Down and Up
THE SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 1:6-14 • John 17:1-11
Jesus has a signature move as a teacher: Instead of answering the questions that people put to him, he shows them all the ways they were wrong to ask that question in the first place. It’s not that Jesus discouraged questions. But he used questions from his disciples and other seekers to challenge all the assumptions and misguided aims that generated those questions in the first place.
Our reading from Acts today shows Jesus teaching in this way right up to the very end of his time on this planet. The reading starts with a question from the disciples. Now that Jesus’s life and crucifixion and resurrection are behind them, the disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Jesus’s spoken answer points out everything that’s wrong with this question.
First, the disciples are wrong to ask when. They want to know whether this is the time, whether this is the chronos, when the Lord will act. But as Jesus puts it, “It is not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set.” In fact, Jesus says that the disciples can know neither the chronos nor the kairos appointed by God. In other words, they can know neither the linear stretches nor the particular moments within that time when God will act.
The disciples are also wrong to assume how God will act. They expect God to act by restoring the powers of a kingdom. They want to return to their heyday of Israel and Judea united as one kingdom, not seen for a millennium since the reign of King David. For the past thousand years, they’ve experienced division, invasions, deportations, and occupations. But Jesus’s vision of power isn’t a nation, but a Holy Spirit that will come over the disciples and empower them as witnesses, not as rulers.
Finally, the disciples are wrong to assume where God will act. They limit the kingdom to a particular geographical territory. But Jesus gives them a different map. He says that he’ll send them to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
In short, when the disciples ask whether now is the time when the Lord will restore the kingdom to Israel, Jesus tells them they’re wrong on three counts. Their question assumes they can know, or that they already know, the when, how, and where of God’s actions in Christ.
But, master teacher that he is, Jesus doesn’t just tell his disciples how wrong they are. He also uses a visual aid! The ascension itself—Jesus being lifted up by cloud into sky—is a dramatic illustration of what troubles Jesus about the disciples’ question.
Our English translation hides the connection between the disciples’ question about restoring the kingdom, and Jesus’s dramatic exit. The word we translate as “restore” is built in Greek on a preposition that means “down.” The Greek word for “establish” means more literally, to “set down,” meaning to “set in order.” So when the disciples ask Jesus whether he’ll “restore the kingdom to Israel,” they’re asking whether he’ll do that setting-down. In our own idiom, it’s like they’re asking Jesus to “get down to business” or to “lay down the law.”
Jesus responds very pointedly by not getting down with their plans, but by going up. When the men in white robes describe Jesus’s ascension, they tell the disciples that Jesus “has been taken up.” That phrase is just one word in Greek, beginning with the preposition “up.” We might translate their words more literally as describing the “up-taken” Jesus.
To boil all this down: The disciples ask, “Lord, is this the time when you will set down the kingdom?” And Jesus replies by going straight up.
The book of Acts tells the story of Jesus’s ascension in a way that makes a strong point: Jesus does the exact opposite of what the disciples expect him to do. They want him to set down the kingdom in one patch of earth. Instead, Jesus is taken up by a cloud into the sky.
Today’s reading does end with a nice touch, though. When the disciples walk down from the mountain where they last glimpse the embodied Jesus, and head back to Jerusalem, they gather in a room that’s apparently up a flight of stairs. In the Greek of the book of Acts, they “up-go” to that room. I hope this detail of upward movement means that despite their disappointment, the disciples are starting to get it. They’re learning to draw closer to Christ by gathering together just above the ground-level perspective on earthly life, and by lifting up their prayers.
And, this reading is only the beginning of the book of Acts, which sees the disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit and acting as Christ’s witnesses far beyond the upper room where we leave them today.
Still, this story from Acts is a strange note for Jesus to go out on. We last see him showing his beloved students just how wrong they are! But the story of the ascension is also a powerful reminder that Jesus was who he was, and is who he is, consistently, throughout his ministry and even today. He’s here to upend our assumptions and expectations. He’s always drawing us even just a step above the narrow agendas of earthly time and space.
And he’s always up to something, no matter where we look.
© 2020 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas