fun and to show how they practice the same kinds of mistaking symbols for the things symbolized.
Luke's method is common to the culture of his time though, as in so much old literature, you have to know enough about that culture and the intent of the author to read through it to the meaning.* Luke was one of the few authors of the classical period to do us the enormous favor of honestly stating his intent at the start.
So the story of the ascension - especially in the subsequent version of Acts, with cloud and angels - seems almost like a parousia story in reverse. In Luke's Gospel as also in Mark's supplement the Easter appearances and the ascension seem to have taken place on the same Easter day. Only the Acts of the Apostles, which is later - obviously influenced by the sacred biblical number of forty (Israel's forty years in the desert, forty days of fasting on the part of Elijah and Jesus) -mentions forty days between Easter and ascension; the symbolic figure for a time of grace. the ascension is not to be understood or celebrated as a second "salvation fact" after Easter but as a specially emphasized aspect of the one Easter event.
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Note: I will continue posting relevant parts of Hans Kung's On Being Christian covering the Resurrection for the next few weeks, maybe I should make up for the bad Lent with a better Easter season series of posts. Pentecost, or so the internet tells me, is on May 31st. Though I would recommend his books because just about every paragraph in them is full of points to consider and information.
* The rigorous, informed methods of reading them recommended in the Vatican II document Dei Verbum seems to me to be something that many areas of writing could benefit from. Not just history or literature. Many of the points could be adjusted and modified to improve the reporting on science, much of which is totally unreliable. I have pointed out here before that some pretty eminent scientists have admitted and complained about reporters and their own scientific colleagues mistaking metaphors and illustrative diagrams for the things they are only stand-ins for.
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