Liberating the Ascension

Evangelist Luke was a highly gifted and creative theologian and also pedagogue. You might not know it, but it was evangelist Luke who was responsible for coining the temporal sequence of Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. Before Luke - it was all part of one transformative eschatological mega-impulse.
    Luke took different theological aspects of the Easter Message, he analyzed them, distilled them, divided them, and distributed them along the time axis. Thus the resurrection was followed by the ascension, which was followed by the gift of the Spirit.  This Luke’s solution is simple, instructive, easy to remember, and it became the foundation of the Christian calendar ever since it was created.
    But as simple, instructive, easy, and ubiquitous as it might been, it also trivialized, domesticated, and de-radicalised Easter faith and theology. It led to what I would describe as spacial-temporal fundamentalism and a simplistic historisation of the original radical early Christian message.
    This Sunday we will try to undo this Luke’s approach and liberate the Ascension from its temporal and special caricature into a radical event which continues to shatter boundaries of time, space, and authority.

 

A caricature of the de-eschalogised Ascension