A well-known yeast extract spread, and useful cooking ingredient is notorious as a polariser of tastes and views. You love it or you loathe it; ambivalence is not generally associated with opinions about it. Today the Church remembers the Ascension of Jesus, forty days after the resurrection and with ten days to go before the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. [Luke 24:44-53].
The Ascension is a problem for believers hung up over the fine line between spirituality ad physics. Polarisation over and obsession with whether the Ascension happened literally and in physical bodily form detracts from the watershed of the last of the resurrection experiences of the disciples. This is when Jesus’s fulfilment of prophesy was emphasised again, this is when the disciples started to understand scripture in the context of the forgiveness of sins and when they were told to wait for new power.
The waiting time must have been difficult for them. Rather than lurch to a faithless extreme they worshipped God back in Jerusalem in the Temple and praised him for what they understood him to be. I cannot imagine how frustrating that time must have been.
We are living in a time of challenge to our faith by the move away from traditional church life to a new model, the evolution of which has accelerated in the recent pandemic, but which may have started more than a hundred years ago. If we have been surprised recently it is because we have a black and white view of what is changing around us.
It is hard to wait to see what the next phase will bring. Scripture is strong on repentance and forgiveness but remarkably quiet about what to do about church attendance in 2023. Scripture encourages faithfulness and worship but has little to say about the juxtaposition of fundamentalism and liberalism when it comes to the Ascension.
In this waiting phase let us take the opportunity to reflect on blessings and pray for guidance to avoid extremes of taste and choice – just in case we are wrong – tomorrow God will give us a new song, a song that is adapted for the needs and tastes of the time.
A Prayer
Lord, you know if my mind is open or not. Do I lurch from love to hate or am I able to see how new light and truth are emerging from your Word to guide a troubled world. Christ enthroned, in your time and way fill me with your Spirit to be useful for you in God’s world. Amen.