Jesus' Ascension and "the Simple Religion of the Bible"
(Some Eastertide Bible Study)

From the Primate - The Most Reverend Louis W Falk

Dear Friends,

How many times has each of us heard someone claim, "My religion is the simple, ethical religion of the Bible! I don't need all that mumbo-jumbo about priests and sacrifice and a lot of fancy ceremonial." It's easy enough to debunk this when the person making the claim is standing there on a bright Sunday morning with golf clubs in hand. But there are also those who say this sort of thing in all sincerity. What do we say to them?
       Well, what about it? Is there such a religion? And if there is, how ever did it come to pass that even the earliest Christians (as we know from the historical records) got involved with "all that stuff" about priesthood, sacrifice and Eucharist?

The time of the Christian Year when we mark Jesus' Ascension into heaven is perhaps as good as any (and better than most) to think about such things.
        Our source is St. Luke - a physician and a keen observer. In his Gospel account (Luke 24:50-53) he tells us that Jesus was 'carried up' into heaven from the presence of his gathered followers. In the slightly longer account he gives us in Acts (1.6-11) adds (that a 'cloud' received him out of their sight. The Evangelist's choice of these words, 'carried up' and 'cloud,' is anything but casual or coincidental.
         "You simply must understand what the Greek term means!" preachers do so love to lecture us from their pulpits. Well, sorry, but in this case we really must.
         The Greek word used for 'carried' is the very same word used in the Bible to refer to sacrifices being "lifted up" to God in worship (anapherein). It is used that way no less than five times in the Greek version of Leviticus for sacrifices offered to God as a "sweet smelling fragrance." From it we get our liturgical term 'anaphora,' which is used' for that part of the Communion Service which begins at the Offertory and includes the Consecration and Communion. Thus Holy Scripture - the Bible - the very Gospel itself - tells us that Jesus' return to heaven has something to do with offering sacrifice to God.
          St. Luke's other "term of art," the word for 'cloud,' is nephele. This is the very same Word used in St. Matthew's Gospel for the 'bright cloud' which covered Jesus and his Apostles on the Mount of the Transfiguration. It does not denote a puff of moisture in the sky! Matthew's nephele photeine ('bright cloud') very deliberately refers to the cloud of God's glory (in Hebrew shekinah) - the Cloud which led the Israelites through the wilderness, and which filled the Desert Tabernacle and the Jerusalem Temple when God "came down" upon them to fill them with his presence. It is the very same 'cloud' which had long ago hovered over Mt.Sinai to let the Hebrews know that they had met their God. In the Bible, this cloud is nothing less than a 'Sign' of the very presence of God.
          So when Jesus ascended into heaven, he went as one presenting a holy sacrifice in the very presence of his Father - there to remain through all eternity, lifting up that same offering for ever.

              Thus it is that from Scripture itself we learn in the strongest and most emphatic terms that the important thing about Jesus being in heaven is that he is there offering his Sacrifice for us throughout the ages, until the end of time and beyond. And it is into that selfsame heavenly offering that we are invited to enter: to be (as it were) "wrapped up" in it and made a part of it, to spend a few minutes of our temporal existence caught up into eternity itself, in each and every Eucharist. This is what the Bible teaches, what the human authors and the Divine Author of that Holy Book are so very anxious to have us know and understand.
          So there is indeed a simple, Biblical Christianity after all! But it is not merely, or even first and foremost, about ethics and the Golden Rule. (Even decent Pagans practice these, after all.) When we go to the Bible itself to find out about "Bible Christianity", what we discover is the Eucharist. "All that stuff" was right there all along!

Yours in Christ,
+ Louis W. Falk