Edward Walker reconsiders the meaning of Luke's Ascension and Pentecost story in the context of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Recently, a senior C of E bishop was talking on the radio about a tragedy that had occurred in his diocese. Referring to his ministry among the bereaved, he maintained that they found great solace in the doctrine of Jesus’ Ascension. By his Ascension, the bishop asserted, Jesus had opened the way to life after death, so that those who had lost loved ones so suddenly and prematurely could feel that their lives were not at an end.
Such an interpretation of the Ascension is surely untrue to the meaning that Luke was intending to convey in his story in Acts.
Biblical scholars have pointed to the similarity of Luke’s story to the story of the ascension of Elijah recorded in II Kings 2, and have suggested that this appears to be the imaginative source, or reference, upon which Luke was drawing; a similar ‘echoing’ can be found in Luke’s story of the raising of the son of the widow of Nain in Luke 7, where the reference (in I Kings 17) to the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath is equally clear. The story of Elijah’s ascension is accompanied by references to a whirlwind, to fire, and to the imparting of his spirit to his disciple Elisha – all images which appear in Luke’s Ascension/Pentecost story.
Edward Walker reconsiders the meaning of Luke's Ascension and Pentecost story in the context of the Hebrew Scriptures.
'It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you.' But what might the character of the Spirit-filled life be like?
The Acts story, of course, tells of the different races present beginning to ‘speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance,’ and much has been written about the phenomenon of glossolalia.
Perhaps, however, another story of Luke’s permits a different interpretation. His account of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple has the aged Simeon praising God for allowing him to see the fulfilment of his people’s hopes and dreams; the salvation ‘which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples.’ He sees in Christ the new humanity, that for which both Jews and Gentiles had inarticulately longed, and which, in Paul’s words, had ‘broken down the dividing wall of hostility’ (Ephesians 2:14). The mark of the Spirit-filled life is not a matter of doctrine, nor of obedience to a law, but of awareness of being the beloved daughters and sons of God, sharing the new vision given to Christ at his Baptism, and acting upon it.
But what about the bereaved? Christians, I think, do not have more to offer than unbelievers, but insofar as their faith has enabled them to become more human, what they have to offer is warm human compassion; a gift we ourselves have probably received as often from unbelievers as from believers. So perhaps the clergy faced with the question ‘What do I say on Whitsunday?’ might have recourse to the account of Christ’s baptism, the enlightenment experience which left him ‘full of the Spirit’, and which led people to say that ‘he taught them with authority, and not as their scribes’ (Matthew 7:29). This was the authority that came to him from living out what it meant to be a beloved Son of God.
Edward Walker's book Treasure Beneath the Hearth (Christian Alternative, Winchester 2015) was reviewed in Sofia 117, September 2015.